John Calvin called men "idol factories."

Biblically informed Christians are often well aware of the grosser forms of outward idolatry, like what is seen in Paganism, Humanism and Roman Catholicism (and Rome's harlot daughters like the heretical New Perspective on Paul and Federal Vision movements). But how many Christians have carefully looked at the more subtle forms on inward idolatry?

David Clarkson, in Soul Idolatry Excludes Men Out of Heaven, does this very thing pinpointing thirteen kinds of "soul idolatry," showing that "soul idolatry" is just as sinful as the more outward form of idolatry practiced by the Whore of Babylon (Rome) and her harlot Protestant daughters (like those who deny the regulative principle of worship and therefore naturally fall into the more obvious forms of gross outward idolatry).

"He that serves his lusts is as incapable of heaven as he that serves and worships idols of wood or stone," writes David Clarkson, demonstrating that "there are thirteen acts of soul worship; and to give any one of them to anything besides the God of heaven is plain idolatry, and those idolaters that so give it."

Moreover, David Clarkson shows that "soul idolatry" remains even in the lives of true born again Christians and that "those natures that are most sanctified on earth are still a seminary of sin; there is in them the roots, the seeds of atheism, blasphemy, murder, adultery, apostasy, and idolatry."

This is a powerful piece of Puritan prose that should be read by all Christians. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would" (Galatians 5:17).