effects which such sayings of the prophets and other holy men ought to have in the enlargement of the moral law, or restraint of privileges and liberties.

The use of this rule in order to the government of conscience is to describe of what usefulness in our religion, and what influence in our lives, is the Old Testament; all the moral precepts which are particulars of the natural law or universal reason, are either explications of the decalogue or precepts evangelical, by which the old prophets did 'prepare the way of our Lord, and make his paths straight.' It is the same religion, theirs and ours, as to the moral part: intending glory to the same God by the same principles of prime reason, differing only in the clarity and obscurity of the promises or motives of obedience, and in the particular instances of the general laws, and in the degrees of duties spiritual but in both God intended to bring mankind to eternal glories by religion or the spiritual worshippings of one God, by justice and sobriety, that is, by such ways as naturally we need for our natural and perfective being even in this world. Now, in these things, the prophets are preachers of righteousness, and we may refresh our souls at those rivulets springing from the wells of life, but we must fill and bathe ourselves in fontibus Salvatoris,-in the fountains of our blessed Saviour;' for he hath anointed our heads, prepared a table for us, and made our cup to overflow, and "of his fulness we have all received, grace for grace."

But this is, at no hand, to be extended to those prohi bitions or reprehensions of their prevarications of any of the signal precepts of religion, by which as themselves were distinguished from other nations, so God would be glorified in them. For sometimes the prophets represented the anger of God in a ceremonial instance: when either they sinned with a high hand in that instance, that is, with despite and contempt of the Divine commandment, or when the ceremony had a mixture of morality, or when it was one of the distinctions of the nation, and a consignation of them to be the people of God. But this will be reduced to practice by the next rule.

RULE VI.

Every thing in the Decalogue is not obligatory to Christians, is not a portion of the moral or natural Law.

WHEN Moses delivered the ten commandments to the people, he did not tell them in order which was second, which was fifth and upon this account they have been severally divided, as men did please to fancy. I shall not clog these annotations with enumerating the several ways of dividing them; but that which relates to the present inquiry is, whether or no the prohibition of graven images be a portion of the first commandment; so as that nothing is intended, but that it be a part or explication of that: and that it contain in it only the duty of confessing one God, and entertaining no other deity, viz. so that images become not an idol, or the final object of our worship as a God; and therefore that images are only forbidden as 'Dii alieni,' not as the representations of this one God, and they are capable of any worship but that which is proper to God: or else it is a distinct commandment: and forbids the having, or making, and worshipping any images, with any kind of religious worship. These are the several effects, which are designed by the differing divisions of the first table; I will not now examine, whether they certainly follow from their premises and presuppositions; but consider what is right, and what follows from thence in order to the integrating 'the rule of conscience.' That those two first commandments are but one, was the doctrine of Philo the Jew (at least it is said so); who, making the preface to be a distinct commandment, reckons this to be the second; "Deos sculptiles non facies tibi, nec facies omne abominamentum solis et lunæ, nec omnium quæ sunt supra terram, nec eorum quæ repunt in aquis, ego sum Deus Dominus tuus zelotes," &c. And the same was followed by Athanasius," "This book hath these ten commandments in tables; the first is 'Εγώ εἰμι Κύριος ὁ Θεός σου· δευτέραν, Οὐ ποιήσεις σεαυτῷ εἴδωλον οὐδὲ παντὸς ὁμοίωμα I am the Lord thy God:' the second, 'Thou shalt not make

a Synop. Script. tom. ii.

an idol to thyself, nor the likeness of any thing;'" and this division was usual in St. Cyril's time, who brings in Julian thus accounting them; "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: the second after this: Non erunt tibi Dii alieni præter me, non facies tibi simulachrum,'" &c. And the same way is followed by St. Jerome and Hesychius: these make the introduction to be one of the commandments; and those which we call the first and the second to be the second only.

2. Of the same opinion, as to the uniting of these two, is Clemens Alexandrinus; and St. Austin," Et revera quod dictum est; Non erunt tibi Dii alieni,' hoc ipsum perfectius explicatur, cum prohibentur colenda figmenta ;-the prohibition of images is a more perfect explication of those words, 'Thou shalt have no other gods but me.' To the same sense, Venerable Bede, St. Bernard, the ordinary gloss, Lyra, Hugo Cardinalis, Lombard, the Church of Rome, and almost all the Lutheran Churches, do divide the decalogue.

m

g

i

3. On the other side, these are made to be two distinct commandments by the Chaldee paraphrast, and by Josephus;Primum præceptum, Deum esse unum, et hunc solum colendum. Secundum, nullius animalis simulachrum adorandum." And these are followed by Origen,1 Gregory Nazianzen, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome," even against his opinion expressed in another place, and St. Chrysostom, St. Austin, or whosoever is the author of the questions of the Old and New Testament, Sulpitius Severus, Zonaras; and admitted as probable by Venerable Bede; but followed earnestly by all the Churches that follow Calvin; and by the other protestants, not Lutherans.

4. In this great contrariety of opinion, that which I choose to follow is the way of the Church of England; which as it hath the greater and more certain authority from antiquity, so it hath much the greater reasonableness. For when God had commanded the worship of himself alone, excluding all false gods,-in the next words he was pleased

b Lib. v. cont. Jul. e Lib. vi. Strom.

h Sup. Salv. Reg.

* Lib. iii. Antiq. c. 4. m In Carm.

c In c. x. Hos.
f Qu. lxxi. in Ex.

i In c. xx. Exod.

1 Lib. iii. hom. 8. in Exod.
n In vi. Ephes.

d In xxvi. Levit.

g In xx. Exod.

also to forbid them to worship him in that manner by which all the gods of the nations were worshipped, which was by images: insomuch that their images were called gods, not that they thought them so, but that the worshipping of false gods, and worshipping by images, were by the idolaters ever joined. Now this being a different thing from the other, -one regarding the object, the other the manner of worship, -it is highly reasonable to believe that they make two commandments. 2. God would not be worshipped by an image, because none could be made of him; and therefore it is remarkable that God did duplicate his caution against images of him, by adding this reason to his precept, "Remember that ye saw no shape, but only heard a voice:” which as it was a direct design of God, that they might not make an image of him, and so worship him as the idolaters did their false gods, so it did, indirectly at least, intimate to them, that "God would be worshipped in spirit and truth :” that is, not with a lying image: as every image of him must needs be for it can have no truth, when a finite body represents an infinite spirit. And this is most likely to be thus: because this being a certain digest of the law of nature, in it the natural religion and worship of God was to be commanded; and, therefore, that it should be spiritual and true, that is, not with false imaginations and corporal representment, was to be the matter of a commandment. 3. Since the first table did so descend to particulars as by a distinct precept to appoint the day of his worship: it is not unlikely that the essential and natural manner of doing it should also be distinctly provided for, since the circumstantial was : but that could not be at all, if it was a portion of the first commandment: for then the sense of it must be according to the first intention, that images should not become our gods. 4. The heathens did not suppose their images to be their gods, but representments of their gods; and therefore it is not so likely that God should, by way of caution, so explicate the first commandment; when there was no danger of doing any such thing, unless they should be stark mad, or fools, and without understanding. 5. When God forbade them to make and worship the likeness of any thing in heaven and earth, he sufficiently declared, that his meaning was to forbid that manner of worshipping, not that object;

for by saying it was "the likeness of something," it declared that this likeness could not be the object of their worship. ping; for because it is the image of a thing, therefore it is not the thing they worshipped; and it cannot be supposed of a man, that he can make the image of the sun to be his God, when he makes that image of the sun, because he thinks the sun is the most excellent thing. When, therefore, in the first commandment, he had forbidden them to acknowledge the sun, or any thing else but himself, to be God, in the next, he forbids the worshipping himself or any thing else by an image. But of this I shall speak more afterwards, because it relates to the moral duty.

5. But I observe, that all those moderns who confound these two commandments, have not that pretence which the ancients had; and have quitted all that by which such confusion could have been, in any sense, tolerable. For Philo, and those ancients who followed him, reckon the first commandment to be, "I am the Lord thy God," &c.; by which God would be acknowledged to be the Lord and the second did forbid "any other besides him." So that there might be some appearance of reason to make the first commandment affirmative, and the second negative: the first, to declare who is God; the second, to forbid polytheism: the first, to declare his entity; the second, to publish his unity: the first, to engage their duty to him who had so lately endeared them by freedom from captivity; the second, to forbid the adopting the gods of the nations with whom they were now to converse. I confess that these reasons are not sufficient; for they multiply, where there is no need, and make a division without difference; and leave all those periods, which are about images, to be of no use, no signification; and concerning their own practice and religion in the matter of images, though it is certain they wholly derived it from the commandment, yet they take no notice of any warrant at all derived from thence; but supposing that they did make the division for these reasons, and that these reasons were good, yet all the moderns quit all this pretension, and allow but three commandments to the first table, and divide the second into seven; to effect which they make two commandments against concupiscence: concerning which I will not say they might have reckoned more