. 3;
Josh. xxiii. 7; whereby we are admonished, as Calvin saith,(528) how
detestable idolatry is before God, _cujus memoriam vult penitus deleri, ne
posthac ullum ejus vestigium appareat_: yea, he requireth,(529) _eorum
omnium memoriam deleri, quoe semeldicata sunt idolis_. If Mordecai would
not give his countenance, Esth. iii. 2, nor do any reverence to a living
monument of that nation whose name God had ordained to be blotted out from
under heaven, much less should we give connivance, and far less
countenance, but least of all reverence, Deut. xxv. 19, to the dead and
dumb monuments of those idols which God hath devoted to utter destruction,
with all their naughty appurtenances, so that he will not have their names
to be once mentioned or remembered again. But, secondly, _movent_ too;
such idolothous remainders move us to turn back to idolatry. For _usu
compertum habemus, superstitiones etiam postquam explosoe essent, si qua
relicta fuissent earum monumenta, cum memoriam sui ipsarum apud homines,
tum id tandem ut revocerantur obtinuisse_, saith Wolphius,(530) who
hereupon thinks it behoveful to destroy _funditus_ such vestiges of
superstition, for this cause, if there were no more: _ut et aspirantibus
ad revocandam idololatriam spes frangatur, et res novas molientibus ansa
pariter ac materia proeripiatur_. God would have Israel to overthrow all
idolatrous monuments, lest thereby they should be snared, Deut. vii. 25;
xii. 30. And if the law command to cover a pit, lest an ox or an ass
should fall therein, Exod. xxi. 23, shall we suffer a pit to be open
wherein the precious souls of men and women, which all the world cannot
ransom, are likely to fall? Did God command to make a battlement for the
roof of a house, and that for the safety of men's bodies, Deut. xxii. 8,
and shall we not only not put up a battlement, or object some bar for the
safety of men's souls, but also leave the way slippery and full of snares?
Read we not that the Lord, who knew what was in man, and saw how propense
he was to idolatry, did not only remove out of his people's way all such
things as might any way allure or induce them to idolatry (even to the
cutting off the names of the idols out of the land, Zech. xiii. 2), but
also hedge up their way with thorns that they might not find their paths,
nor overtake their idol gods, when they should seek after them? Hos. ii.
6, 7. And shall we by the very contrary course not only not hedge up the
way of i