1883 Haydock Douay Rheims Bible
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| Psalms 113:4 | The mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like the lambs of the flock. Psalm 134:15. | Skipped. Through joy, exultaverunt, (Haydock) or rather through fear, ver. 7. (Calmet) --- There was an earthquake, not specified by Moses; or the psalmist speaks of what took place at Ar, (Numbers 21:15.; Worthington) unless he alludes to the waters of the Jordan, rising up like mountains. (Menochius) [or 12.] Men. All Catholics agree, that idolatry is the "giving of divine honour to any creature." St. Justin Martyr, (contra Gent.) St. Augustine in the ten first books of the City of God, and other Fathers, refute all the species of idolatry. The Platonists adored the angels, or devils, intelligentias separatas. Others worshipped dead or living men renowned for their achievements, like Jupiter and Hercules; while some paid the same sovereign respect to animals, or even to inanimate things, both in themselves and in their images. The psalmist here derides the most gross species of idols, which are made by men, and are incapable of any vital action, being thus beneath the very beasts. Yet some were so absurd as to confide in them, (ver. 16.[8(16)?]; Worthington; or ver. 8.[8(16)?]; Haydock) and thereby neglected the light of reason, becoming slaves of the devils, who were either the objects of adoration, as in the compacts made by sorcerers, or at least seduced mankind to pay such worship to creatures. Hence all the gods of the Gentiles are styled devils, Psalm 95:5. (Worthington) --- How unjustly do heretics apply these words to the holy images used in the Church! though they must know (Haydock) that Catholics do not consider them as gods, no more than the saints and angels, whom they reverence only as the friends of God: treating their pictures with a relative honour, and endeavouring thus to excite themselves to the pursuit of virtue, by the memory of what they have done. (Berthier) |