Analysis Of The Text 'Samuel Willard: Two Sermons'

The text “Samuel Willard: Two Sermons” describes the adversity of the Puritan leader Samuel Willard to the religious faith expressed through visual images. Across two sermons, respectively “Enquiry into the Divine Attributes, 1689” and “What Is Forbidden in the Second Commandment, 1701”, Willard argues why any images created to represent God is wrong, sustaining his arguments with Biblical passages that indicate the historical errors of creating idols (visual images) for worshiping religious faiths. In the first sermon, Samuel Willard states that pictures and images cannot reflect the God or other religious values or religious episodes, because the shapes of God, the Spirits or the Angels are unknown to humans. He catalogues any attempt to

The religious leader of the seventeenth century New England reminds cruel events that occurred across the human history due to worshiping images of God and ended in human sacrifice brought to human – created images for Spirits, referring to the Egyptian or the Israelite imitation of Gods. Willard states that associating God with humans-created images is the work of evil, which further influences people to evil acts, such as the human sacrifice.
Samuel Willard takes this position for discouraging people to bow to false representations of God and to stop an old and pagan practice of human sacrifice. His sermons teach people to praise God as a shapeless and figureless Spirit, focusing on the real values of the religious faith, such as piety, goodness or moral conduct, which cannot be portrayed.
2. Generally Speaking why did John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), Benjamin West (1738-1820), and R.G. Bruce have this extended correspondence? What was Copley trying to accomplish? What did West say about his work? What do these letters tell us about life for painters in colonial

Galt describes West’s insatiable thirst for getting to know the European art, studying it day and night and discovering the imitation of the glorious antiquity in Michelangelo or Rafael’s works.
Romans initially perceived West as an American Quaker, as his appearance was nothing similar to the Romans’ looks, as a comparison between the old but glorious Rome and the young, vigorous, active and simple America. His interest towards the religious art subjects is what might have influenced the Romans to perceive West as a Quaker. Moreover, the Cardinal Albani thought of him to be an Indian, associating America with savage, dark people and to his surprise he came to meet a fair American, deceiving his