THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 449
by puttii]g his hand to his master's goods, though his case of wrong be never so clear, therefore did the command of God intervene to justify tlieir action." But why do you call this " a thing of danger" only? is it not of more than danger, even expressly sinful? Then is a thing morally dangerous, when there may be sin in it, not when unavoidably there is; then, indeed, there is danger of punishment, or rather certainty of it, without repentance; but we do not say then there is danger of sinning. It may be you do it to com2:)ly with your casuists, who have determined that in some cases it is lawful for a servant himself to make up his wrongs out of his master's goods ; which caused your friends some trouble, as you know in the case of John de Alva.^ You proceed, and insist upon the command of God, proceeding from his sovereignty and lordship over all, war- ranting the Hebrews to take the Egyptians' goods, and so spoil them ; and that rightly. " But this," say you, '"' can no way be applied unto images; nor could God command the Hebrews to make any images if he had absolutely forbidden to have any at all made." Sir, this is not our case. God forbade the Hebrews to make any images, so as to bow down to them in a way of religious worship, and yet might command them to make hieroglyphical representations of his care and watchfulness, and to set them up where they might not be wor- shipped. But let us suppose that you speak " ad idem," and j)erti- nently; let us see how you prove what you say. " For this," say you, " concerns not any affair between neighbour and neighbour, whereof the supreme Lord hath absolute dominion, but the service only and adoration due from man to his Maker; which God, being absolutely good and immutably true, cannot alter or dispense with. Nor doth it stand with his nature and deity to change, dispense, or vary the first table of his law concerning himself, as he may the second, which concerns neighbours, for want of that dominion over himself which he hath over any creature, to take away its right, to preserve or de- stroy it, as himself pleaseth ; and therefore you conclude, that if God had commanded his people to set up no images, he could not have commanded them to set up any, because this would imply a contra-
1 John de Alva was a sei'vant in the Jesuit College of Clermont, "who pilfered from his masters, and, on his examination before the civil court, quoted in his defence the maxim of a Jesuit, Father Bauny, who held it lawful for a servant to purloin from his master, if the theft were simply to make amends for any insufficiency in his wages. The story is humorously given in the "Provincial Letters," (Let. vi.) There is a singular parallel to be found in the history of another Alva, famous for his atrocities in the Low Coun- tries. When he was recalled from the disgrace which he had incm'red for them, to reduce Portugal under the Spauish crown, he seized an immense treasure at Lisbon, and refused to give any account of it, holding it as the reward due to him for his services, and compensation for his four years' disgrace and imprisonment. " If the king," saicl he, " ask me for an account, I will make hun a statement of kingdoms preserved and conquered, of signal victories, of successful sieges, and of sixty years' service. ' ' No farther inquiries were made. — Ed.
VOL. XIV, 29
450 A VINDICATION OF THE ANEMADVEESIONS ON FIAT LUX.
diction in himself." A very profound theological discourse, which might become one of the angelical or seraphical doctors of your church ! But who, I pray, told you that there was the same reason of all the commands of the first table ? Vows and oaths are a part of the worship of God prescribed in the third commandment; yet, whatever God can do, your pope takes upon himself to dispense with them every day. He so dispensed with the oath of Ladislaus, king of Hungary, made in his peace with the Turks, to the extreme danger of his whole kingdom, the irreparable loss and almost ruin of all Christendom. So he dispensed with the oath of Henry II. of France, which ended in his expulsion out of Italy, his loss of the famous battle of St Quentin, and the danger of his whole kingdom. The strict observation of the Sabbath by the Jews was commanded unto them in a precept of the first table, and was not a matter between neighbours, but belonged immediately to the worship of God him- self: according to your divinity, God could not dispense with them to do any labour that day; but our Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, that by his command the priests were to labour on that day in killing the sacrifices, by virtue of an after-exception. And your book of Maccabees will inform you that the whole people judged them- selves dispensed withal in case of imminent danger. The whole fabric of Mosaical worship was a thing that belonged immediately to God himself, and was not a matter between neighbours, which had its foundation in the second commandment; and yet I suppose you will grant that God hath altered it, changed it, and taken it awa}^ So excellent is your rule as to all the precepts of the first table, which indeed holds only in the first command ! Things that naturally and necessarily belong to the dependence of the rational creature on God, as the first cause, last end, and supreme Lord of all, are absolutely indispensable ; which are in general all comprised, as to their nature, in the first j)recept, wherein we are commanded to receive him alone as our God, and consequently to yield him that obedience of faith, love, honour, which is due to him as God: but the outward modes and ways of expressing and testifying that subjection and obedience which we owe unto him, depending on his arbitrary institution, are changeable, dispensable, and liable to be varied at his pleasure ; which they were at several seasons, before the last hand was put to the revelation of his will by his Son. And then, though God did abso- lutely forbid his people the making of images, as to any use of them in his worship and service, he might, by particular exception, have made some himself, or appointed them to be made, and have de- signed them to what use he pleased ; from whence it would not follow in the least, that they who were to regulate their obedience by his command, and not by that instance of his own particular exception