it would still be certain, that when the Idolatry was repented of and forsaken, the grace reflowed through the accustomed channels of the Mosaic Institutes. And in spite of all past idolatries, it had not been wholly cut off even at the time of the Coming of CHRIST. In the next place there is a false assumption concerning the sin of idolatry itself; which seems to have been so severely visited as it was, because it was the specifically forbidden sin, the protesting against which was one great special object of the national existence of the Jews amidst a godless world. It was not, surely, that GOD abhorred idol worship more than murder, or uncleanness, or injustice; but it was, that “in Judah was GOD to be known”—the one GOD—the forgotten GOD—amidst Gentile polytheism, until the Coming of The Great Mediator. Every Divine interference with that nation seemed to bear this as its reason, “That all the earth may know that there is a GOD in Israel.”—“The LORD, He is the GOD! The LORD He is the GOD!” (Joshua iv. 24; 1 Kings viii. 42, 43; Psalm lx. throughout, &c.) Idolatry in that nation had a heinousness beyond all other sin. And great as the guilt of idolatry must ever be, yet it can hardly be called in the _same_ sense, the specific design of the existence of the Christian Church, to protest against that sin beyond all others. And until this can be made good, the strict parallel cannot be established. In the third place, there is a further assumption of an actual analogy of sinfulness in this particular, between the Jewish and Christian Churches, which is not borne out by facts. Jewish idolatry implied a voluntary and intentional abandonment of the worship of JEHOVAH. Now this can in no wise be affirmed of the worst idolatry of the Romish Hierarchy. No one will say that the Churches in communion with Rome, ever intended to abandon the worship of GOD, for the sake of Angels and Saints. It may be safely and truly said, that their reverence paid to images, and their invocations of saints and angels, are of an idolatrous nature, and calculated to lead, and have led, to idolatry in the common people; but it would be unreasonable and untrue to say, that the sin of the Church of Rome in this matter was the _same_ sin as that of the Jews when they deliberately abandoned the worship of GOD. And, therefore, we cannot argue from the one to the other.