Gillespie and Zanchius on when something has become an idol

Status
Not open for further replies.

NaphtaliPress

Administrator
Staff member
*N.B. Hooker is one of the anglocatholics which Presbyterians like Gillespie disputed against in their maintaining the truth of the Regulative Principle of Worship against the former's normative principle. Zanchius was one of the famous Reformed theologians at the end of the 16th century.
§6. Fourthly, that whereunto more respect and account is given than God allows to be given to it, and wherein more excellency is placed than God has put into it, or will at all communicate to it, is an idol exalted against God; which makes Zanchius to say, if you attribute to Luther or Calvin that they could not be mistaken, you are making idols for yourself.1 Now, when Hooker accounts festival days, for God’s extraordinary works wrought upon them, to be holier than other days,2 what man of sound judgment will not perceive that these days are idolized, since such an eminence and excellency is put in them, whereas God has made no difference between them and any other days? We have seen also that the ceremonies are urged as necessary,3 but did ever God allow that things indifferent should be so highly advanced at the pleasure of men? And, moreover, I have shown that worship is placed in them;4 in which respect they must needs be idols, being thus exalted against God’s Word, at which we are commanded to hold us in the matter of worship. Last of all, they are idolatrously advanced and dignified, in so much as holy mystical significations are given them, which are a great deal more than God’s Word allows in any rites of human institution, as shall be shown afterwards.5 And so it appears how the ceremonies, as now urged and used, are idols.
George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies (Naphtali Press, 2013), 192–193.
---------------------
1 . Lib 1, de Viti. Ext. Cult. Oppos., col. 505 [cf. Zanchi, Opera (1617), book 4, col. 505]. “Si Luthero vel Calvino tribuas, quòd non potuerant errare, idola tibi fingis. . . .”

2 . Eccl. Polity, lib. 5, sect. 69 [cf. Works (1821), 2.281].

3 . Supra, part 1, cap. 1 [page 23].

4 . Supra, cap. 1 [page 132].

5 . Infra, cap. 5 [page 225].​
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top