Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typ...os. Excerpt from book: THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. Thoii Shalt have no other goda before me. This first and chiefest of the ten commands is negative; and as all negatives depend upon and must be measured by the truth of their contrary affirmative, I shall first consider what duties are. here required, and then what sins are here forbidden. This command has respect to worship, and Requires four things: 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 this is against polytheism, or the worshipping of many gods. It is opposed also to Samari- tanism, or the worshipping of false gods together with the true, like those Samaritans spoken of, 2 Kings, 17: 33, who feared the Lord and yet served their own gods; mak"ig a strange medley in religion, and blending those things together that were utterly irreconcilable: as if they intended not only to be partakers themselves with devils, but to make God so too; which is the greatest gratification that can be given to that proud and wicked spirit whose ambition it is to emulate and rival God in worship: for so the apostle tells us, that those " things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God," 1 Cor. 10: 20. Thus to join any other thing with God as the object of our worship, is infinitely to debase and disparage him; since it intimates that something besides God is excellent and perfect as himself. Therefore, in Zeph. 1:5, God severely threatens to cut off and to destroy those " that worship and that swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malcham." 4. It requires that all our services and acts of worship to the true and, only God be performed wit...Detailed info »« Brief info