A26892:7154
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 113: Quest. 113. What Images, and what use of Images is lawful or unlawful?
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.
17. Where we may use Creatures themselves to profit us by the sight, we may (ordinarily) use the Images of those creatures. As the sight of Trees, Fruits, Cities, &c. may delight us, and mind us of the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, (or the sight of the Sun, Moon, Stars, &c.) So may the pictures of the same things. And as a dead body, skeleton, or skull, may profitably mind us of our latter end; so may the picture of any of these, which we may more conveniently keep.
17. Where we may use Creatures themselves to profit us by the sight, we may (ordinarily) use the Images of those creatures. As the sight of Trees, Fruits, Cities, &c. may delight us, and mind us of the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, (or the sight of the Sun, Moon, Stars, &c.) So may the pictures of the same things. And as a dead body, skelleton, or skull, may profitably mind us of our latter end; so may the picture of any of these, which we may more conveniently keep.
18. It is not unlawful to pray before or towards an Image, in a room where Images are placed only for Ornament, and we have no respect to them as a medium or object of our Worship, (except by accident, as aforesaid.)
19. It is not unlawful to make an Image (out of the cases of accidental evil before named) to be objectum vel medium excitans ad cultum Dei, an object or medium of our Consideration, exciting our minds to worship God: (As a Deaths-head, or a Crucifix, or an historical Image of Christ or some holy man, yea, the sight of any of Gods Creatures, may be so holily used, as to stir up in us a worshipping affection, and so is medium cultus excitans vel efficienter.) But no Creature, or Image, (I think) may lawfully be made the medium cultum vel terminus, in genere causae finalis, a worshipped medium, or the terminus, or the thing which we worship mediately, on pretence of representing God, and that we worship him in it ultimately. And this I take to be the thing forbidden directly in the second Commandment; viz. To worship a Creature (with mind or body) in the Act of Divine Worship, as representing God, or as the Mediate term of our Worship, by which we send it unto God, as if it were the more acceptable to him. So that it is lawful by the sight of a Crucifix to be provoked to worship God; But its unlawful to offer him that worship, by offering it to the Crucifix first, as the sign, way or means of our sending it to God.