Idolatry

“ Each church has a list of great names, and the members feel in duty bound to stand by their great men.
Why is idolatry the worst of sins? Is it not far better to worship a God of stone than a God who threatens to punish in eternal flames the most of his children? ”

“ The source of idolatry was a desire of gods that they might see, therefore they worshipped the sun; but, as we must be taught to worship an unseen God, so to seek an unseen good, 2 Cor. iv. 18. We look with an eye of faith further than we can see with an eye of sense. ”

“ Or it may be understood of spiritual idolatry; those whose affections are placed upon the wealth of the world and the pleasures of sense, whose god is their money, whose god is their belly, they set up their idols in their heart. Many who have no idols in their sanctuary have idols in their hearts, which is no less a usurpation of God's throne and a profanation of his name. ”

“ The Mass is Idolatry. All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment, is idolatry. The Mass is invented by the brain of man, without any commandment of God; therefore it is idolatry.
[Part One: All Worship Invented by Man is Idolatry]
For probation of the first part, I will adduce none of the Gentiles' sacrifices, in which, notwithstanding, was less abomination than has been in the Mass; but of God's scriptures I will bring forth the witnesses of my words. ”

“ For although in that ancient and diffused adoration of Idols, unto the Priests and subtiler heads, the worship perhaps might be symbolical, and as those Images some way related unto their Deities; yet was the Idolatry direct and down-right in the People; whose credulity is illimitable, who may be made believe that any thing is God; and may be made believe there is no God at all. ”

“ That idolatry which is sometimes found among Christians; who, though they abhor the thoughts of giving divine worship to a creature, yet, if they look into their own hearts, will have reason to charge themselves with those things which are in scripture called idolatry ”

“ Believers, and men who claim for themselves the authority of the Christian name, are not ashamed—are not, I repeat, ashamed to find a defence in the heavenly Scriptures for the vain superstitions associated with the public exhibitions of the heathens, and thus to attribute divine authority to idolatry. For how is it, that what is done by the heathens in honor of any idol is resorted to in a public show by faithful Christians, and the heathen idolatry is maintained and the true and divine religion is trampled upon in contempt of God? ”

“ Ambition, avarice, love—“the world, the flesh, or the devil,” in some form, is always the idol. Perhaps, love; the first, the most disinterested, self-devoted, of all the forms of idolatry, comes nearest to the true worship. ”

“ We do not bow down to the stock of a tree, to the work of our own hands. We do not pray to the angels or saints in heaven, any more than to the saints that are upon the earth. But what then? We have set up our idols in our hearts: and to these we bow down and worship them: we worship ourselves, when we pay that honour to ourselves which is due to God only. Therefore all pride is idolatry: it is ascribing to ourselves what is due to God alone. ”

“ How much more wrong must it be to believe that there is a blessing in idols. When you examine all the precepts that relate to idolatry, you will find that their reason is obvious, and that they serve to make us abandon this evil belief, and keep at the greatest possible distance from it. ”

“ He kept his heart with all diligence, that that should not be secretly enticed to think that there is a divine glory in their brightness, or a divine power in their influence, and that therefore divine honours are to be paid to them. Here is the source of idolatry; it begins in the heart. Every man is tempted to that, as to other sins, when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. ”

“ And such idols the whole Christian world is in the daily worship of; and it may be that some of us are sharing in such worship. Let us examine these idols, and see what they are.
Oovetousness, says the Apostle, is idolatry: [7] the love of the world, the love of pleasure, the love of any earthly thing, when it is made a supreme object of regard, is idolatry. For 'worship does not consist merely in bowing down on the knees, or in uttering prayers: these are acts of the body: the essence of worship is to be sought in the heart. Worship means essentially a supreme love for a thing ”

“ A band of several hundred persons had rejected idolatry, adopted the worship of one great God, and surrendered themselves implicitly to the guidance of what they believed a revelation from Him;—praying to the Almighty with frequency and fervour, looking for pardon through His mercy, and striving to follow after good works, almsgiving, chastity and justice. ”

“ Hence the invention and construction of images as imaginary likenesses of the Gods, to serve as substitutes for them, to be venerated in their stead daring their absence, as we secure the likeness of a friend when about to leave us for a journey, or to be long absent. And here we may date the primary origin of idolatry, which is nothing more nor less than the first rude germination of man's religious nature. ”

“ The Apostle saith also to the Corinthians, 'We know that an idol is nothing in the world: and there is no god but One.' [Footnote 249] For they who are simple and infirm may easily by an excessive and indiscreet use of images, be perverted to idolatry. ”

“ The words ἐὰν πεσὼν προσκυνήσῃς, if thou wilt fall down and worship, do give us the true notion of idolatry. The word which we call worship comes from κύω, which signifies to kiss, or from κυὼν, which signifies a dog, both being to the same purpose, and signifying any action of reverence by which we signify the respect of our minds. To kiss the hand, or to fawn as a dog, are gestures which express the honour we would give, and being applied to divine worship before, or with respect unto, an undue object, is idolatry ”

“ Yes, we sin also against it by idolatry, superstition, witchcraft, sacrilege, and simony.
25. When does a person commit idolatry?
He commits idolatry (worship of images) when he pays divine honor to any creature or thing, as the heathens did.
26. When do we sin by superstition?
1. When we honor God or the Saints in a manner contrary to the doctrine or practice of the Church; 2. When we attribute to things a certain power which they cannot have, either by nature, or by the prayers of the Church, or by virtue of Divine dispensation. ”

“ It is a feat of abstraction impossible for the ordinary man, to worship before an idol, and not to worship the idol. The strange, awful fascination which idolatry exercised is perhaps gone now from the civilised world. But the lesson remains ever in season, that it is dangerous work to bring in sense as an ally of devotion, because outward things, which at first may be only symbols and helps, are almost certain to become something more. ”

“ Idols may have come in to give a definite idea of superior power, and the primitive faith or impression obtained by Revelation seems to have mingled with their idolatry without any sense of incongruity. ”

“ Idolatry is one of the most unconquerable of all the corrupt propensities of the human soul. Miracles under the new dispensation had scarcely ceased—the apostolic fathers were scarcely cold in their graves, before idolatrous forms were again superinduced upon the pure spirituality of the holy gospel; and in the papal church the curse continues till this hour. Back
[Pg 65] 3. The new and spiritual system should be first propagated among those who understood both the spiritual import of the Hebrew language, and likewise the language of the other nations to whom the gospel was to be preached. ”

“ Originally it may have been that a divinity was supposed to reside among the branches, and it was to this spirit that the prayer was first addressed; but anyone who has watched the progress of idolatry must have observed how rapidly minds, at a certain stage of enlightenment, weary of the unseen, and how wittingly they transfer their worship to any tangible or visible object. ”

“ His renunciation of idolatry is based, in the second clause, on his experience of what God can do, and on his having heard God's gracious voice of pardon and promise. If a man hears God, he will not be drawn to worship at any idol's shrine. ”

“ When an idolater will take an ordinance of God, and an appointed duty, and turn it into a symbol of his idolatry (as in the foregoing instance of the Mahometans) . We may not therefore forsake that duty; but we must do it in such a manner, as may sufficiently disclaim the idolater's use of it. As if any idolaters will make a symbol of some Scripture texts, or of the Lord's day, or of the sacramental bread and wine, &c. we must not therefore disuse them. ”

“ Idolatry is supposed to have a great part of its rise from this. While men endeavoured to express their thankful and admiring remembrances of some excellent persons by setting up their pictures, their posterity began to worship them as gods. ”

“ But we have a much more serious and conclusive proof than tins that nearly the entire retinue of Christian professors are practical idolaters, and that their "holy religion," in all its essential characteristics, comprises, in its very nature, the highest species of idolatry. Some Christian professors tell us that those who worship idols must have a limited conception of the character and attributes of the Deity; thus conceding that idolatry consists in ascribing to God a false character. ”

“ And their adoration of angels and departed saints, is only as of mediators and intercessors, who may present their prayers, and obtain favor for them—the very idolatry of paganism.
In these things there is a shew of wisdom and humility—wisdom to devise means to impress a sense of religion, and humility to draw nigh to God by the intervention of those more worthy than themselves; and the means seem not destitute of influence; they produce warm zeal, and all the fervor of devotion; yea, all those feelings and emotions which are thought by some to constitute the offence of religion. ”

“ Notwithstanding the thousand year rule of the Gospels, we, in an overwhelming majority are more sincerely idolaters than Christians—of course without suspecting it.... Nihilist, Godless, paganized, the contemporary generation accepts as an undoubted law, that the development of man consists in enlarging the number of needs and refining them to the point of a cult. Is this not a new plurality of gods, an idolatry? ”

“ But a twofold idolatry may be here deprehended. 1. In that they worship the flesh and blood of Christ. 2. In that they worship the same in the sacrament. As touching the first, albeit we may and should adore the man Christ with divine worship, yet we may not adore his manhood, or his flesh and blood. 1. Because though the man Christ be God, yet his manhood is not God, and by consequence cannot be honoured with divine worship. ”

“ From those beings of a nobler kind, idolatry descended into an enormous multiplication of inferiour powers; so that in many countries, mountains, trees, and rivers, the earth, and sea, and wind, nay, even virtues and vices, and diseases, had their shrines attended by devout and zealous worshippers. ”

“ The relics of idolatry ought to be abolished as affronts to the holy God and a great reproach to human nature. ”

“ But a stranger in a strange land, uninitiated into the symbolism of the religious faith there practised, is apt to infer idolatry in the ritual he witnesses simply because he cannot discriminate between the thing seen and its esoteric significance. ”

“ According to this orthodox Christian bishop, Jesus Christ appeared on earth as a God in condescension to the wishes of a people too devoid of spirituality, and too strongly inclined to idolatry, to worship God as a spirit. For he admits the worship of a God-man or a man-God is a species of idolatry. ”

“ The origin of idolatry is similar. The soul, materialised by forgetting God, and engrossed in earthly things, makes them into gods. The race of men descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition. ”

“ In such countries, you can contemplate that religion in all its open and unveiled idolatry; it is there you will see more fully exhibited the practice of worshipping images, of bowing down to dumb idols in the shape of pictures, images, saint worship, angel worship, &c., &c. ”

“ Here, I. The caution against idolatry is repeated, and against communion with idolaters: "Thou shalt consume the people, and not serve their gods." v. 16. We are in danger of having fellowship with the works of darkness if we take pleasure in fellowship with those that do those works. ”

“ All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols:—we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. ”

“ Though veneration and adoration be distinguished in holy things to show that adoration given to them is idolatry, but veneration given to them is not idolatry, yet in profane things, such as images are, veneration given to them is idolatry, as well as adoration; and we are idolaters for doing so much as to respect and reverence them as things sacred or holy ”