The Second Commandment

The Second Commandment.

XVII. As in the preceding commandment the Lord has declared himself to be the one God, besides whom no other deities ought to be imagined or worshipped, so in this he more clearly reveals his nature, and the kind of worship with which he ought to be honoured, that we may not dare to form any carnal conceptions of him. The end, therefore, of this precept is, that he will not have his legitimate worship profaned with superstitious rites. Wherefore, in a word, he calls us off, and wholly abstracts us from carnal observances, which our foolish minds are accustomed to devise, when they conceive of God according to the grossness of their own apprehensions; and therefore he calls us to the service which rightfully belongs to him; that is, the spiritual worship which he has instituted. He marks what is the grossest transgression of this kind; that is, external idolatry. And this precept consists of two parts. The first restrains us from licentiously daring to make God, who is incomprehensible, the subject of our senses, or to represent him under any visible form. The second prohibits us from paying religious adoration to any images. He likewise briefly enumerates all the forms, in which he used to be represented by profane and superstitious nations. By those things which are in heaven, he means the sun, the moon, and the other stars, and perhaps birds; as, when he explains his meaning in the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy, he mentions birds as well as the stars.832 This I should not have remarked, had I not known some persons injudiciously refer this clause to angels. I omit the other particulars, as needing no explanation. And in the first book833 we have already sufficiently proved that whatever visible representations of God are invented by man, are diametrically opposite to his nature; and that, therefore, as soon as ever idols are introduced, true religion is immediately corrupted and adulterated.

XVIII. The penal sanction which is annexed ought to have no small influence in arousing us from our lethargy. He thus threatens:

This is equivalent to a declaration that it is to him alone that we ought to adhere. And to urge us to it, he announces his power, which he permits none with impunity to despise or undervalue. For the Hebrew word El, which is here used for God, is expressive of strength. In the second place, he calls himself “a jealous God,” who can bear no rival. Thirdly, he declares that he will avenge his majesty and glory on those who transfer it to creatures or to graven images; and that not with the transient punishment of the original transgressors only, but of their posterity to the third and fourth generation; that is, of those who shall imitate the impiety of their fathers; as he also permanently displays his mercy and goodness, through a long line of posterity, to those who love him and keep his law. It is very common for God to assume the character of a husband to us; for the union, in which he connects us with himself, when he receives us into the bosom of his Church, bears a resemblance to the sacred conjugal relation, which requires to be supported by mutual fidelity. As he performs towards us all the duties of a true and faithful husband, so he demands from us the reciprocal duties of conjugal love and chastity; that is, that we do not prostitute our souls to Satan, to lust, and to the impurity of the carnal appetites. Wherefore, when he reproves the apostasy of the Jews, he complains that they had discarded chastity, and were polluted with adulteries.834 Therefore, as a husband, in proportion to the superiority of his purity and chastity, is the more grievously incensed, if he perceive the affection of his wife inclining to a rival, so the Lord, who has in truth espoused us to himself, declares that he feels the most ardent jealousy, whenever we neglect the sacred purity of his conjugal relation to us, and defile ourselves with criminal lusts, but especially when we transfer to any other, or adulterate with any superstition, the worship of his majesty, which ought to be preserved in the most consummate perfection; since by such conduct we not only violate the faith pledged in our nuptials, but even pollute our souls with spiritual adultery.

XIX. Let us inquire what he intends by his threatening to “visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation.” For besides that it is inconsistent with the equity of the Divine justice to inflict upon an innocent person the punishment due to the offences of another, God himself declares that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.”835 But this expression is repeated more than once, concerning a deferring to future generations of the punishments of crimes committed by their ancestors. For Moses frequently speaks of “the Lord visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”836 In like manner Jeremiah: “Thou showest loving-kindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them.”837 Some, who labour very hard to solve this difficulty, are of opinion that its meaning is to be confined to temporal punishments; which if children sustain through the sins of their parents, there is nothing absurd in it; because they frequently conduce to the salvation of those on whom they are inflicted. This is certainly true. For Isaiah denounced to Hezekiah, that on account of the sin which he had committed, his sons should be despoiled of the kingdom and carried away into exile.838 The families of Pharaoh and Abimelech are afflicted on account of the injury sustained by Abraham.839 But when this is adduced as a solution of these questions, it is rather an evasion of it, than a proper explanation. For in this and in similar places the Lord threatens a punishment too great to be terminated by the limits of the present life. It must therefore be understood as a declaration that the curse of the Lord righteously rests, not only on the person of an impious man, but also on his whole family. Where it has rested, what can be expected, but that the father, being destitute of the Spirit of God, will lead a most flagitious life; and that the son, experiencing, in consequence of the iniquity of his father, a similar dereliction by the Lord, will pursue the same path to perdition; and that the grandson and the great grandson, the execrable posterity of detestable men, will run headlong after them down the same precipice of destruction?

XX. First let us inquire, whether such punishment be inconsistent with the Divine justice. If the whole nature of man be worthy of condemnation, we know that destruction awaits those who are not favoured by the Lord with the communication of his grace. Nevertheless, they perish through their own iniquity, and not through the unjust hatred of God. Nor is there any room left for expostulation, why they are not assisted by Divine grace to obtain salvation as well as others. Since it is a punishment, therefore, inflicted on the impious and flagitious, in consequence of their transgressions, that their families remain destitute of Divine grace for many generations, who can bring any accusation against God for this most righteous instance of his vengeance? But it will be said, the Lord declares, on the contrary, that the punishment of the sin of the father shall not be transferred to the son. Observe the subject that is treated of in that place. The Israelites, after they had been long harassed by numerous and unceasing calamities, began to use this proverb, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge;”840 by which they insinuated, that sins had been committed by their parents, the punishment of which was inflicted on them who were otherwise righteous and innocent, more through the implacable wrath of God, than through a just severity. The Prophet announces to them that this is not the case, but that they are punished for their own transgressions, and that it is incompatible with the Divine justice to punish a righteous son for the iniquity of a wicked father. Nor is this to be found in the penal sanction now under consideration. For if the visitation, of which we are treating, be fulfilled, when God removes from the family of the impious his grace, the light of his truth, and the other means of salvation, the very circumstance of children blinded and abandoned by him being found treading in the footsteps of their fathers, is an instance of their bearing the curse in consequence of the crimes of their parents. But their being the subjects of temporal miseries, and at length of eternal perdition, are punishments from the righteous judgment of God, not for the sins of others, but on account of their own iniquity.

XXI. On the other hand, God gives a promise to extend his mercy to a thousand generations; which also frequently occurs in the Scripture, and is inserted in the solemn covenant with the Church: “I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.”841 In allusion to this, Solomon says, that “the children of the just man are blessed after him;”842 not only as the effect of a religious education, which is of no small importance, but also in consequence of the blessing promised in the covenant, that the grace of God shall perpetually remain in the families of the pious. This is a source of peculiar consolation to the faithful, but to the impious of great terror; for if, even after death, the memory of righteousness and iniquity has so much influence with God, that the curse of the one and the blessing of the other will redound to posterity, much more will it remain on the persons of the actors themselves. Now, it is no objection to our argument, that the descendants of the impious sometimes grow better, while those of the faithful degenerate; since the Legislator never intended to establish in this case such an invariable rule, as would derogate from his own free choice. For it is sufficient for the consolation of the righteous and the terror of the sinner, that the denunciation is not vain or inefficacious, although it be not always executed. For as the temporal punishments inflicted on a few wicked men are testimonies of the Divine wrath against sin, and of the judgment that will hereafter be pronounced on all sinners, though many escape with impunity even to the end of their lives, so, when the Lord exhibits one example of this blessing, in manifesting his mercy and goodness to the son for the sake of his father, he affords a proof of his constant and perpetual favour to his worshippers; and when, in any one instance, he pursues the iniquity of the father in the son, he shows what a judgment awaits all the reprobate on account of their own transgressions; the certainty of which was what he principally designed in this passage. He also gives us a cursory intimation of the greatness of his mercy, which he extends to a thousand generations, while he has assigned only four generations to his vengeance.