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All kinds of music, i.e. wind and stringed instruments of various sorts and fashions, for we have here Syrian and Greek ones, as appears by the words, though in Chaldee letters, for this mighty monarch was lord over them all.
Ye fall down and worship: mark, all that is required of them is only a gesture of worship, without oral profession. The pomp and equipage, the solemn sound of the music, and the strict command, was enough to induce them to stoop and fall down to it. This is one of Satan’s great engines to draw the world from God’s pure worship, and the simplicity that is in Christ, dazzling men’s eyes, and bewitching them with a gaudy, whorish dress of idolatrous service, as ye see in this example, and Rev_17:4,5; all which ariseth merely from hence, because men do not or will not see that God’s worship is wholly spiritual, and most beautiful and glorious as such, 2Co_3:7 to the end; by this it excels all pagan, Jewish, and antichristian worship, all which is human, bodily, uncommanded of God, therefore displeasing and provoking, unprofitable, insnaring, and destructive. Now idolatrous gestures are sinful, because forbidden of God, Exo_20:5, because this satisfies and hardens idolater’s in their way, also because by this snare and critical mark their proselytes are known and distinguished, as here, they that stood up, when others fell down; thus antichrist and new Babylon hath her mark in the forehead and hands of her followers, Rev_13:15-17. Primitive Christians would not offer a grain of frankincense to a pagan idol for fear or favour, nor true protestants kneel to the host, which the popish priest holds up to insnare them.