First, in the writings of Moses: РІР‚СљTake 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: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure,РІР‚Сњ &c. This it is easy to infer from the reasons which he annexes to the prohibition. 160 But God compares not idols with each other, as though one were better or worse than another but rejects, without a single exception, all statues, pictures, and other figures, in which idolaters imagined that he would be near them. The Greeks appeared wiser than the rest, because they worshipped the Deity under the human form. There was scarcely an animal, indeed, which the Egyptians did not consider as an image of God. For the Persians, we know, worshipped the sun and the foolish heathen made for themselves as many gods as they saw stars in the heavens. Therefore God, in the law, after having asserted the glory of Deity to belong exclusively to himself, when he intends to show what worship he approves or rejects, immediately adds, РІР‚СљThou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness.РІР‚Сњ In these words he forbids us to attempt a representation of him in any visible figure and briefly enumerates all the forms by which superstition had already begun to change his truth into a lie. In the mean time, since the whole world has been seized with such brutal stupidity, as to be desirous of visible representations of the Deity, and thus to fabricate gods of wood, stone, gold, silver, and other inanimate and corruptible materials, we ought to hold this as a certain principle, that, whenever any image is made as a representation of God, the Divine glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood. That exclusive definition, therefore, which every where occurs, reduces to nothing whatever notions of the Deity men may form in their own imaginations since God alone is a sufficient witness concerning himself. Now, as the Scripture, in consideration of the ignorance and dulness of the human understanding, generally speaks in the plainest manner,Р’В РІР‚вЂњ where it intends to discriminate between the true God and all false gods, it principally contrasts him with idols not that it may sanction the more ingenious and plausible systems of the philosophers, but that it may better detect the folly and even madness of the world in researches concerning God, as long as every one adheres to his own speculations. All Idolatry A Defection From The True God Unlawfulness Of Ascribing To God A Visible Form.

Calvin institute of christian worship