For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.
Ver. 17. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth] So precise she shall be, so circumspect, according to Exodus 23:13, that she should spit out of her mouth those dunghill deities with utmost contempt, as David had done before her, Psalms 16:4. If bodily filthiness may not be once named among Christians, Ephesians 5:3, why should spiritual? The primitive Christians would not call their days of the week by the heathenish names of Dies Martis, Dies Mercurii, &c. (as Mercurius Trismegist had superstitiously named them), but the first, second, third, &c., day of the week: as not willing to have the names of those idols mentioned among God's people. Mentioned they may be (no doubt), recitative without sin, as Baal is, Romans 11:4, and Castor and Pollux, Acts 28:11, but not honoris gratia, for honour' sake, or without some expression of detestation of them; such as was that of Cyril, who, speaking of paganish idolatries, breaks out thus, Bορβορουμεθα ταυτα λεγοντες, we rake a dunghill in a discourse of dunghill gods. What a pathetic speech or rather shriek is that of Almighty God, Jeremiah 44:4, "Oh! do not this abominable thing": do not honour idols in the least. Shall I bow my knee to yonder jackanapes? said that martyr, pointing to the Rood in Paul's. Should I kiss Baal? as, they did 1 Kings 19:18; or so much as kiss my hand in honour to him? as Job 31:27 were not this to deny the God that is above Job 31:28. And how can those be excused that have so often in their mouths Iupiter omnipotens Mehurcule, Mecastor, et caetera magis portenta quam numina, saith Jerome? and those that think their verses nothing so neat, unless there be often naming, and sometimes invocating too, of Apollo Minerva, Venus, &c.? Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? James 3:11. Those that say they think no hurt in all this are no more excused thereby than he, that said (Ovid),
“ Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba. ”
Those who thus borrow garnish from the Egyptians may therewith get their botches and boils. Howsoever, they may fear to have Bellarmine himself (who was no precisian) to rise up in judgment against them and condemn them; who would not have Paul called Divus Paulus, Divine Paul, but Beatus, blessed, because Divus and Diva were the words of the heathens for their gods and goddesses.
And they shall no more be remembered] so without indignation and detestation, without: "What have I to do any more with idols?" "Get you hence," Hos 14:1 Isaiah 30:22 Abite hinc, abite longe, Away from here, be far gone, as Charles V said of all his worldly pomp and achievements at the last as Amnon thrust Tamar out of doors when he had had his will of her, when he had moiled himself in that filthy guzzle, and sullied his conscience. "She multiplied her whoredoms" (saith the prophet) "in calling to remembrance the days of her youth wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt," Eze 23:21 Hosea 2:8. Not the new scent of meat, but the remembrance of their old flesh pots moved Israel they found sweetness in a lust twice sod, they had still the "broth of those abominable things in their vessels," as the prophet Isaiah hath phrased it, Isaiah 65:4. To remember with delight sins past is to recommit them; and herein the deceitful heart is with all care to be looked unto, that when we call to mind former evil practices, though with an intent to be humbled for them, we be not insnared, and drawn to commit them afresh by being tickled in the thought of them.