Animadversions on a treatise entitled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…Animadversions on a treatise intituled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…

But what if Catholics having nothing to say for their practice in the adoration of Images, seeing the Protestants have nothing but simple pretences for their removal out of Churches; these simple pretences are express reiterate commands of God: which what value they are of with the Romanists, when they lay against their ways and practice, is evident. The Arguments of Protestants when they deal with the Romanists, are not directed against this, or that, part of their doctrine or practice about Images, but the whole; that is, the making of them, some of God himself, the placing of them in Churches, and giving them religious adoration; not to speak of the abominable miscarriages of many of their Devotionists in teaching, or of their people in committing with them as gross Idolatry, as ever any of the ancient Heathens did; which shall at large be proved, if our Author desires it. Against this principle, and whole practise, one of the Protestants pretences, as they are called, lays in the second Commandment, wherein the making of all Images for any such purpose, is expressly ⟨p. 320⟩forbidden: But the same God, say they, commanded Cherubims to be made, and placed over the Ark. He did so; but I desire to know, what the Cherubs were Images of; and that they would show, He ever appointed them to be adored, or to be the immediate Objects of any veneration, or to be so much as historical means of instruction, being always shut up from the view of the people, and representing nothing that ever had a real subsistence in rerum natura. Besides, Who appointed them to be made? As I take it, it was God himself, who did therein no more contradict himself, then he did, when he commanded his people to spoil the Egyptians, having yet forbid all men to steal. His own special dispensation of a Law, constitutes no general Rule. So that (whoever are blind, or fools) it is certain, that the making of Images for Religious veneration, is expressly forbidden of God unto the sons of men. But alas! they were foreign images, the ugly faces of Moloch, Dagon, Ashtaroth; he forbade not his own. Yea, but they are Images or likenesses of Himself, that in the first place, and principally, he forbids them ⟨p. 321⟩to make, and he enforceth his command upon them from hence, that when he spake unto them in Horeb, they saw no manner of similitude, Deut. 5.15. which surely concerned not the ugly face of Moloch.