“The evil of idolatry is in this: you depart from God… God is slighted and condemned when you choose to make earth your god rather than the infinite First Being of all things. A man might despise his wife, an abominable sin, and choose to go to a queen, the most beautiful woman in the world, forsaking his wife. But to leave a queen or an empress, who is the most beautiful woman upon earth, and to have the heart cleave to a base dunghill-raker, would this not be a great show of contempt to the beautiful queen? Yet is is so when you forsake the blessed, eternal God as your Chief Good, and choose the things of the earth… You forsake the Fountain of living waters, the blessed God, and your heart cleaves to the dust. You seek your contentment and happiness in cisterns that can hold no water! Let the heavens be astonished at this horrible wickedness.”
–Jeremiah Burroughs, A Treatise Concerning Earthly-Mindedness: Showing the Great Sin of Thinking as the World Thinks Rather Than Thinking God’s Thoughts After Him. Ed. Don Kistler. (Orlando, FL: Soli Deo Gloria, 1649/2006), pp. 24-25.
