Master Bezaes sermons upon the three chapters of the canticle of canticlesMaster Bezaes sermons vpon the three chapters of the canticle of canticles

2 This first commandment which is the ground & foundation of all the rest being overthrown, what may a man conclude of the rest? As for the second, containing two principal points, namely an express forbidding to make any likeness of any creature high, middle, or low in the cause of religion, or to do any reverence to them, I will not say of this commandment as of the other. For they have gone a great deal farther in this then in the first, which albeit in effect they have violated and broken, yet have they left him written as he was by the hand of God. But as for this second, seeing that if he remained there, painted Images and Statues must fall to ground, they have so ⟨p. 410⟩entangled it with the first, that they have finally eclipsed it altogether: a most intolerable presumption, and inexcusably execrable, seeing that the Lord who engraved it as it were with his own hand and without the ministry of man, declareth that not one sole little letter of the law may not be blotted out Math. 5.18. So then already this fault, I mean this eclipsing of this commandment by those of whom we speak is without all excuse. But how on the other side may the transgression thereof be excused, when in their churches, chapels, streets, great places, in cities and in fields there are found so many nests of statues and all sorts of Images? We know well their goodly replies, which yet are such as vanish away like smoke at the least word of this commandment. The true sense thereof besides that it is most clear in it self, whence may it be better gathered then by that which hath been generally observed in the christian Church for moe then three hundred years together? Images, say they, are the books of the common people. And what can such dumb doctors teach, set up and established against the express commandment of God, who hath not only forbidden to adore and worship them, but to make them, I mean to have them used in the matter of religion? And experience hath finally showed why the Lord distinguished this commandment into two principal heads, to wit, first forbidding to make them, and after that to worship them.

2 This first commandement which is the ground & foundation of al the rest being ouerthrowen, what may a man conclude of the rest? As for the second, containing two principall points, namely an expresse forbidding to make any likenes of any creature high, middle, or low in the cause of religion, or to do any reuerēce to thē, I will not say of this cōmandemēt as of the other. For they haue gone a great deale farther in this then in the first, which albeit in effect they haue violated and broken, yet haue they left him written as hee was by the hande of God. But as for this second, seeing that if he remained there, painted Images and Statues must fall to ground, they haue so