Deuteronomy 4:29

CHAPTER IV.

There. Hebrew, "thence" from the place of captivity, or returning from the love of idols to the services of the true God. --- Soul. Hebrew, "with all thy soul. (Ver. 30) In thy tribulation after," &c. (Calmet) --- God often sends chastisements as the most effectual means of salvation, to make his children enter into themselves. In this state, the soul is more at liberty to consider the follow of adhering to any thing in opposition to the sovereign Lord. Then she is forced to confess that her idols cannot afford her any protection. How, in effect, could any one fall into such an abyss of corruption and stupidity, as to imagine those things to be gods which have not even the dignity and advantages which they themselves possess? Their soul must first have been strangely blinded, and their heart corrupt. Even the more enlightened pagans acknowledged the folly of pretending to represent the Divinity under sensible forms. "God, says Empedocles, has no human members....He is a pure and ineffable spirit, who governs the world by his profound wisdom." Numa would not allow any picture of Him, conformably to the doctrine of Pythagoras; and, for the first 170 years of Rome, no representation of God was set up in the temples. (Plutarch) --- The ancient Ph\'9cnicians seemed to have acted on the same principle, as the temple of Hercules, at the Straits, had no image. It is well known that the Persians rejected both the statues and temples erected in honour of the gods; and the Germans esteemed it beneath the majesty of the heavenly Beings, to represent them under any human form. (Tacitus, Hist. v.) (Calmet) --- Yet these sages gave way to the folly of the people, and, against their better knowledge, adored the stupid and senseless idols. (Haydock)