A37046:287
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.
From this ground also it would seem, that painting of Angels might be condemned, as a thing impossible, they being Spirits, which no corporal thing can represent▪ besid• that the representing of them has some hazard with it, and for those cherubims that were made by Gods direction under the Old Testament, they were rather some Emblem of the nature and service of Angels, as being full of zeal, and always (as it were) upon wing ready to obey Gods will, then any likeness of themselves, and its hardly possible to fancy representations of Spirits, good or evil, but thereby men will wrong themselves in the right description of them: Though we grant, Angels being but finite Spirits, there is another kind of danger and impossibility of representing God, who is an infinite Spirit; also some say that these Cherubims mentioned did not represent the nature of Angels, but Angels appearing under such a visible shape, and we find Ezek. 1. There are divers shapes by which they are pointed out, but it is as to their fitness and readiness for service, and not as to their nature.
From this ground also it would seem, that painting of Angels might be condemned, as a thing impossible, they being Spirits, which no corporal thing can represent▪ besid• that the representing of them has some hazard with it, and for those cherubims that were made by Gods direction under the Old Testament, they were rather some Embleme of the nature and service of Angels, as being full of zeal, and alwayes (as it were) upon wing ready to obey Gods will, then any likeness of themselves, and its hardly possible to fancy representations of Spirits, good or evil, but thereby men will wrong themselves in the right description of them: Though we grant, Angels being but finite Spirits, there is another kind of danger and impossibility of representing God, who is an infinite Spirit; also some say that these Cherubims mentioned did not represent the nature of Angels, but Angels appearing under such a visible shape, and we find Ezek. 1. There are divers shapes by which they are pointed out, but it is as to their fitness and readiness for service, and not as to their nature.