For as God,when He brought the Israelites into the Land of Promise,did not secure them therein by subduing all the nations round about them,but left many of them,as thorns in their sides,to awaken from time to time their piety and industry:so our Saviour,in conducting us toward his heavenly kingdom,did not destroy all the difficulties of natural questions,but left them to exercise our industry and reason;the scope of his preaching being only to show us this plain and direct way to salvation,namely,the belief of this article,that he was the Christ,the Son of the living God,sent into the world to sacrifice himself for our sins,and,at his coming again,gloriously to reign over his elect,and to save them from their enemies eternally:to which the opinion of possession by spirits or phantasms is no impediment in the way,though it be to some an occasion of going out of the way,and to follow their own inventions.If we require of the Scripture an account of all questions which may be raised to trouble us in the performance of God's commands,we may as well complain of Moses for not having set down the time of the creation of such spirits,as well as of the creation of the earth and sea,and of men and beasts.To conclude,I find in Scripture that there be angels and spirits,good and evil;but not that they are incorporeal,as are the apparitions men see in the dark,or in a dream or vision,which the Latins call spectra,and took for demons.And I find that there are spirits corporeal,though subtle and invisible;but not that any man's body was possessed or inhabited by them,and that the bodies of the saints shall be such,namely,spiritual bodies,as St.Paul calls them.
Nevertheless,the contrary doctrine,namely,that there be incorporeal spirits,hath hitherto so prevailed in the Church that the use of exorcism (that is to say,of ejection of devils by conjuration)is thereupon built;and,though rarely and faintly practised,is not yet totally given over.That there were many demoniacs in the primitive Church,and few madmen,and other such singular diseases;whereas in these times we hear of,and see many madmen,and few demoniacs,proceeds not from the change of nature,but of names.But how it comes to pass that whereas heretofore the Apostles,and after them for a time the pastors of the Church,did cure those singular diseases,which now they are not seen to do;as likewise,why it is not in the power of every true believer now to do all that the faithful did then,that is to say,as we read "in Christ's name to cast out devils,to speak with new tongues,to take up serpents,to drink deadly poison without harm taking,and to cure the sick by the laying on of their hands,"and all this without other words but "in the name of Jesus,"is another question.And it is probable that those extraordinary gifts were given to the Church for no longer a time than men trusted wholly to Christ,and looked for their felicity only in his kingdom to come;and consequently,that when they sought authority and riches,and trusted to their own subtlety for a kingdom of this world,these supernatural gifts of God were again taken from them.
Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images,neither instituted by Moses in the Old,nor by Christ in the New Testament;nor yet brought in from the Gentiles;but left amongst them,after they had given their names to Christ.Before our Saviour preached,it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses,which are commonly called ideas,idols,phantasms,conceits,as being representations of those external bodies which cause them,and have nothing in them of reality,no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream.And this is the reason why St.Paul says,"We know that an idol is nothing":not that he thought that an image of metal,stone,or wood was nothing;but that the thing which they honored or feared in the image,and held for a god,was a mere figment,without place,habitation,motion,or existence,but in the motions of the brain.And the worship of these with divine honour is that which is in the Scripture called idolatry,and rebellion against God.For God being King of the Jews,and His lieutenant being first Moses,and afterward the high priest,if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies),they had had no further dependence on the true God,of whom there can be no similitude;nor on His prime ministers,Moses and the high priests;but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite,to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth,and their own destruction for want of union.And therefore the first law of God was:
they should not take for gods,alienos deos,that is,the gods of other nations,but that only true God,who vouchsafed to commune with Moses,and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace,and for their salvation from their enemies.And the second was that they should not make to themselves any image to worship,of their own invention.For it is the same deposing of a king to submit to another king,whether he be set up by a neighbour nation or by ourselves.
The places of Scripture pretended to countenance the setting up of images to worship them,or to set them up at all in the places where God is worshipped,are,first,two examples;one of the cherubim over the Ark of God;the other of the brazen serpent:secondly,some texts whereby we are commanded to worship certain creatures for their relation to God;as to worship His footstool:and lastly,some other texts,by which is authorized a religious honouring of holy things.But before I examine the force of those places,to prove that which is pretended,I must first explain what is to be understood by worshipping,and what by images and idols.