For she did not know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, And multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.
It seems to us strange folly. They attributed to gods, who represented the functions of nature, the power to give what God alone gives. How is it different, when people now say, “nature does this, or that,” or speak of “the operations of nature,” or the laws of “nature,” and ignore God who appoints those laws, and “worketh hitherto” John 5:17 “those operations?” They attributed to planets (as have astrologers at all times) influence over the affairs of people, and worshiped a god, Baal-Gad, or Jupiter, who presided over them. Wherein do those otherwise, who displace God’s providence by fortune or fate or destiny, and say “fortune willed,” “fortune denied him,” “it was his fate, his destiny,” and, even when God most signally interposes, shrink from naming Him, as if to speak of God’s providence were something superstitious? What is this, but to ascribe to Baal, under a new name, the works and gifts of God? And more widely yet. Since “men have as many strange gods as they have sins,” what do they, who seek pleasure or gain or greatness or praise in forbidden ways or from forbidden sources, than make their pleasure or gain or ambition their god, and offer their time and understanding and ingenuity and intellect, yea, their whole lives and their whole selves, their souls and bodies, all the gifts of God, in sacrifice to the idol which they have made? Nay, since whosoever believes of God otherwise than He has revealed Himself, does, in fact, believe in another god, not in the One True God, what else does all heresy, but form to itself an idol out of God’s choicest gift of nature, man’s own mind, and worship, not indeed the works of man’s own hands, but the creature of his own understanding?