denounced, that no such thing should be. "Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," is a mandate repeated in every
variety of language, and under every diversity of circumstance. In some
passages, indeed, together with the most clear assurances, {19} that
mankind need apply to no other dispenser of good, and can want no other
as Saviour, advocate, or intercessor, that same truth is announced with
such superabundance of repetition, that in the productions of any human
writer the style would be chargeable with tautology. In the Bible, this
repetition only the more forces upon the mind, and fixes there, that
same principle as an eternal verity never to be questioned; never to be
dispensed with; never to be diluted or qualified; never to be invaded by
any service, worship, prayer, invocation, or adoration of any other
being whatever. Let us take, for example, the forty-fifth chapter of
Isaiah, in which the principle is most strongly and clearly illustrated.
"I am the LORD, and there is none else: there is no God beside me; I
girded thee, though thou hast not known me; that they may know from the
rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside me: I am
the Lord, and there is none else. They shall be ashamed, and also
confounded, all of them; they shall go to confusion together, that are
makers of idols. But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an
everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world
without end: I am the Lord, and there is none else. I said not unto the
seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. They have no knowledge that set up
the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save.
There is no god beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none
beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for
I am God, and there is none else."

But it is needless to multiply these passages; and members of the Church
of Rome will say, that they themselves acknowledge, as fully as members
of the Anglican Church can do, that there is but one supreme {20} God
and Lord, to whom alone they intend to offer the worship due to God; and
that the appeals which they offer by way of invocation to saints and
angels for their services and intercession, do not militate against this
principle. But here let us ask ourselves these few questions:--

First, if it had been intended by the Almighty to forbid any religious
application, such as is now prof