A37046:269
The law unsealed
The law unsealed: or, A practical exposition of the Ten Commandments With a resolution of several momentous questions and cases of conscience. By the learned, laborious, faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. James Durham, late minister of the Gospel at Glasgow.
Glasgow: printed by Robert Sanders, 1676
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.
That we may have the clearer access to the meaning & use of this Commandment: let us see 1. What is the scope of it. 2. Wherein it is different from the former.
The scope of this Commandment, is not mee•ly and only to forbid making and worshipping of Images, which is the most gross way of abusing the worship of God; but under that to forbid all manner of grossness in the external worship of God, and to command exactness and preciseness in it (as well as internal worship) according to the Rule prescribed there anent by the Lord; and so this Commandment includeth all ⟨p. 33⟩externals commanded in the Ceremonial Law, and doth forbid all will-worship, and superstition in the worship of God, all honouring him by precepts taught by men, and not by himself, Isai. 29. 13. and Matth. 15. 9. So then in the first Commandment the worshipping of the only true God is commanded, and the worshipping of any Idol is forbidden: here the true worship of that God is prescribed, and the contrary forbidden; the first Commandment showeth who is to be worshipped, the second how he is to be worshipped, not in the manner that Heathens worshipped their Idols, nor in any other manner that men shall feign and devise to themselves, but in the manner he himself prescribeth.
The scope of this Commandment, is not mee•ly and only to forbid making and worshipping of Images, which is the most gross way of abusing the worship of God; but under that to forbid all manner of grosness in the external worship of God, and to command exactness and preciseness in it (as well as internal worship) according to the Rule prescribed there anent by the Lord; and so this Commandment includeth all ⟨p. 33⟩