NOTE.--The moral law, as a standard rule for our obedience, remains in full rigor and authority, and constitutes a body of precepts which carry a universal and natural equity in them, being so conformable to the light of reason and the dictates of every man's conscience that, as soon as they are declared and understood, they must needs be subscribed to as just and right. CHAPTER I. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. EXODUS XX, 3: _Thou shalt have no other gods before me._ This command, although given in a negative form, enjoins the following positive duties: 1. That _we must have a God_, which, of course, is against atheism. 2. That _we must have the Lord Jehovah for our God_, which is against idolatry. 3. That _we must have the only true God, the Lord Jehovah alone, for our God_, and that is against Polytheism. 4. That _all our services and acts of worship to the true and only God be performed with sincerity and true devotion_. This is implied in the expression, _before me, or in my sight_. 1. IDOLATRY FORBIDDEN. EX. XX, 3. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. EX. XXXIV, 14. For thou shalt worship no other God: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. EX. XXIII, 13. And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth. EX. XXIII, 24. Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images. DEUT. IV, 15. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; (for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire;) 16. Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17. The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, 18. The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: 19. And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. DEUT. VI, 14. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you; 15. (For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you;) lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. HOSEA XIII, 4. Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me; for there is no savior besides me. 1 COR. VIII, 4. As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.