name him, that is a greater degree of hatred. But fourthly, if wee cannot
endure to remember him, that is more then to name him. Yet thus should
it be in our manifestation of our hatred to Idolatry: we should not admit it
into our company, much lesse then to joyn in the Ordinances of God. We
should not admit, no not the very sight of it, no not the name of it, no not
the memory of it without a great deale of indignation. Jer. 44. 4. Oh doe
not this abominable thing, saith the Lord there; The Lord cryes out with a
shriek as it were, Oh! doe not this abominable thing, as if any of you should
see one ready to murther your child, or to cut the throat of your father, you
would shrick out, Oh! what mean you to doe? do not such a horrible villa∣ny
as this; so God cries out as it were with a shriek, do not this abominable
thing. It is observable in the second commandement, that God saith hee
will visite the sinn upon the third generation of them that hate him: none
seem to love God more then wil-worshippers; they will not only worship
God as he hath appointed, but will devise ways of their owne, and yet God
charges the breakers of no commandement with hatred of him but onely
these. As if God should say, you pretend love to me, in that you will finde
out new wayes to worship me by, you pretend decency and reverence, but
I account it hating me, you can provoke me in nothing more. Tertullian
in his book De Idololatria,Principa∣le crimen generis, humani, summus∣seculi rea∣atus tota causa ju∣dicii, Ido∣latria. Tertul. lib. de I∣dololat. Little hath this expression; Idolatry is the principall
hey nous crime of mankind, it is the chief guilt of the world, and the onely
cause of judgment in the world.It were good therefore, seeing God hates it, and loaths it so much, that we
should hate and loath it, and therefore even cast out the name and the me∣mory
of it; it were a happy thing if this could be obtained, that now the
names as of Popish, so of heathenish Idols could be got out from the Church;
But I know not how it comes to passe that we Christians do still retaine the
use of their names, the very dayes of the week amg us are called by the
names of Planets, or Heathen Gods: Not that I think it a sin, when it is the
ordinary language of the world, so to speak as may be understood; for the
Apostle (as I said afore) mentioneth the name of Castor and Pollux: but
if there could be an alteration by a generall consent, it were a thing desire∣able
(as our brethren in New-England doe) and it were very desireable
likewise, that our children might not be educated in the use of heathen Po∣ems,
where the names of heathen Idols are kept up fresh amongst us; The
Papists themselves acknowledge so much in their notes upon the Rhemists
Testament, Rev. 1. 10. where they say, the name Sunday is Heathenish, as
all other of the week dayes, some imposed after the name of Planets by the
Romans, some by the name of certaine Idols that the Saxons worshipped,
to which they dedicated their days before they were Christians; which names
the Church used not, but hath appointed to call the first day Dominike, (the
Lords) the other by the name of Feries, untill the last day of the week,
which she calleth by name Sabbath, because that was of God, and
imposition of eathen. And in their Annotations upon Luke,0
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