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| The Useless Bondage of the Gentiles.
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Chapter 7.—The Useless Bondage of
the Gentiles.
And if ever any of them endeavored
to make it out that their idols were only signs, yet still they
used them in reference to the worship and adoration of the
creature. What difference does it make to me, for instance, that
the image of Neptune is not itself to be considered a god, but only
as representing the wide ocean, and all the other waters besides
that spring out of fountains? As it is described by a poet of
theirs,1857
who says,
if I recollect aright, “Thou, Father Neptune, whose hoary temples
are wreathed with the resounding sea, whose beard is the mighty
ocean flowing forth unceasingly, and whose
hair is the
winding rivers.” This husk shakes its rattling stones within a
sweet covering, and yet it is not food for men, but for swine. He
who knows the gospel knows what I mean.1858
What profit is it to me, then,
that the image of Neptune is used with a reference to this
explanation of it, unless indeed the result be that I worship
neither? For any statue you like to take is as much god to me as
the wide ocean. I grant, however, that they who make gods of the
works of man have sunk lower than they who make gods of the works
of God. But the command is that we should love and serve the One
God, who is the Maker of all those things, the images of which are
worshipped by the heathen either as gods, or as signs and
representations of gods. If, then, to take a sign which has been
established for a useful end instead of the thing itself which it
was designed to signify, is bondage to the flesh, how much more so
is it to take signs intended to represent useless things for the
things themselves! For even if you go back to the very things
signified by such signs, and engage your mind in the worship of
these, you will not be anything the more free from the burden and
the livery of bondage to the flesh.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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