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IV. "Of those who hate me." </strong>Another reason against image-worship is, that it is hating God. The Papists, who worship God by an image, hate God. Image-worship is apretended love to God—but God interprets it as hating him. "She who loves another man, hates her own husband." An image-lover is a God hater. Idolaters are said to go a whoring from God. Exod 34:15. How can they love God? I shall show that image-worshipers hate God, whatever love they pretend.

[1] Those who go contrary to his express will hate him. He says, you shall not set up any statue, image, nor picture, to represent me; these things I hate. "Neither shall you set up any image; which the Lord your God hates." Deut 16:22. Yet the idolater sets up images, and worships them. This God looks upon as hating him. How does the child love his father—who does all it can to cross him?

[2] Those who turned Jephthah out of doors hated him, therefore they laboured to shut him out of his father's house. Judges 11:7. The idolater shuts the truth out of doors; he blots out the second commandment; he makes an image of the invisible God; he brings a lie into God's worship; which are clear proofs that he hates God.

[3] Though idolaters love the false image of God in a picture, they hate his true image in a believer. They pretend to honor Christ in a crucifix, and yet persecute him in his members. Such hate God.

Use one. This confutes those who plead for image-worshipers. They are very devout people; they adore images; they set up the crucifix; kiss it; light candles to it; therefore they think that they love God. Nay—but who shall be judge of their love? God says they hate him, and give religious adoration to a creature. They hate God—and God hates them! And they shall never live with God—whom he hates! He will never lay such vipers in his bosom! Heaven is kept as paradise, with a flaming sword, that they shall not enter in. He "repays those who hate him to their face." Deut. 7:10. He will shoot all his deadly arrows among idolaters. All the plagues and curses in the book of God shall befall the idolater. The Lord repays him who hates him to his face.

Use two. Let it exhort all to flee from Romish idolatry. Let us not be among God-haters. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." 1 John 5:21. As you would keep your bodies from adultery, keep your souls from idolatry. Take heed of images, they are images of jealousy to provoke God to anger; they are damnable. You may perish by false worship, as much as by scandalous sins. You may perish by image-worship, as much as by drunkenness and whoredom. A man may die by poison as much as a pistol. We may go to hell by drinking poison in the Romish cup of fornication, as much as by being pistoled with gross and scandalous sins.

To conclude, "God is a jealous God," who will admit of no co-rival; He will "visit the iniquities of the fathers upon their children;" he will entail a plague upon the posterity of idolaters. He interprets idolaters to be such as hate him. He who is an image-lover, is a God-hater. Therefore keep yourself pure from Romish idolatry; if you love your souls—keep yourselves from idols!

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