the Jews who never obeyed them at that rate; and therefore all those wild reductions of all good and bad to that measure is of no good use, but it is full of error, and may have some ill effects; of which I have already given caution: but then because they may be explicated and can admit a commentary, as all laws do beyond their letter; there is nothing more reasonable, than that the commentaries or additional explications of their own prophets and holy men, and the usages of their nation, be taken into the sacredness of the text and the limits of the commandment.

Thus when God had said, " Thou shalt do no murder;" when Moses, in another place, adds these words, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart;" nor be mindful of an injury this is to be supposed to be intended by God in the commandment; and to be a just commentary to the text, and therefore part of the moral law. When they were commanded to worship the God of Israel, and no other: this was to be understood according to David's commentary; and when he had composed forms of prayer to God, to pray to him was to be supposed to be a duty of the commandment. God commanded that they should honour father and mother,' which appellative when Moses and the holy writers of the Old Testament had given to princes and magistrates, and had, in another place, expressly commanded obedience to them, it is to be supposed that this is an explication of the fifth commandment.

This also is to be extended further, and by the sayings of the prophets they could understand what things were permitted by Moses, which yet God loved not: and that the commandment had a further purpose than their usages would endure and though (as our blessed Lord afterward expressed) "Moses permitted divorces for the hardness of their heart,"-yet that "from the beginning it was not so," and that greater piety was intended in the commandment, they were sufficiently taught by the gloss, which God himself inserted and published by the prophet Hosea, "I hate putting away." In this and all other cases, the natural reasonableness of things, natural justice, and essential piety, and the first institution of them, were the best indications of these

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a Lev. xix. 17, 18.

effects which such sayings of the prophets and other holy men ought to have in the enlargement of the moral law, or restraint of privileges and liberties.

The use of this rule in order to the government of conscience is to describe of what usefulness in our religion, and what influence in our lives, is the Old Testament; all the moral precepts which are particulars of the natural law or universal reason, are either explications of the decalogue or precepts evangelical, by which the old prophets did 'prepare the way of our Lord, and make his paths straight.' It is the same religion, theirs and ours, as to the moral part: intending glory to the same God by the same principles of prime reason, differing only in the clarity and obscurity of the promises or motives of obedience, and in the particular instances of the general laws, and in the degrees of duties spiritual: but in both, God intended to bring mankind to eternal glories by religion or the spiritual worshippings of one God, by justice and sobriety, that is, by such ways as naturally we need for our natural and perfective being even in this world. Now, in these things, the prophets are preachers of righteousness, and we may refresh our souls at those rivulets springing from the wells of life, but we must fill and bathe ourselves in fontibus Salvatoris,' 'in the fountains of our blessed Saviour: for he hath anointed our heads, prepared a table for us, and made our cup to overflow, and "of his fulness we have all received, grace for grace."

But this is, at no hand, to be extended to those prohibitions or reprehensions of their prevarications of any of the signal precepts of religion, by which as themselves were distinguished from other nations, so God would be glorified in them. For sometimes the prophets represented the anger of God in a ceremonial instance: when either they sinned with a high hand in that instance, that is, with despite and contempt of the divine commandment, or when the ceremony had a mixture of morality, or when it was one of the distinctions of the nation, and a consignation of them to be the people of God. But this will be reduced to practice by the next rule.

RULE VI.

Every Thing in the Decalogue is not obligatory to Christians, is not a Portion of the moral or natural Law.

WHEN Moses delivered the ten commandments to the people, he did not tell them in order which was second, which was fifth and upon this account they have been severally divided, as men did please to fancy. I shall not clog these annotations with enumerating the several ways of dividing them; but that which relates to the present inquiry is, whether or no the prohibition of graven images be a portion of the first commandment; so as that nothing is intended, but that it be a part or explication of that: and that it contain in it only the duty of confessing one God, and entertaining no other deity, viz. so that images become not an idol, or the final object of our worship as a God; and therefore that images are only forbidden as 'Dii alieni,' not as the representations of this one God, and they are capable of any worship but that which is proper to God: or else it is a distinct commandment; and forbids the having, or making, and worshipping any images, with any kind of religious worship. These are the several effects, which are designed by the differing divisions of the first table; I will not now examine, whether they certainly follow from their premises and presuppositions; but consider what is right, and what follows from thence in order to the integrating the rule of conscience.' That those two first commandments are but one, was the doctrine of Philo the Jew (at least it is said so); who, making the preface to be a distinct commandment, reckons this to be the second; "Deos sculptiles non facies tibi, nec facies omne abominamentum solis et lunæ, nec omnium quæ sunt supra terram, nec eorum quæ repunt in aquis, ego sum Deus Dominus tuus zelotes," &c.And the same was followed by Athanasius", "This book hath these ten commandments in tables ; the first is ἐγώ εἰμι Κύριος ὁ Θεός σου· δευτέραν, οὐ ποιήσεις σεαυτῷ εἴδωλον οὐδὲ παντὸς ὁμοίωμα· 'I am the Lord thy God:' the second, thou shalt not make

an idol to thyself, nor the likeness of any thing:"" and this division was usual in St. Cyril's time, who brings in Julian thus accounting them; "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: the second after this: "Non erunt tibi Dii alieni præter me, non facies tibi simulachrum,'" &c. And the same way is followed by St. Jerome and Hesychius: these make the introduction to be one of the commandments; and those, which we call the first and the second, to be the second only.

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Of the same opinion, as to the uniting of these two, is Clemens Alexandrinus; and St. Austin, "Et revera quod dictum est; 'non erunt tibi Dii alieni,' hoc ipsum perfectius explicatur, cum prohibentur colenda figmenta: "the prohibition of images is a more perfect explication of those words, 'Thou shalt have no other gods but me."-To the same sense Venerable Bede, St. Bernard 1, the ordinary gloss, Lyra, Hugo Cardinalis, Lombard, the church of Rome, and almost all the Lutheran churches, do divide the decalogue..

On the other side, these are made to be two distinct commandments by the Chaldee paraphrasti, and by Josephus ; "Primum præceptum, Deum esse unum, et hunc solum colendum. Secundum, nullius animalis simulachrum adorandum."-And these are followed by Origen', Gregory Nazianzen", St. Ambrose and St. Jerome", even against his opinion expressed in another place, and St. Chrysostom, St. Austin, or whosoever is the author of the questions of the Old and New Testament, Sulpitius Severus, Zonaras; and admitted as probable by Venerable Bede; but followed earnestly by all the churches that follow Calvin; and by the other protestants, not Lutherans.

4. In this great contrariety of opinion, that which I choose to follow, is the way of the church of England; which as it hath the greater and more certain authority from antiquity, so it hath much the greater reasonableness. For when God had commanded the worship of himself alone, excluding all false gods,-in the next words he was pleased

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also to forbid them to worship him in that manner, by which all the gods of the nations were worshipped, which was, by images: insomuch that their images were called gods, not that they thought them so; but that the worshipping of false gods, and worshipping by images, were by the idolaters ever joined. Now this being a different thing from the other, one regarding the object, the other the manner of worship,it is highly reasonable to believe that they make two commandments. 2. God would not be worshipped by an image, because none could be made of him; and therefore it is remarkable that God did. duplicate his caution against images of him, by adding this reason to his precept, “ Remember that ye saw no shape, but only heard a voice:" which as it was a direct design of God, that they might not make an image of him, and so worship him as the idolaters did their false gods, so it did, indirectly at least, intimate to them, that "God would be worshipped in spirit and truth:" that is, not with a lying image: as every image of him must needs be for it can have no truth, when a finite body represents an infinite spirit. And this is most likely to be thus: because this being a certain digest of the law of nature, in it the natural religion and worship of God was to be commanded, and, therefore, that it should be spiritual and true, that is, not with false imaginations and corporal representment, was to be the matter of a commandment. 3. Since the first table did so descend to particulars as by a distinct précept to appoint the day of his worship: it is not unlikely that the essential and natural manner of doing it should also be distinctly provided for, since the circumstantial was: but that could not be at all, if it was a portion of the first commandment: for then the sense of it must be according to the first intention, that images should not become our gods. 4. The heathens did not suppose their images to be their gods, but representments of their gods; and therefore it is not so likely that God should, by way of caution, so explicate the first commandment; when there was no danger of doing any such thing; unless they should be stark mad, or fools, and without understanding. 5. When God forbade them to make and worship the likeness of any thing in heaven and earth,- he sufficiently declared, that his meaning was to forbid that manner of worshipping, not that object;