A Golden Chain

It is a carnal service standing of innumerable bodily rites and ceremonies borrowed partly from the Jews, and partly from the heathen: it is divided between God and some of his creatures: in that they are worshipped both with one ⟨p. 1015⟩kind of worship: let them paint it as they can. Thus then, if by their manner of worshipping God, we may judge how they conceive of him, as we may: they have plainly turned the true God into a fantasy of their own. For God is no otherwise to be conceived, then he hath revealed himself in his creatures & word, and specially in Christ: who is the engraven image of the person of the Father.

It is a carnall seruice standing of innumerable bodily rites and ceremonies borrowed partly from the Iewes, and partly from the heathen: it is diuided betweene God and some of his creatures: in that they are worshipped both with one ⟨p. 1015⟩kind of worship: let them paint it as they can. Thus then, if by their manner of worshipping God, we may iudge howe they conceiue of him, as we may: they haue plainely turned the true God into a phantasie of their owne. For God is no otherwise to be conceiued, then hee hath reuealed himselfe in his creatures & word, and specially in Christ: who is the ingrauen image of the person of the Father.

The second sin is Idolatry: and that as gross as was ever among the heathen. And it is to be seen in two things. First that they worship the Saints with religious worship which without exception is proper to God. Yea they transform some of them into detestable idols, making them in trueth mediators of redemption, specially the Virgin Mary, whom they call a Lady, a Goddess, a queen whom ^aChrist her son obeyeth in heaven, a mediatress: or life, hope, the medicine of the diseased: and they pray unto her thus: Prepare thou glory for us: defend us from our enemies, & in the hour of death receive us, loose the bonds of the guilty, bring light to the blind, drive away all devils. Show thy self to be a mother, Let him receive the prayers. Again, their idolatry is manifest, in that they worship God in, at, before images: having no commandment so to do, but the contrary. They allege that they use and worship images only in a remembrance of God. But this is all one as if an unchaste wife should receive many lovers into her house in the absence of her husband and being reproved, should answer: that they were the friends of her husband, and that she kept them only in remembrance of him. Thirdly, their Idolatry exceeds the Idolatry of the heathen, in that they worship a Breadengod, or, Christ in and under the forms of bread and wine. And if Christ according to his humanity be absent from the earth, as I have proved, the Popish host is as abominable an idol as ever was.