But if the abolition of Paganism be the subject of this chapter, it may be asked, how comes the purification of Israel to be announced in the opening of it? The answer is plain. Adopted Israel may be here understood. To lineal Israel indeed was the prophecy given; and with Israel, idolatry was, and ever had been, the besetting sin; most nearly therefore were the Jews also concerned in its abolition. Viewed, however, in the more enlarged sense, idolatry comprises the indulgence of every evil propensity; for Paganism, by appointing a presiding Deity over each, had sanctioned the unrestrained gratification of every passion, in making it an act of devotion. Christianity, on the contrary, enjoins the restraint and control of our passions, and thus becomes the natural antidote to the poison of Heathenism: or the fountain of purification from the sin and pollution of idolatry, as the opening of this chapter declares. _In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness._ That day, as formerly explained, is to every one the day of his conversion to Christianity. The house of David, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, here, as in the last chapter, symbolically represent the later converts to Christianity; as the house of Judah, which was first saved, signify the earlier Christians. The nature of the sin and pollution to be thus washed away, is next declared to be idolatry, and its abolition is foretold. _And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall be no more remembered; and also I will cause the prophets, and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land._ It may be worthy of remark, that _the names_ only _of the idols_, and not the spirit of idolatry, is here declared to be cut off; and _from the land_, which in prophetic language, commonly means the land of Israel, here, adopted Israel, or Christendom. Now, this nominal abolition took place in the fourth century, from which time both Jews and Gentiles have been prohibited from the open worship of idols. But we have now reached the nineteenth century without seeing the spirit of idolatry really extinct; if then the total abolition, which is yet to come, be here intimated, it must be symbolically foreshewn by the nominal abolition which then took place. _That day_, in regard to the inward and spiritual purification, is to be taken as the day of his regeneration to each individual, not as the same day to all collectively; but regarding the outward and ostensible abolition, this occurred when the pains and penalties of the Theodosian code prohibited the open practice of Pagan rites. The prophetic view may, however, include both.