12G ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
he ever appointed them to be adored, or to be the immediate objects of any veneration, or to be so much as historical means of instruction, being always shut up from the view of the people, and representing nothino- that ever had a real subsistence " in rerum natura." Be- sides, who appointed them to be made? As I take it, it Avas God himself, who did therein no more contradict himself than he did Avhen he commanded his people to spoil the Egyptians, having yet forbid all men to steal. His own special dispensation of a law constitutes no general rule; so that (whoever are blind or fools) it is certain that the making of images for religious veneration is expressly for- bidden of God unto the sons of men. But, alas ! " They were foreign images, the ugly faces of Moloch, Dagon, Ashtaroth; he forbade not his own." Yea, but they are images or likenesses of himself that, in the first place and principally, he forbids them to make; and he en- forceth his command upon them from hence, that when he spake unto them in Horeb they "saw no manner of similitude," Deut. iv. 15; which surely concerned not " the ugly face of Moloch." And it is a very pretty fancy of our author, and inferior to none of the like kind that we have met with, that they have in their Catholic churches both, " Thou shalt not make graven images," and, " Thou shalt make graven images;" because they have the image of St Peter, not of Simon Magus; of St Benedict or good St Francis, not of Luther and Calvin. I desire to know where they got that command, " Thou shalt make images?" In the original, and all the translations lately published in the " Biblia Polyglotta," it is, " Thou shalt not;" so it is in the writings of all the ancients. As for this new command, " Thou shalt make graven images," I cannot guess from whence it comes; and so shall say no more about it. Only I shall ask him one question in good earnest, desiring his resolution the next time he shall think fit to make the world merry with his Avitty discourses, and it is this: Suppose the Jews had not made the images of Jannes and Jambres, their Simon Maguses, but of Moses and Aaron, and had placed them in the temple and worshipped them, as Papists do the images of Peter or the blessed Virgin, whether he thinks it would have been approved of God or no ? I fear he will be at a stand. But I shall not discourage him by telling him beforehand what will befall him, on what side soever he determines the question.
He will not yet have done, but tells us the precept lies in this, " That ' men shall not make to themselves :' as if he had said, ' When you come into the land among the Gentiles, let none of you make to himself any of the images he shall see there set up by the inhabitants contrary to the law of Moses, and the practice of the synagogue, which doth so honour her chembims that she abominates all idols and their sculpture.' And thus, if any Catholic should make to himself, contrary
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to what is allowed, any peculiar imago of the planets/' etc. But that " Nil admirari " relieves me, I should be at a great loss in reading these things; for truly a man would think that he that talks at this rate had read the Bible no otherwise than he would have our people to do it ; that is, not at all. I would I could prevail with him for once to read over the book of Deuteronomy. I am per- suaded he will not repent him of his pains, if he be a lover of truth, as he pretends he is; at least he could not miss of the advantage of being delivered from troubling himself and others hereafter with such gross mistakes. If he will believe the author of the Pentateuch, it was the image of the true God that was principally intended in the prohibition of all images whatever to be made objects of divine adora- tion, and that without any respect unto the cherubims over the ark, everlastingly secluded from the sight of the people. And the images of the false gods are but in a second place forbidden, the gods them- selves being renounced in the first commandment; and it is this making unto a man's self any image whatever, without the appoint- ment of God, that is the very substance of the command. And I desire to know of our author how any image made in his church comes to represent him to whom it is assigned, or to have any reli- gious relation to him ; for instance, to St Peter rather than to Simon Magus or Judas, so that the honour done unto it should redound to the one rather than to the other? It is not from any appointment of God, nor from the nature of the thing itself, for the carved piece of wood is as fit to represent Judas as Peter ; not from any influence of virtue and efficacy from Peter into the statue, as the heathens pleaded for their image-worship of old. I think the whole relation between the image and the pretended prototype depends solely on the imagination of him that made it, or him that reverenceth it. This creative faculty in the imagination is that which is forbidden to all the sons of men in the " Non facies tibi," — " Thou shalt not make to thyself;" and when all is done, the relation supposed, which is the pretended ground of adoration, is but imaginary and fantastic, — sorry basis for the building erected on it. Tliis whimsical termination of the worship in the prototype, by virtue of the imagination's creation of a relation between it and the image, will not free the Papists from downright idolatry in their abuse of images; much less will the pre- tence that it is the true God they intend to worship, that true God having declared all images of himself, set up without his command, to be abominable idols.