A20559:139
The bright star which leadeth wise men to our Lord Jesus Christ, or, A…
The bright star which leadeth wise men to our Lord Jesus Christ, or, A familiar and learned exposition on the ten commandments gathered from the mouth of a faithful pastor by a gracious young man, sometime scholar in Cambridge.The bright star which leadeth wise men to our Lord Jesus Christ, or, A familiar and learned exposition on the ten commandements gathered from the mouth of a faithfull pastor by a gracious young man, sometime scholler in Cambridge.
London: printed by John Harison for Thomas Man, 1603London: printed by Iohn Harison for Thomas Man, 1603
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Then the grievous threatening that God useth to affright men from it, shows that they are easy & willing to be drawn unto it, and that there is a strange promise and inclination in every mans nature, to this sin of false worship. So in Deut. 7. 25. 26. God labours with the people of Israel there, that they should not in the land of Canaan when they met with Idols covered with gold and silver, covet or touch one parcel of the plate, or meddle with it, for if they did, it would ensnare them, it would make them remember the Idol, & from remembering fall to liking, and at length to worship it; therefore it is an abomination to God, and he that vvill keep a piece of gold of the Idol, it is the next way to make him grow a worshipper of the Idol, which that God is so careful to remove the least occasions, that might draw them to Idolatry, shows that men be wonderfully bent and inclined to this idolatry that God hates; and this appears by the example of the children of Israel, which were the church of God, and the seed of Abraham, for, for all the world else, there was nothing else but false worship, & the whole earth was overwhelmed with a sea of Idolatry; but these Israelites were but a while among the Egyptians, and we see how soon they were infected with their disease, but when God had pulled them out of that hell of the world, that was so full stuffed with all such abomination, & ⟨p. 30⟩brought them into the wilderness, where they were alone, & no people else to provoke them to it; yet when Moses that restrained them was away but forty days, then they took liberty, and the lust that had been smothered by his presence, now burst forth, and they gave themselves & all that they had most part of them, to Idolatry, and to a calf. And after when God had brought them into the land of promise, and they had been there a while, they could no sooner have any little space of prosperity and ease, but presently they run a madding after the Idols of the land, so that God was fain almost continually to keep them under with affliction and trouble. And then after when David & Solomon had reigned, one would have thought that in that space all relics and remembrance of Idolatry had been quite banished & swept away, so that no man should ever have persuaded them to fall to worship calves again.
Then the grieuous threatning that God vseth to affright men from it, shewes that they are easie & vvilling to be drawne vnto it, and that there is a strange promise and inclination in euery mans nature, to this sinne of false vvorship. So in