A26892:7102
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Part 3 › Question 112: Quest. 112. Whether Religious Worship may be given to a Creature? and what?
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.
5. Image Worship, (or bowing or otherwise worshipping towards an Image as an object,) in the time of Divine worship, or when we otherwise pretend to be worshipping God, is so gross an appearance of ⟨p. 873⟩inward Idolatry, (either as visibly describing God to be like a Creature, or else as seeming to mean what Idolaters did by that action) that God hath thought meet to forbid it to all mankind by a special1 Law. (Command. 2.)
5. Image Worship, (or bowing or otherwise worshipping towards an Image as an object,) in the time of Divine worship, or when we otherwise pretend to be worshiping God, is so gross an appearance of ⟨p. 873⟩inward Idolatry, (either as visibly describing God to be like a Creature, or else as seeming to mean what Idolaters did by that action) that God hath thought meet to forbid it to all mankind by a special1 Law. (Command. 2.)
6. The scandal of seeming Idolatry is a heinous sin, and not to be excused by the contrary meaning of the heart, no more than lying Idolatrous professions are. Because to blaspheme God as if he were like a Creature, or to tell the World by our actions that a creature is God, are both very heinous. And so is it to murder our brethren's souls, by tempting them to the like.