4. The last thing I shall instance in of this kind is the adoration or luorship of images. God says concerning it expressly, " Thou shalt
606 THE CHUECH OF ROME NO SAFE GUIDE.
not make unto thyself any graven images; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them." They say contrary, " Thou shalt make unto thyself graven images; thou shalt bow down to them, and adore them." And in their use they make them the stage-plays in religion, wherewith the minds of ignorant, unstable persons are allured and seduced into all manner of superstitious practices, and turned off from the simplicity of the gospel ; for being once persuaded, on the credit of their guide, that the making, use, and adoration of them are lawful, there is enough in the carnal minds of men to make them " dote" and even be " mad" upon them. Wherefore, no less service is done unto the interest of sin and the kingdom of Satan hereby, than if they should have taken off all sense of the authority of God from the consciences of men in the prohibition of those things which their sensual lusts are most prone unto. Could they have dissolved the obligation of the commands of God against adulteiy or stealing, and left men unto the guidance of their own lusts and inclinations, it is evident what abominable excesses the generality of men would run into. Neither do the lusts of the mind engage persons with less fierceness into the pursuit of their objects than do those of the flesh; and thence the disannulling of this command of God hath been an inlet unto all abominable idolatry. But herein they will not allow those who give up themselves unto their conduct once to consider the direct contradiction that is between God's commands and theirs ; but believe they must what their church believes, and practise ac- cordingly,— which is the most intolerable tyranny over the souls of men that ever was attempted. Only they will tell us of " latria," and " dulia," and " hyperdulia," of religious worship that is direct or re- ductive, transient or terminated on this or that object ; and, after a maze of the Hke insignificant terms, the conclusion is positive, " You shall worship graven images."
There are also sundry other things wherein they do or would im- pose on the credulity of men, — in open contradiction unto their sense, reason, and expeiience, as well as unto all evidence of truth from the light and guidance of the Scripture, — which are somewhat of another nature than those foregoing. I shall only mention some of them; as, — 1. They would have us believe that " we cannot believe the Scripture to be the word of God but u^Don the testimony and autho- rity of their church." All the evidence that a man is capable of in his own mind that he doth so believe it; all that can be given in ordering our lives according unto it as the word of God; the assur- ance and peace which multitudes of all sorts have in resolving all their interest in things eternal into the faith of it; the sufferings and martyrdoms which many have undergone in the confirmation of it; the uncontrollable pleas that are made of the sufficiency of the motives
ITS UNREASONABLE DOGMAS. 507
whereon we believe it so to be, — are nothing with them : but we must say, we cannot beheve the Scripture to be the word of God but only on the testimony and authority of their church; and therein both give ourselves the lie as unto what we know and are assured of, and. judge millions to hell who have hved and died in the faith of it, without any respect unto that testimony or authority. 2. They will have us to believe what they do not indeed believe themselves ; as, for instance, justification by our own works : for practically many of them do for this end trust unto absolutions, masses, the sacraments, and sacramentals of the church, with a reserve for the complement of it in purgatory, — which are not our own works ; and some of the wisest of them do betake themselves at last to the " only mercy and grace of God." So would they have us to venture our souls on that whereon they will not adventure then- own. 3. Papal personal infallibility was once a principal article of their creed; and the gene- rality of their proselytes do receive it from them with no less firm assent than they do unto that of Christ himself. But among them- selves they have so multiplied their wrangling disputes about it, as makes it evident that they believe it only so far as holds proportion with their interest, and is subservient thereunto; indeed, not at all. Their disputes of a difference between the court of Rome and the church of Rome, of the pope in his chair and out of it, in the use of help and advice of others and without this, in a general council and without it, in a particular council and without it, in matter of right and of fact, and the like, make it evidfent that they know not in what sense to believe it; and so indeed believe it not at all. And whereas they do themselves confess that some of their popes have been of the worst of men, yea, monsters for luxury, uncleanness, and violence, that which they require of us is not only hard and unreasonable, but impossible for any sober man to grant, — namely, that we believe sucli persons to have been infallible in the declaration of all divine, heavenly mysteries, so as that we ought to acquiesce in their declara- tion of them. 4. They would have us believe that the same body of Christ which was once " in the fulness of time made of a woman,'" by the power of God, is every day made of a wafer by the power of a priest. And what indignities are hereby cast on his person hath been sufficiently demonstrated.