hen follows our last principle, which is the immediate foundation of our ensuing discourse, or that which is to be confirmed; and it is this:
The loss of an experience of the power of religion has been the cause of the loss of the truth of religion; or it has been the cause of rejecting its substance, and setting up a shadow or image in the place of it.
This transformation of all things in religion began and proceeded on these grounds. Those who had the conduct of it were always possessed of the general notions of truth, which they could not forego without a total renuciation of the gospel itself. But, having lost all experience of this power in themselves, they wrested them unto things quite of another nature -- destructive to the truth, as well as devoid of its power. So it came to pass that there was a dead image made and set up of religion, called by the name of that which was true and living, but utterly lost.
For the religion of images is nothing but a dead image of the gospel, erected in the loss of an experience of its spiritual power, and suited to the taste of men, carnal, ignorant, and superstitious.
Christ, in His divine nature is invisible to us, and in His human nature, He is absent from us. There must be presented to our minds, therefore, an image or representation of Him, or He cannot be the proper object of our faith, trust, love and delight. This is done in the gospel, and the preaching of it. Upon this representation of Christ and His glory in the gospel, and the preaching of it, believers have an experience of the power and efficacy of the divine truth contained in it.
But this spiritual light was lost among men, through the efficacy of their darkness and unbelief, and they were not able to discover the glory of Christ, as revealed and proposed in the gospel, so as to make Him the present object of their faith and love.
What shall these men do? Shall they reject the notion in general, that there ought to be such a representation made of Christ to the minds of men, in order to inflame their devotion, to excite their faith, and stir up their affection? This cannot be done without an open renunciation of Him, and of the gospel as a fable. Therefore they find another way for it -- another means to the same end -- and this is through making images of Him in wood and stone, or gold and silver, or painting on them. In these images, by means of sight and imagination, they found that which really did work upon their affections, and, as they thought, did excite them unto the love of Christ.
They knew that there should be a representation of Christ to render Him an object of faith and love, but how this was done
in the gospel, they could not understand. Yet the principle itself must be retained (for without it there is no religion). To extricate themselves from this difficulty, they broke through all God's commands to the contrary, and took themselves to the making of images of Christ, and their adoration.
And from small beginnings, as darkness and superstition increased in the minds of men, there was a progress in this practice, until these images took the whole work of representing Christ and His glory out of the hands of the gospel, and appropriated it unto themselves.
He who lives in the exercise of faith and love in the Lord Jesus Christ, as revealed in the gospel, as evidently crucified, and evidently exalted, and finds the fruit of this faith in his own soul, will be preserved in time of trial. Without this, men will begin to think it is better to have a false Christ than none at all, and they will suppose something is to be found in images, when they can find nothing in the gospel.
They know also that the worship of God ought to be beautiful and glorious. But true worship is by the Spirit of God; where He is, there is liberty and glory (2 Cor. 3:17-18). But by this time, this glory of true worship was lost in the world. Religious men could discern no glory in these things, nor could they obtain any experience of their power. What, then, shall they do? The notion must be retained, that divine worship is to be beautiful and glorious.
But in spiritual worship they could see nothing; they therefore sought to make a glory for it. They set up an image of the glory that would appear beautiful to their fleshly minds, and give them satisfaction. To this end they manufactured ceremonies, vestments, gestures, ornaments, music, altars, images, paintings, with prescriptions for great bodily veneration.
Without these things, they do not know how to pay reverence to God. Worship that is according to the prescription of the Word seems to them empty and indecent; they can neither see beauty nor glory in it. This light and experience being lost, they introduce beggarly elements and carnal ceremonies in the worship of the church, with attempts to render it decorous and beautiful through superstitious rites and observances.
So this is the source of images in worship -- men who are not able, through faith, to discern the glory of things spiritual and invisible, do make images for themselves. But the worship of the church is spiritual, and the glory of it is invisible to the eyes of flesh.
So these are the shadows into which men go. They have lost the spiritual light to discern the truth and glory of the mystery of the gospel. Because they have no experience of its power and efficacy, they do not see the purposes of the life of God in their own minds and souls.
John Owen was a Puritan divine of the 17th century. He was a close friend of, and chaplain to, Oliver Cromwell. He was a theologian of the first rank.
