The law unsealed

The Third instance is that of Jeroboam, who did sin and made Israel to sin, by the Calf he set up at Dan & Bethel, that they were not intended to be worshipped as idols, for themselves, but as means▪ whereby they might be helped to worship the true God, may appear, 1. From Jeroboam's motive, which was not to divert the people from the true God, at least as he supposed, or to make them alter their God, but to alter their manner of worship, and to divert them from going up to Jerusalem to worship, from ⟨p. 41⟩which his fear of their revolt to Rehoboam arose; hence the Calves are not provided to prevent worshipping of God, but are put in place of their going up to Jerusalem; as the colour of reason pretended by him for this alteration showeth; and so one service is put for another, without changing their God, and all the reproofs that his sins meeteth with from the Prophets run at this, that he altered the manner of Gods worship in putting up new signs in new places, and appointing new Sacrifices and Priests. 2. It appeareth from this, that as it was distinct from that way of serving God, which was in Judah, so was it from the way of the Heathens, yea from the way used by such idolatrous Kings as Ahab, who are said to do worse, because they did set up strange Gods (which the Calves are not called) and Baalim; and Jehu when he destroyed the false Gods, yet he retained this manner of Worship; and there were no cause to discriminate Jeroboam's sin from Achabs, or to look upon it as any thing lesser, if all the difference had been only in the change of worshipping the image of one Idol into the worshipping of the image of another, but the difference was in this, that the one worshipped the true God in these images▪ the other Idols indeed. 3. Hence there was still some knowledge of God in that Land, and Prophets sometimes sent them by the Lord; yea, when they were led captive, and others sent into their place, it is said 2 Kings 17. 26, &c. They learned the manner of the god of the Land, that is the true God, though they corrupted themselves with serving their Idols also, and thus the Samaritans continued worshipping they knew not what, though they pretended to worship the true God, John 4. 22.