Sect. 3. Against Reason.
WHat need we seek any other Reason of God's prohibition then his will? and yet God himself hath given abundant reason of his prohibition of Images erected to himself.
a To whom will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? b Ye saw no manner of similitude in the day that the Lord spake to you in Horcb. [ C] It is an high injury to the infinite and Spiritual nature of God to be resembled by bodily shapes. And for the worship of Images erected to himself or his creature,c I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another, nor my praise to molten images. The holy jealousie of the Almighty will not abide any of his honour divided with his creature; andd whatever worship more then mere humane is imparted to the creature, sets it in rivaltie with our Maker.
The man is better then his picture; and if religious worship will not be al∣lowed to the Person of man or Angel, how much lesse to his Image? Not to man;e Saint Peter forbids it: not to Angel;f himself forbids it. What [ D] a madnesse then is it for a living man to stoop unto a dead stock; unlesse (as thatg Cynick had wont to speak unto statues) to use himself to repulses?
This curtesie was too shamefull in the Pagans of old, how much more into∣lerable in Christians? And as for that last shift of this unlawfull devotion, that they worship not the Image, but by it the Person represented; Haec à Paganis afferri solebat, This (saithh Cassander, out of the evidence of Arnobius & Lactan∣tius, to whom he might have added Saint Augustine) was the very evasion of the old Heathen; Nec valebat tunc illa ratio, Neither would this colour then serve: how can it hope now to passe and finde allowance?
The Doctrine therefore and Practice of Image-worship, as late as erroneous, [ E] is justly rejected by us, who, according toi S. Hierome's profession, worship not the relicks of Martyrs, nor Sun, nor Moon, nor Angels, nor Archangels, nor Cherubim, nor Seraphin, nor any name that is named in this world or in the world to come: and unjustly are we hereupon ejected.