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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Romans 1:23 - 1:23
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Changed the glory of the uncorruptible God; you have the same phrase, Psa_106:20 Jer_2:11; and from thence it is borrowed.
Into an image made like to corruptible man, &c.: the apostle proeeedeth from the more worthy to the less worthy creatures, that the grossness of their idolatry might the better appear; and these four are put for all other kinds. This gross idolatry of the heathen in worshipping such images as are here spoken of, was practised by the Israelites; see Eze_8:10,11: and so it is by the Romanists to this day; nor doth it avail them to say, they do not worship images, but the true God in or before those images; for the same plea was made by the idolaters of old. Symmachus, in a learned oration, wherein he craved of the emperors Valentinian and Theodosius the restitution of the Roman gods, affirms, that they had respect only to one God; but they had divers ways to bring them to that God: they did not hold such things as they worshipped to be God, but in them they said they worshipped the true God. That worship which is intended to God by an image, is not the worship of God, but of the image. Compare Psa_106:19,20, with Exo_32:4,5.