19. It is not unlawful to make an image (out of the cases of accidental evil before named) to be _objectum vel medium excitans ad cultum Dei_, an object or medium of our consideration, exciting our minds to worship God. (As a death's-head, or a crucifix, or an historical image of Christ or some holy man, yea, the sight of any of God's creatures, may be so holily used, as to stir up in us a worshipping affection, and so is _medium cultus excitans vel efficienter_.) But no creature, or image, (I think,) may lawfully be made the _medium cultum vel terminus, in genere causæ finalis_, a worshipped medium, or the _terminus_, or the thing which we worship mediately, on pretence of representing God, and that we worship him in it ultimately. And this I take to be the thing forbidden directly in the second commandment; viz. To worship a creature (with mind or body) in the act of divine worship, as representing God, or as the mediate term of our worship, by which we send it unto God, as if it were the more acceptable to him. So that it is lawful by the sight of a crucifix to be provoked to worship God; but it is unlawful to offer him that worship, by offering it to the crucifix first, as the sign, way, or means of our sending it to God.
20. Yet a creature may be honoured or worshipped with such worship as is due to him, by the means of such a representing _terminus_ or image. If the king command his subjects to bow towards his image or throne when he is absent, as an act of honour, or human worship to himself, it is lawful so to do, God having not forbid it. But God hath forbid us to do so by himself, because he hath no image, and is confined to no place, and to avoid the danger and appearance of idolatry.
21. Yet is it lawful to lift up our hand and eyes towards heaven, as the place of God's glory; and I condemn not the ancient churches that worshipped towards the east. But it was not heaven, or the sun, or east that they worshipped, or to which they sent their worship, as any _terminus medius_, or thing mediately worshipped; but only to God himself, whose glory is in the heavens.
[358] Isa. xl. 18, 25; xlvi. 5; Exod. xx. 4; Gen. i. 26; v. 1; Deut. iv. 16-18, 23, 25; v. 8; xvi. 22; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 7; Ezek. viii. 3, 5; Dan. iii.; Rom. i. 23; Heb. xii. 29; Col. iii. 10; Deut. ix; Exod. xxiii. 24; xxxiv. 13; Deut. vii. 5; 1 Kings xiv. 9, 23; 2 Kings xvii. 19; 2 Chron. xiv. 3, 5; Hab. ii. 18; Jer. x. 8; Deut. xxvii. 15; Isa. xvii. 8; xli. 29; 2 Chron. xxviii. 2; xxiv. 3, 4; Hos. xiii. 2; Ezek. xvi. 17; xxiii. 14; xxx. 13; Hos. x. 1, 2; 2 Kings xxi. 7; Jer. viii. 19; li. 47.
[359] 2 Chron. iii. 10; Matt. xxii. 10; Numb. xxi. 9; 2 Kings xvi. 17; 1 Kings vii. 18, 19, 25, 26, 29, 30.
[360] Rom. viii. 29; Rev. i. 12, &c.; 2 Cor. iv. 4; Col. i. 15; Phil. iii. 8-10, &c.
[361] 1 Cor. xi. 7; 2 Cor. iii. 18; Col. iii. 10.
[362] Exod. xxv. 18, 19; xxxvii. 8, 9.
[363] 1 Kings vi. 24-27; Ezek. x. 2, 4, 7, 9, 14; 1 Kings vii. 29, 36; viii. 6, 7; 1 Sam. iv. 4; 2 Kings xix. 15; Psal. lxxx. 1; xcix. 1; Isa. vi. 2, 6.
[364] Ut Beza Icones Viror. Illustrium.
[365] Neh. ix. 48; Esth. viii. 8.
Quest. CXIV. _Whether stage-plays, where the virtuous and vicious are personated, be lawful?_
Because this is a kind of imagery, the question may be here fitly handled. But I have said so much before of stage-plays, and the sin that is used in them, part i. chap. 18, that I have nothing more to say here, but only to decide this particular case of conscience concerning them.
As I am not willing to thrust any man into extremes, nor to trouble men with calling those sins, which God hath not forbidden; so I have reason to advise men to go, in doubtful cases, on the safer side, much more to dissuade them from undoubted sin, and especially from great and multiplied sins; and therefore I must thus decide the question.
1. It is not absolutely unlawful to personate another man, nor doth the second commandment forbid such living images in this extent. I pass by the instance of the woman of Tekoah, 2 Sam. xiv.; because the bare history proveth not the lawfulness. But Paul's speaking as of himself and Apollos the things which concerned others, was approvable; and as Christ frequently taught by parables, so his parables were a description of good and evil, by the way of feigned history, as if such and such things had been done by such persons as never were. And this fiction is no falsehood; for the hearer knoweth that it is not meant as an historical narrative, but a parable; and it is but an image in words, or a painted doctrine. And if a person and action may be feigned by words, I know not where it is forbidden to feign them by personal representation. Therefore to personate another is not simply a sin.
2. To personate good men in good actions, is not simply unlawful; because, 1. It is not unlawful as it is personating, as is showed. 2. Nor as lying; because it is not an asserting, but a representing; nor so taken.