“Not by my good-will thereto.”
“Then what do we?”
“What we have hitherto done. Serve God, and keep ourselves from idols.”
“Nick, I do by times marvel if it be any ill to go. We worship no idols, even though we bow down—”
“‘Thou shalt not bow down to them’ is the command.”
“Ay, but they were images of false gods.”
“Read the Commandment, good wife. They were ‘any graven image, or the likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.’ Not a word touching false gods read I there.”
“Why, but that were to condemn all manner of painting and such like—even yon rogue’s likeness of Mistress Hall yonder.”
“Scarcely, methinks, so long as it were not made for worship. The cherubim were commanded to be made. But if so were, wife—whether were better, that the arts of painting and sculpture were forgotten, or that God should be dishonoured and His commands disobeyed?”
“Well, if you put it that way—”