LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY MRS. RAYMOND WILDER 1 THE IMAGE-WORSHIP OF PROVED TO BE CONTRARY TO HOLY SCRIPTURE, AND THE ,1fattt) antr discipline of tfje ^rimitibe i/) is meant in the language of ecclesiastical writers, not only a solid figure, (to which the word is now more usually applied,) but also any form, of whatever kind, intended to convey the likeness of any absent being, and to be its representative ; whether the similitude is attempted to be made by colours on canvas, on boards, or on a wall ; or by a molten mass of metal ; or by a block of stone or wood chiselled and carved ; or whe- ther it consist of any other material, as of porcelain ; and whether the figure be called a picture, a statue, an effigy, image, or by any other name. 2 IMAGE-WORSHIP. had for ages excluded the true doctrine of the Gos- pel, and established themselves in its place : Secondly, In these times of unscrupulous proselytism, our intention is (not by sounding a general and vague alarm, but by arguments of facts and realities) to warn every one of the awfully hazardous step which those persons take who suffer themselves to be se- duced by specious and fascinating representations now artfully interwoven with subtle arguments, to re- nounce the evangelical and apostolical principles of the Church of England, and to adopt the corruptions and innovations of Romanism in their stead : And, Thirdly, if it might so be, in these days of uni- versal investigation and inquiry, we would induce such members of the Church of Rome as may be still anxious (and we are told that many such there are) to see an honest and dispassionate examination of the points of difference between their Church and ours, to take the matter up in good earnest ; to weigh the cases uprightly ; and to decide for themselves, as before the God in whom we both believe ; assured that the truth, while it will make them free, will secure to them satis- faction, and comfort and joy in the Holy Ghost. Desirable as it is that these principles should be kept in view by the reader throughout all our inqui- ries into the nature and tendencies of Romanism, un- der no head is the application of them more necessary than it is on the question of image-worship. We have been accustomed to hear from time to time, that the charge brought against the Church of Rome of worshipping and adoring images, is founded in ignor- ance or wilful misrepresentation ; we have heard her bishops pleading as an apology for answering such charges, " the otherwise respectable sources whence the INTRODUCTION. 3 accusations spring," * and expressing their " fear of in- sulting the understandings of their audience by sup- posing any capable of believing them." We have heard the same authorised teachers ask, with a triumphant assurance intended to silence every doubt, and put an end for ever to further question, " Is it possible, that, in an age and country which claims to be so learned and so enlightened, men should be found capable of believing that the majority of the Chris- tian world, the great, the good, the learned of almost every civilised nation under heaven, are so ig- norant, so debased, so stupid, so wicked, as to give divine honours to a lifeless and senseless image ? Is it possible that any of you should persuade yourselves, that the most ignorant Catholic here present could be capable of adoring, for instance, the ivory image which you see upon that altar?" We have heard, by the same authority, (whose words were most industriously circulated throughout the whole country about twenty years ago,) a most solemn and awful imprecation of divine vengeance pronounced upon others and upon himself in this matter : upon others, who act contrary to what he declares to be the doctrine of his Church ; and upon himself, if the declarations he has made do not in very truth contain that doctrine : "Anathema to the man that worships an image as God, or gives to IT DIVINE HONOURS, or believes it to possess any portion of divine power or virtue ; or places his trust in it ; or PRAYS TO IT ; or believes it to be anything more than a lifeless, senseless lump of matter." "And, my brethren, I will add, without * See " Sermon preached at Bradford, in 1 826, by Peter Augustine Baines, D.D., Bishop of Siga," and republished in the collection made by a society called the Catholic Institute in 1840. B 2 IMAGE-WORSHIP. any hesitation or fear, Anathema to myself if the doc- trine I have here explained to you is not the true and universally received doctrine of the Catholic Church." 11 Now, when, on the one hand, we find such solemn and reiterated protestations as these, a bishop pledging his hope of eternal salvation as to their truth, and declaring unreservedly, that, not to receive divine ho- nours, but to excite feelings of penitence and devotion towards God, images are placed on high in Roman Catholic churches ; and when, on the other, we are ourselves witnesses of the clasped hands held up to the image, the tearful eye fixed on its countenance, the prostrate body, and the loud and bitter cry uttered to the image, calling it by the name of its prototype ; when we witness clouds of frankincense rolled up to the image, which for a while apparently concentrates on itself the joint fervent devotions of a whole body of worshippers ; we are compelled to ascertain for ourselves what is the reality. When, moreover, at the same time we read in the approved works of the most celebrated divines and doctors, bishops and cardinals of the Romish Church, that so ought things to be that images of Christ and his saints ought to be set up for the purpose of being worshipped and adored, that divine honours are of right due to them, and that those are heretics to be abhorred who deny images to be fit objects of religious worship ; and, what is yet more, when we find the Roman Pontifical f asserting that the highest supreme divine worship is * By " Catholics," and " Catholic Church," Dr. Baines throughout this consecration sermon designates the Church of Rome and her members. t Pontif. Rom. 1595, p. 671. Jussu dementis, vui. INTRODUCTION. 5 due to the material cross, and the Roman Breviary* addressing the material cross with solemn and direct prayer, and the Roman Missalf enjoining the adoration of the material cross : what is our duty, as men accountable to God for our own faith and for the instruction which we may give to our families and fellow-Christians ? Can it be any other than patient- ly and dispassionately to examine the question for ourselves, and to state the results plainly and without reserve to others ? And if we find (as we have found) that the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome is to worship and adore images contrary to God's word and the example of the Primitive Church, (how- ever industriously and skilfully on some occasions the more alarming and revolting features of that worship be kept out of sight,) then surely we are especially bound to apprise our fellow-Christians of what will be required of those who tender their allegiance to Rome ; so that they may not, with blinded eyes and implicit reliance on partial representations, surrender themselves to be guided down a gentle and fascinat- ing path, into a gulf from which few human footsteps have ever returned to the light ; and where, when inquiry is shut out, and consideration has neither place nor name, the veil will be removed, and the superstitious and deceitful devices of men will be seen in their own natural proportions and deformity. We purpose, then, in order with more satisfaction to answer the inquiry, What is Romanism with regard to the worship and adoration of images ? to ascertain, 1. What were the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome in this respect before the Reform- ation, and from which that Reformation rescued us. * Brev. Rom , Sept. 1 4th and May 3rd. f Miss. Rom. 1 64 1 , p. 20 1 . 6 IMAGE-WORSHIP. 2. What were the enactments and binding declara- tions of the Council of Trent, and the Creed of Pope Pius : What have been the doctrines and explanations of the accredited writers of the Church of Rome : And what has been the visible reality as to the faith and practice countenanced and cherished by the Roman authorities. And then, Srdly, How do the results of these in- quiries correspond, first, with the plain teaching of Holy Scripture ; and, secondly, with the doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church of Christ through the first five centuries and more. SECOND COUNCIL OF NKLEA. PART I. DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME BEFORE THE REFORMATION. CHAPTER I. SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC.EA. IN these days, when not only has the necessity of our Reformation been denied, but its whole nature, and character, and effects have been, with more than usual industry and bitterness, held up to the hatred or contempt and scorn of the world, as unjustifiable, uncharitable, and sinful ; and when attempts are un- remittingly made to shake the confidence of our own people in the soundness of our creed, and the Scrip- tural and primitive purity and excellence of our wor- ship, it seems necessary to review that state of religion in Christendom at the time of the Reformation, for protesting against which, and for purifying our branch of the Church Catholic from which, those men whose names we have been accustomed to hold in reverential and grateful remembrance, have been branded as heretics, and enemies to the Cross of Christ. On the question of image-worship, (without antici- pating what properly belongs to a subsequent branch of our inquiry,) we must here, at the very outset of our investigation, refer to the transactions of the second Council of Nice, at the close of the eighth century, 8 IMAGE-WORSHIP. because it is on the decisions of that assembly that the Romanists chiefly build their present superstruc- ture of image-worship. True it is that they are led to refer to earlier authorities cited in that council, and to rest on the arguments and testimonies then employed by its members (arguments, as we shall hereafter see, not bearing at all on the real point at issue, and testimonies drawn from spurious works attributed to the ancient Fathers) ; yet to the enactments of this council they recur, as an autho- rity from which there is no appeal. The decrees, indeed, of this assembly are sufficiently comprehen- sive to admit of the most unqualified worship and adoration of images ; and yet we find that the restric- tions and modifications expressed individually by its members were too full of caution to satisfy subsequent maintainers of image-worship in the Church of Rome ; these appear to have passed all former bounds, and to have boldly propagated doctrines on the worship and adoration of images, for which the most zealous ad- vocates and champions of that worship, even at the close of the eighth century, were not yet fully pre- pared. After the Christian world had been convulsed through the eighth century by the furious struggles of those who maintained the lawfulness and duty of worshipping and adoring images on the one hand, and those on the other who resisted the introduction of this novel worship as unscriptural, and unaposto- lical, and heathenish, (struggles not of the pen and tongue only, but of actual seditions and civil wars, and massacres, and murders) at the close of the century, A. D. 787, a council, called the " Second Nicene Coun- SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 9 cil," was held at Nicgea or Nice, in Bithynia, for the express purpose of establishing through Christendom the worship and adoration of images in the Church of Christ. What preceded and what followed this council, as far as concerns our present inquiry, will more properly be reserved for^ a subsequent branch of our investigation. For our immediate purpose in this section we need not dwell on those points, be- cause (as Cardinal Bellarmin reminds us) the decrees of that council, however directly opposed to the pre- vious Council of Constantinople, and however resisted afterwards by Charlemagne, and the Councils of Frank- fort and Paris, and by the clergy and nobles of En- gland, yet ultimately prevailed, and formed the rule of the Roman Church. Leo, the fourth emperor of that name, (whom his- torians report to have been carried off by poison at the impious counsel of his wife Irene,) died A. D. 780. Irene held the reins of government for her son Con- stantine, then a minor; and, under her auspices, the second Council of Nice was convened. It was at- tended as well by bishops who had before opposed the worship of images, and who now came forward to avow their errors, and to tender their adhesion to the cause which they had before anathematised, as by those who had been before most zealous and uncom- promising supporters of the worship of images ; Adrian, Archbishop of " Old Rome," the Apostolic See, being represented by two of his own clergy ; and Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, or " New Rome," being present in person ; the bishops of the " Eastern Dio- cese," or "Apostolical Sees," as they are equally called, being represented by two of their clergy. Here it may be well to observe in passing, that ea 10 IMAGE-WORSHIP. one individual ecclesiastic seems to have been present at this council who held the sentiments to condemn which it was purposely convened. Cardinal Bellarmin, indeed,* says that the subject was fully and thorough- ly discussed, the disputation being carried on sharply, and the evidence of Scripture, councils, and Fathers being brought forward. But this is very far from being the case : there was no discussion ; no opinion of living divines or of departed Fathers was admitted which at all ran counter to the decrees already resolved upon. Even the testimony of Eusebius against images was not allowed to be read, but was only alluded to, and condemned by an anathema involving his works and all who received them. Everything was brought to the council ready prepared, just as now the report of a committee presented to an unanimous meeting is read and adopted ; everything proceeded without interruption as a matter of course, except when the president or some member of the council expressed his approbation, or confirmed some statement by his own testimony. From first to last we find no counter- statement or dispute of any kind. * Vol. II. book ii. chap. xii. SECOND COUNCIL OF NICLEA. 11 CHAPTER II. SECOND COUNCIL OF Nic^EA continued. THE first Act or Session of the council begins with a motion made by the Bishops of Sicily, That it is right and becoming for him who presides, the most holy Archbishop and Chief Ruler of royal Constantinople, New Rome, to open the council by delivering his sen- timents. This being carried, Tarasius addressed the assembly ; and at the close of his speech Constantine, Bishop of Constantia, in Cyprus, moved that the bi- shops who lay under a charge of heresy, and were present desiring forgiveness and reconciliation, be called in. This was agreed to ; and after some in- quiry as to the canonical reconciliation of those who had been in error and had returned to the true faith, these bishops were permitted to declare their errors, and read the confession of their present creed. Our subject requires that specimens of these retractions and professions should be laid before the reader. Immediately on the motion of Constantine being carried, Basil Bishop of Ancyra, Theodorus Bishop of Myra, and Theodosius Bishop of Ammorium were called in. Basil first read his own recantation at great length ; and Theodorus read as his own a copy of the same paper, on hearing which some of the council thanked God ; and then Theodosius was brought for- ward, and spake thus : 12 IMAGE-WORSHIP. My all-holy masters, honoured of God, and all this holy assembly ! I, too, a miserable and deceived sinner, who have spoken many evil words against the sacred images, now comprehending the truth, have changed my views and condemned myself, and have plainly cursed and do curse what I have evilly said and taught in this world; and I pray and beseech your holy assembly, that, with all Christians, you will receive me, your unworthy servant." " Tarasius, the most holy Patriarch, said, ' The most reverend Theodosius has shewn great contrition of heart, and is worthy to be received/ " After this, Theodosius read his own statement, as follows : " To the holy and oecumenical council, Theodosius, the least of Christians. I confess and agree, and re- ceive and salute and worship* first of all, the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, and the holy image of her who bare Him, the holy theotocos; and her help and protection, and her mediation, every day and night, I, as a sinner, invoke for my help, she having freedom of speech with Him who was born of her, Christ our God : and also the images of the holy and celebrated apostles, prophets, martyrs, fathers, and ascetics of the desert, I receive and wor- ship not as Gods (may that not be !) ; but even now, shewing the temper and desire of my soul which I originally entertained towards them, I call upon them all, with my whole soul, to mediate for me with God, that He would grant me, through their mediations, to find mercy with Him at the day of judgment. Like- * It may be well to observe, that throughout the records of this council the word we translate worship (irpooKvvuv) is translated in the Latin by " adorare." SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 13 wise, also, I worship, honour, and salute the relics of the saints, as those who have struggled for Christ, and re- ceived grace from Him to effect cures and heal diseases, and cast out devils, as the Church of the Christians has received from the holy Apostles and fathers to our own times. And I am well pleased that in the churches also of the saints there should be exhibited chiefly the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the holy one who bare God, formed of all kinds of materials, gold and silver, and colours of every kind, that the dispensation of his incarnation might be known to all men ; and like- wise, that there be exhibited the manner of life of the holy and celebrated Apostles, prophets, and martyrs, that their struggles and contests may be made known for a brief description, and for stirring up and teaching the people, especially the simple sort." Then, having piteously implored the council to re- ceive him back, he thus ends his address : " On those who do not worship the holy and sacred images, anathema ! On those who blaspheme the holy and sacred images, anathema ! On those who dare to utter blasphemy and accusation against the sacred images, or to call them idols, anathema ! On the ac- cusers of Christians, I mean the Iconoclasts, anathema ! On those who do not carefully teach all the people who love Christ to worship and salute the sacred, holy, and honourable images of all the saints who have pleased God from the beginning of the world, ana- thema ! On those who have a doubtful mind, and do not from their soul confess that they worship the sacred images, anathema!" After these full confessions of their own conversion, and these bitter maledictions on all who even enter- tained in their minds doubts on the subject, had greatly 14 IMAGE-WORSHIP. affected the audience, Tarasius, who acted throughout as president of the council,* put the question as to the reconciliation of these offending bishops thus : " Is it your pleasure that they take their seats ?" To this the monks (representatives of the Eastern Apos- tolical Sees) expressed their assent ; and the three bishops " were ordered to sit, each on his proper bench and seat." In the second Session, the letter of Pope Adrian to Tarasius was read, urging him to persevere in his resolution to receive, uphold, and worship the sacred images, and to be united with filial affection to the Apostolic See of old Rome, which he was very careful to declare to be the head of all the churches. In the third Session, to a letter addressed to Tarasius, "Archbishop of Constantinople, and Patriarch of the whole world" [oecumenical], the Eastern bishops ap- pend a confession of Theodoras, sometime Patriarch of Jerusalem, which contains much matter worthy of no- tice, and which, while it lays open and bare before us the futile and ungrounded arguments from Scripture and the Fathers by which image-worship was then, as it is now, defended, shews (the defenders of image worship themselves being our witnesses) that, when- ever attempts were made from the first to introduce images as objects of religious worship in the Church, there were always men, imbued with the principles of primitive times, ready to oppose and denounce them. Having said, " the holy images we worshipping em- brace," and having specified first of all the picture and figure of our blessed Lord, Theodorus proceeds : * When the members sign their consent, the locum-tenens of Adrian, " Pope of the older Rome," signs first. SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 15 " We, moreover, honour and adore the image of his unpolluted mother, the holy theotocos, our immacu- late Lady. We must also honour the images of the Apostles, prophets, and gloriously victorious martyrs, holy and just, as friends of God ; not presenting our reverence to the matter and colour, but led through these by the eyes of our mind to the original, referring the honour to him; knowing, according to the great St. Basil, that the honour of the image passes through to the original. But to those who contentiously argue and say that we ought not to worship the images of the saints, being made with hands, foolishly, or rather impiously, calling them idols, we say, * Let such know that the cherubim and the mercy-seat, and the ark and table, which the divine Moses prepared at the command of God, were made with hands and were worshipped.' " On the misinterpretation of Scripture, and the refer- ence here made to St. Basil, which, however, has not the most remote bearing on image-worship, we must speak under another head of our inquiry ; at present we need only observe, that, while the bishops then assembled, in number three hundred and eighteen, impose " ter- rible cursings on all those who do not agree with them in honouring, reverencing, and worshipping images," and especially condemn " the assembly unlawfully called the Seventh Council," (the Council of Con- stantinople above referred to, which denounced the worship of images, and forbad their admission into the churches,) Constantius, the reconciled Bishop of Constantia, expressly reserves the worship of Latria to the Holy Trinity, a reservation which we shall find rejected both before and after the Council of Trent. 16 IMAGE-WORSHIP. In the fourth Session of this assembly, we are pained by lamentable examples of that eagerness to uphold a theory, that can wrest passages of Holy Scripture to prove a doctrine on which they have no bearing ; and cite as the testimony of ancient Fathers what they never wrote ; and quote their real sentiments on one subject, to establish another utterly at variance with them. For example : Moses made the ark, the mercy-seat, and the cher- ubim, for the people to worship ; therefore Christians ought to have the images of Christ, and his saints, and the Virgin to worship.* Again, St. Chrysostom, in his encomium on a holy man named Meletius, addressing his audience as persons acquainted with the merits of his subject, says, that so entirely had Meletius won the affections of the people, and so deeply had he impressed them with the sacred- ness of his character, " that the very remembrance of his name was sufficient to dispel from their minds every inordinate feeling and desire." " And not only was his name heard in all their paths, their fields, their market-places, but many had his likeness engraven on the medallions of their rings, their cups, and goblets, and on the walls of their chambers ; so that not only did they hear his holy name, but saw the form of his person everywhere, and thus derived a twofold conso- lation for his departure." And this is cited as a proof that John Chrysostom approved of images, and set the example of receiving them as " reverend, sacred, and holy!" "If John of the golden mouth spake thus of images, who will any longer dare to speak a word * Under a subsequent head we shall examine the passages alleged from Holy Scripture as countenancing the religious worship of images. SECOND COUNCIL OF NKLEA. 17 against them ?" The question at issue was, not whe- ther Christians might have the portraits of their friends and of holy men hanging on their walls or engraved on their seals, but whether images should be set up in churches, and be worshipped. The rest of this fourth Act is chiefly taken up by legends of miracles wrought by images. It is a melancholy page of Christian history, and informs us only too plainly how firm a grasp superstition had then taken of the minds of those who should have been the lights of the world. To such instances as are alleged on the authority of any Father of the first five centuries we shall advert hereafter ; at present we must leave this Act of the council, with only one or two remarks. After a very long account (quoted as from the great St. Athanasius, but beyond question not his) of an image of our Saviour working miracles, the Patriarch of Constantinople, anticipating the doubt which might offer itself to some present on hearing the account of so many miracles wrought by images in former times, conscious that no such miracles were wrought by the images in their possession then, interposes thus: " But lest any should say, ' What is the cause why the images with us now do not work miracles?' we answer him, ' Because, as the Apostle says, signs are for those who believe not, and not for those who believe ;' and those who used to approach the image were unbe- lievers. So God wrought the miracles through the image to draw them to the faith of us Christians." Here we have a clear acknowledgment, as far as the President's testimony goes, that miracles by images had then ceased to be wrought; and the principle recognised, that, when they were wrought, it was for 18 IMAGE-WORSHIP. the conversion of unbelievers : and yet in the self- same session, one named Manzon, himself a member of the council and a bishop, gets up and declares, that the year before, on his returning home from Constan- tinople, he fell so grievously ill, that he called his friends together to make his will. " Meanwhile the disorder continuing, I took the image of Jesus Christ, and said, ' Lord, who givest grace to Thy saints, look upon me !' and on my putting the same revered image upon the limb affected, immediately the disease was driven away, and I was made well." Upon which, Theodorus, Bishop of Seleucia, rose and said : " This was known to us also, for it is in our neighbourhood." At every stage of our inquiry into the origin, pro- gress, and present state of image-worship, we are struck with the palpable contradictions and inconsis- tencies into which its supporters are constantly falling. Here we have one bishop making to his fellow-coun- cillors an apology for the non-appearance of miracles wrought by images in their times ; and another de- claring that a few months only before the council a miracle was wrought on himself by an image, to which another bishop adds his hearsay confirmation. But another contradiction is forced upon us here between Tarasius, president of this council, on one side, and that other bishop and Cardinal Bellar- min, on the other. The Patriarch of Constantinople, at the end of the eighth century, says distinctly that the miracles which were wont to be wrought by images were wrought on unbelievers for their conver- sion : that other bishop declares the miracle was wrought on himself, already a believer and a minister even of the Church ; and Cardinal Bellarmin maintains that miracles were wrought by images on purpose to SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 19 establish their right to veneration and worship ; and that the benefits resulting therefrom were conferred* solely and exclusively on those who honoured images and believed that the worship of them pleases God ; consequently he concludes, that, if image-worship is idolatry, God proves Himself to be the chief promoter of idolatry. It is also remarkable that a similar apology which Tarasius here makes for the cessation of miracles by images in his time, his predecessor Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople when Gregory was Bishop of Rome, nearly two hundred years before, makes for the same thing. The instance he specifies, and which he says was beyond gainsaying and doubt, and of all the most evident, was the miracle wrought by the image of the Virgin Mary (a picture in Sozo- polis of Pisidia), which sent forth from its painted hand a springing stream of ointment, of which there were many witnesses. " But if," he adds, " such a miraculous act is not seen now, not on that account should former acts be disbelieved, lest also what is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles should be judged incredible." This is contained in a treatise purporting to be an epistle from Germanus to Thomas Bishop of Claudiopolis, and cited in the fourth Act of this coun- cil. And, unhappily, this is the view urged upon Christians now, Either Rome or infidelity, either believe what Rome now holds, or be at once open and professed infidels : an inference from which those who are from their hearts and inmost consciences Chris- tians, but who cannot subscribe to the doctrines of Rome, shrink with mingled feelings of indignation and horror. * Lib. ii. cap. xii. c 2 20 IMAGE-WORSHIP. Another remark of no small importance here sug- gests itself, arising from the comment of Anastasius on the words, " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," and also the observa- tions of the council and its president on that com- ment. " And let no one," he says, " stumble at the intima- tion of worship. For we worship holy men and an- gels ; but we do not serve them. For, says Moses, ' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him ONLY shalt thou SERVE.' Observe how to the words ' thou shalt serve' is added ' only;' not so to * thou shalt wor- ship.' So that we may lawfully worship ; for worship is a sign of honour ; but by no means may we serve : consequently, neither must we pray to them," The council having on this observed, that what they called* the false council had impiously quoted this passage in their defence, the President Tarasius said, " See how the most learned father interprets it. What he has brought forward induces all of us to re- ceive and to worship images ; for worship is a sign of honour. All persons, then, WHO PROFESS TO HONOUR THE SACRED IMAGES, BUT REFUSE THEIR WORSHIP, will be convicted by the holy father as speaking with hypocrisy; for, in reality, those who do not receive their worship, which is the sign of honour, shew that they are working the contrary, their dishonour." Here is a most clear and explicit declaration, that, according to this council, to honour the images is not enough ; on the contrary, it is pronounced to be mere hypocrisy, unless that honour be the honour of wor- ship ; and although Anastasius makes an exception of * The council at Constantinople, which had condemned image- worship about thirty-two years before. SECOND COUNCIL OF NKLEA. 21 prayer, yet no worship is alluded to in the passage of Scripture, except that same worship, whatever it be, with which the Almighty commands Himself to be honoured, when He says, "Thou shalt WORSHIP the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." In conformity with this decision, the council declare, that they honour and salute, and with honour worship the sacred images; and having pronounced curses on all who hold any opposite doctrine, especially those who call the images idols, or " apply to the sacred images the words uttered in Scripture against idols," close the fourth Act by subscribing their names to it. It is worthy of remark, that the very passage of Holy Scripture which, in this council, is cited to prove that images may be worshipped with the same worship which the Almighty commands His people to pay to Himself, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 1 ' though they are not to be SERVED, had been appealed to by Gregory the Great, to shew that images are not to be worshipped : " You must shew by proof of Holy Scripture, that it is not lawful to WORSHIP any- thing made with hands, since it is written, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.' " * The fifth Act abounds with numerous legends cited to prove that God wrought miracles by the images, and, therefore, that the linages were to be honoured and worshipped. The two last of these testimonies (by no means the worst) are thus cited word for word : *' A certain woman in the region of Apamiae dug a well ; and after she had been to much expense, and gone to a great depth, she found no water, and was * Epist. lib. xi., Epist. xiii. vol. i. p. 1100. 22 IMAGE-WORSHIP. sadly dejected, both on account of the labour and of the cost. On one occasion, in her sleep, she saw a person, who said to her, * Send and bring the image of the Abbot Theodosius, and God gives thee water through him.' The woman sent two of her men, and received the image of the saint, and it being let down into the well, forthwith and immediately the water came out, so as to fill half the well. They then brought to us of the same water, and we drank and glorified God." " Dionysius, the elder of the Church of Ascalon, gave us this account of the Abbot John, the anchorite: ' This man was great in this generation, and this wonder is a confirmation of his acceptance with God. The old man lay in a cave in the parts about Socchus, somewhat less than twenty miles from Jerusalem. Now, he had in the cave an image of our holy unpolluted Lady Mary, theotocos, and ever Virgin, holding Christ, our God, in her arms. Whenever, then, he wished to go into dis- tant deserts, or to Jerusalem to worship the holy cross or the holy places, or to Mount Sion to pray, or to the martyrs who were far distant from Jerusalem, (for he was particularly fond of the martyrs; and at one time he would go to the holy John at Ephesus, at another to the holy Theodorus of Euchais, or the holy Thecla of Seleucia, or the holy Sergius at Arapha,) he pre- pared his candle, and lighted it, as was his custom, and standing and praying that his journey might be directed aright, he said to the Lady, looking at her image, * Holy Lady, theotocos, since I have a long way to go, having before me the journey of many days, take care of your own candle, and keep it from going out, according to my purpose, for I make my journey, having your help for my companion/ Having said SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 23 this to the image, he went his way, and having com- pleted his intended journey, he returned, sometimes after a month, now and then after two or three, and sometimes after five or six, and so he found his candle prepared and lighted, as he had left it when he went on his journey; and he never saw it extinguished of itself, neither when he rose up from sleep, nor when he returned from the desert to his cave." On this Tarasius exclaimed, " We are now satiated with testimonies from the Fathers; and we know that the setting up of the sacred images is an ancient tradition. We therefore are followers of the holy Fathers." On this Stephen the Monk observes, " We have other volumes in the cause of the holy images, to the number of fifteen. But as you order." " We are full," rejoins the Patriarch, " and are satisfied." It is painful to find an Assembly, consisting of nearly four hundred Christian bishops and doctors, listening to such trifling fables with eagerness and satisfaction, and grounding on them the truth of the dogmas which they enact, and which they impose on all their fellow-Christians, on pain of incurring " frightful anathemas." Yet on such a foundation rests the doctrine of the worship and adoration of images in the Roman Catholic Church at the pre- sent day. However great our sorrow to find that decrees, intended to rule the faith and practical religion of Christendom, should be built on such a foundation as that on which the second Nicene Council raised its superstructure of image-worship, our surprise cannot be less, when we witness the reckless and contemptuous manner in which the same assembly 24 IMAGE-WORSHIP. threw overboard, without examination of its merits and weight, any testimony from whatever quarter, which was alleged as militating against the conclu- sion to which they had already come before they entered the council-chamber, and which they were resolved to uphold and maintain. If there were any of the Fathers of the Primitive Church, whose evi- dence on subjects involving the early practice of Christians we should have beforehand expected a council, at the close of the eighth century, to have weighed with patience, and candour, and reverence, Eusebius would certainly be among that number. In- stead of this, we find the evidence of that celebrated Father of the Antenicene Church summarily, and scornfully, and despitefully cast aside, as not only unworthy of consideration, but as unfit to be read, and deserving only the hatred and cursings of the council.* Having speedily despatched some books which pre- tended to have the superscriptions of the Apostles, the president Tarasius said, " Those who have babbled against the sacred images have brought forward Euse- bius for a testimony, in his letter written to Con- stantia, the wife of Licinius ; and let us see of what opinion Eusebius is." Immediately a monk read an extract, all prepared and ready, from a work " of Eusebius to Euphration," (the Latin translation calls it the eighth book,) in which the words, as they are quoted, deny the co-existence of the Father and * Undoubtedly many later writers have, without scruple, charged Eusebius with either direct heresy, or else vacillation and dishonesty as to his views of our Lord's perfect divinity, charges from which others of unquestionable piety and orthodoxy have been strenuous in rescuing his memory. SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 25 the Son. On this, Tarasius asks, " Do we admit this man ?" "God forbid, my lord !" replied the council ; " let this man be held in greater hatred than the others." The two representatives of the Roman Pontiff Adrian then observed, " This passage shews that he held an Arian view." The narrative adds, " The book of Eusebius thus brought forward contained other blasphemies, which the council would not endure to hear." Tarasius said, " We cast away his writings ;" the Council responding, " We both reject them and curse them." The Monk Stephen then read a pas- sage from Antipater, Bishop of Bostra, allowing that Eusebius was a most learned man, and had left many writings behind him, some of which were worthy of all acceptation ; but charging both him, as the sup- porter of Origen, and Origen also the defender and the defended with heresy, and ending by addressing him as if he were present : " O thou clever advocate of the absurdities of Origen !" On this, Tarasius ex- claimed, " The works of Eusebius are proved, even by the voice of a Father, to be foreign from the Catholic Church." Not another word was said, and the council went on to the next business. We may, however, observe, that the cause of Chris- tian truth gained this great advantage from the un- justifiable suppression of the testimony of Eusebius. That Father is here recorded, beyond all gainsaying, to have borne his testimony, clear and irrefutable, against the worship of images in the Church. The council could not venture to entertain or suggest a suspicion that the testimony was not genuine ; and, so conclusive was it against them, that they preferred to brand with infamy and to curse as a heretic one of the renowned Fathers of the Christian Church, 26 IMAGE-WORSHIP. rather than admit his evidence against their cause, or even suffer it to be read. For a knowledge, moreover, of this testimony of Eusebius against image-worship, we are indebted to this very council. In its sixth act, a book is read, containing the statements, and arguments, and doc- trines of the previous Council of Constantinople, toge- ther with a running comment on the part of this second Nicene Council by way of refutation; and, among the testimonies cited at Constantinople and rejected here, is this passage of Eusebius. We shall therefore quote it when we examine that Father's evidence. To the subsequent Acts of the council, which record the decrees and proceedings of that previous Council of Constantinople, we must refer hereafter. That this Nicene council was convened chiefly by the management of the court of Rome, and that all its proceedings were conducted with the view of meeting the wishes of that See, is evident by what we know from its history, and is proved by internal testimony through all its stages ; and at the last, as the practical issue, and as if to set a final seal to the whole affair, one of the Pope's representatives proposed to the council, that " on the morrow a venerable image ' O should be set up, for all the council to salute it," which was decreed. SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 27 CHAPTER III. SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^EA ITS DECREES RESISTED. FROM this council must be dated the successful triumph of image-worship over the simple, and pure, and spiritual service of primitive Christianity. Armed with the authority and anathemas of this council and with their own, the Bishops of Rome, who had long fostered and headed the party in favour of image- worship against their antagonists, found nothing which could effectually resist the spread of this novelty over Christendom. True it is, that letters ascribed to Charle- magne* (denied indeed by some to have been his, yet certainly published in his days) advocated the old religion ; but these were thought worthy of being answered by the Pope himself, and were overborne. True it is, that councils and assemblies (whether they be called provincial or national, and whatever uncer- tainty may hang over them) were assembled at Paris,f Frankfort, Mayence, and elsewhere, for the purpose of * To these letters we must again refer more than once. t Cardinal Bellarmin (Appendix De Cult. Imag. vol. ii. p. 522) denies to the assembly at Paris, held under Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, the name of a council ; and attacks the proceedings of the Gallican divines at that time, chiefly on account of their audacity in examining and judging the acts of him who was the judge of them- selves and of the whole world I (that is, Pope Adrian;) and concludes a long argument against it by asserting, that, whether the book contain- ing the records of this assembly be true or false, or partly true and partly false, it is not worth the time spent in reading it ; and that, had the editor looked more to the public good than his own profit, it would not have been published 1 28 IMAGE-WORSHIP. opposing the prevalence of the new decrees. But, in opposition to the phalanx arrayed against them, mar- shalled as it was and swollen by all the strength of the Roman hierarchy, and, wherever image-worship had already gained a footing, supported by those estab- lishments to which the miracles said to be wrought by their images brought yearly increasing revenues, the scattered and unorganised maintainers of primitive worship could not long make head, and image-worship became dominant, with few exceptions, throughout all Christendom. This innovation having thus struck its roots into almost every portion of the Lord's vineyard, its fruits were soon abundant everywhere. Our fallen and frail nature, ever inclined to lean and rest on the accommodating but treacherous helps of super- stition, rather than, under God's grace, to brace up its nerves, and exert its best endeavours to secure the blessed promises of the " everlasting Gospel," not only received this will-worship of images with acqui- escence, but hailed it as a boon. And thus the authority of the Pope, and of the subordinate rulers of the Church, the secular interests of religious bodies and of different Churches, and the ever-recurring inclinations of the unenlightened and unconverted human mind, formed a triple cord too strong for any- thing, but the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, to sever. In our branch of the Catholic Church, it pleased the great Bishop of souls, in his own good time, to effect that blessed work by our great Reform- ation, and we are thankful. But our thankfulness must shew itself in unremitting vigilance and honest exertions to prevent any return of the superstitions from which we have been rescued ; and a recollection DECREES OF NICE RESISTED IN ENGLAND. 29 of the state of worship, and of the practices among us during the uncurbed prevalence of Romanism, would seem well fitted to keep awake that vigilance, and stimulate us to those exertions. Here, however, it will not perhaps be thought out of place, if we first refer somewhat more at large to the resistance made in our own country to the intro- duction of image-worship consequent upon the pro- pagation of the decrees of the second Nicene Council. Over various points in the history of those days of gloom and falling-back from the pure light of the Gospel towards the practices of paganism, much of doubt and obscurity hangs. The original records, whatever they were, appear to have been purposely destroyed ; and it is much more easy for persons of opposite sentiments on the subject before us to make contradictory statements, than to establish their own views by evidence. Still, with regard to the sorrow, and alarm, and dismay which the doctrine of image- worship, to be insisted upon as an article of faith and discipline, excited in England, the testimony yet preserved leaves no place for reasonable doubt. Through the first ages of Christianity in these is- lands, as in the Churches throughout all Christendom, there is no trace to be found of images set up in the churches or elsewhere for adoration. And when, in after days, Augustine the Monk was sent hither from Rome, though he and his companions carried for their banner a silver cross and a picture of Christ, yet there is no mention of any image or picture to be worshipped. No trace of such worship at that time is found in the books of Bede, though he dwells much on the miraculous workings of the cross. His words are : 30 IMAGE-WORSHIP. " But they [Augustine and his companions], endued not with demoniacal but with divine virtue, came bearing a silver cross for their standard, and the image of our Saviour painted on a board ; and, singing Lita- nies, prayed to the Lord for the salvation of them- selves and of those on whose account they came."* And the same author, when arguing in behalf of the admission of images and pictures, expressly applies their use to the instruction of the more unlearned in those doctrines which others might derive from books. The reasoning of Spelmanf seems unanswerable : " Most sure it is, that, if those first propagators of reli- gion among the Anglo-Saxons had adored the cross and images, and had taught that they were to be wor- shipped, some mention of it would be found in some contemporary author. But not even Bede himself, among so many miracles of the cross,, of which he tells, and diversified and fervent devotions of the pious, as far as I know, mentions any one individual who either adored the cross, or an image, or put forth either the one or the other to be worshipped." Roger Hoveden's words are very clear, and are found, with some unimportant variations, in Matthew of Westminster, and others : " A. D. 792. Charles, King of the Franks, sent into Britain a synodal book directed to him from Constan- tinople; in which book (alas, to our grief!) many things were found unbecoming and contrary to the true faith ; chiefly that it had been established by the unanimous consent of almost all the Eastern doctors, not less than three hundred bishops, or even more, that images ought to be adored ; a thing on which the Church of God looks utterly with execration. Against * See Lib. de temp. Salam. c. xix. f Concil. Brit. A.D. 792. PROCEEDINGS IN ENGLAND. 31 which Albinus [Alcuin] wrote a letter, wonderfully confirmed by the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and carried it, together with the same book, in the name of our bishops and chief men, to the King of the Franks." * Although there is considerable difficulty in recon- ciling the dates assigned to the events of this period by different authors, the following seems to be the order least liable to objections, and most consistent with the insulated statements which have been delivered down to us as to the proceedings in England, with regard to images, at the close of the eighth century. Charlemagne, at that time King of France, f had form- ed a friendship and alliance with Offa, the English King of Mercia; and, on receiving from the East a copy of the decrees of the Second Nicene Council, which he seems at first to have regarded with favour, forwarded them, as a most acceptable present to Offa, for the instruction and guidance of himself and his bishops and people. But the royal present met with a very different reception here from what Charlemagne had anticipated. The nobles and bishops expressed their utter abhorrence of image-worship this outlandish innovation, as it was called as a thing to be detested by the Church of God. And the greatest scholar of the age, and most learned in the Scriptures, being no other than Charlemagne's own tutor and precep- tor, the renowned Alcuin, wrote a letter himself to his royal master, condemning the decrees of that council, and grounding his condemnation of it on most sure warrant of Holy Scripture; and this letter he presented to Charlemagne in the name of the bishops * Ed. 1696, p. 233. f See Cone. Mag. Brit. London, 1 737, p. 158. 32 IMAGE-WORSHIP. and nobles of England. Charlemagne, it is said, was so moved by the reasons thus laid before him, that he called the Council of Frankfort, to deliberate on the question ; and that assembly, consisting of more than three hundred bishops, condemned the decision of the second Council of Nice, and rejected the worship of images as an unchristian and heathenish innovation. Whatever be the real state of the case as to the councils of Frankfort, Mayence, and Paris, (said to have condemned image- worship when first pressed on the Western Churches,) it seems quite clear that the tidings of the new decrees filled the nobles and clergy of England with dismay, and met with that resistance which we have above men- tioned. But the united and unwearied efforts of the Court of Rome, backed by the temporal accession of wealth which the new doctrine brought to the reli- gious orders, and by the superstitious tendency of un- enlightened human nature, prevailed, and bore down all opposition. No arguments from Scripture, or from primitive antiquity could make head against it; and not long after, in our own land, no less than through the East, images were erected as objects of veneration and worship, not in the churches only and monasteries, but on every high hill, and under every green tree, among the smooth stones of the brook, and on the barren heath, in the solitude and by the way- side, and in the market, and every place of concourse. Of the consequences of this foreign innovation, we have, as it has been before intimated, too plain and multiplied proofs in contemporary records. We have seen that even in the second Council of Nice, A. D. 787, the admission and the worship of images was sought to be maintained by establishing a SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 33 belief in the miraculous powers with which the images had been endowed ; and this assurance was every- where interwoven with the propagation of the doc- trine of image-worship, not only by the preaching of monks and the circulation of legends, but by the direct teaching of the Church itself in its authorised services and ordinances. Instead, then, of images being at that time repre- sented as merely mementos of our Saviour's mercy and our own consequent duty, the very terms employed in consecrating them encouraged and implied the belief that they were thereafter to be endued with power miraculously imparted to them, to ward off or mitigate temporal evils, and to procure or augment temporal good things; to drive away the spiritual enemy of mankind, and promote the salvation of those who were possessed of them. Storm and tempest, floods and scarcity, civil discord and foreign invasion, domes- tic calamities and personal distress, in a word, every evil which can befal us in this vale of misery, or as pilgrims in our way to God, were to be either escaped altogether, or at least diminished or more speedily remedied by the intervention of the image, to those who possessed and worshipped it. Of this the records of our own country supply abundant evidence from every quarter. It may be well in this place to bring before our minds a few instances, by way of example. In the Pontifical Book* of Exeter Cathedral, lately published, among many other ordinances of the Church, we find various prescribed forms of consecration. The following passages are extracted from the rites to be * " Liber Pontificalis" of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter, a manu- script of the fourteenth century. Edited by Ralph Barnes, Esq. Exeter, 1847. Pp. 224, &c. D 34 IMAGE-WORSHIP. observed in dedicating a new cross and a new image of the Virgin Mary: " Let the Bishop bless the water, and with it sprinkle the cross." Then follow these prayers : " We beseech Thee, O Lord, Holy Father Almighty, everlasting God, that Thou wouldest vouchsafe to bless this wood of Thy cross, that it may be a saving remedy to mankind, the confirmation of the faith, the perfecting of good works, and the redemption of souls; a comfort and safeguard and defence against the cruel darts of our foes Let this royal cross be the confirming of faith, the promotion of hope, our defence in adversity, victory against the enemy, concord in the state, our defence in the field, our stay in the house. By the virtue of this cross pre- serve thy flock safe, O Lord ! " Then the cross is anointed with chrism, and afterwards fumed with incense ; after which the bishop says, " We humbly beseech Thee, O Lord, that this sign of Thy holy cross may in the Church be a saving remedy, to be continually ADORED by all the faithful Shew Thy marvellous loving-kindness by virtue of the holy cross, and grant that, in the places and houses of the faithful where this cross shall be, devils and un- clean spirits may be put to flight, and pestilent dis- eases banished, and all adverse powers and plots of the enemy be repelled by the presence of this cross," &c. " Afterwards let the cross be honourably placed, and let it be ADORED BY ALL, and first by the bishop; and, whilst IT is BEING ADORED, let this anthem be sung by the choir : " O cross ! more brilliant than all stars ! famous in the world ! very lovely to men ! more holy than all ! who alone wast worthy to bear the weight of the world ! sweet wood ! bearing the sweet SECOND COUNCIL OF NICjEA. 35 nails and sweet burdens, save thou the present con- gregation assembled to-day for thy praises." Then, among other prayers towards the close of the ordi- nance, is this blessing: "The blessing of God Al- mighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, come down and remain upon this cross, that it may be for ever a saving cure to all who ADORE IT." We cannot refrain from putting these prayers and adorations of a cross side by side with the indignant remonstrance of Dr. Baines, in 1826, to which we have before adverted : " Is it possible," he says, " that any of you" (the mixed congregation in the Roman Ca- tholic chapel at Bradford) "could persuade yourselves that the most ignorant Catholic here present could be capable of ADORING the ivory image which you see on that altar ? " The Roman Pontifical, in the order for blessing the cross, (published by command of Clement VIII., 1595, and again so lately as 1818,) may be left to answer this question : " The bishop having blessed the frank- incense, puts it into the censer, and, sprinkling the cross with holy water, fumes it with incense; and then, kneeling before the cross, he devoutly ADORES [adorai] and kisses it; and thus do all who are so disposed." And what sort of adoration is intended to be thus offered to the cross is most plainly declared in the same Pontifical, and that is no other, no less holy and divine a worship and adoration, than is offered to the Al- mighty God Himself, namely, the worship of LATRIA. Thus, in the prescribed order for receiving an emperor into a city, the Pontifical directs, that " The emperor, either on horseback, or, what is more correct, dis- mounting and kneeling on a carpet, kisses the cross. But if it be the Pope's legate that meets the Df 36 IMAGE- WORSHIP. emperor, or enters the city with him, he who bears the sword before the emperor, and another carrying the le- gate's cross, ought to go together; the legate's cross (in- asmuch as SUPREME DIVINE WORSHIP is due to it [kUrid]) will be on the right, the emperor's sword on the left."* In the consecration of an image of the blessed Vir- gin, the prayers arid anthems addressed to the Virgin herself are interspersed with prayers to God ; and, as in the case of the cross, the image is to be sprinkled with holy water, anointed with chrism, and fumed with in- cense; and then among other supplications are these : " Confirm, O God, our benediction, and sanctify this form of the blessed Virgin Mary, which carries the figure of Thy only Incarnate Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, so that it may remain blessed, and bring the succour of saving help to Thy faithful ; that thunders and lightnings, and destructive blasts, if they prevail, may be more speedily driven away ; that the flood of rains also, and the interruption of fine weather, or the tumult of civil wars, or the ravages of infidels, may be suppressed at its presence; that the abundance of peace and all safety, and of the fruits of the earth also, may be multiplied wherever the presence of this image may be at hand ; not less that the mortality of animals may at Thy bidding cease : and may satisfaction be given to all who shall shew it reverence, and utter their prayers to Thee before it; and to them, after the course of this life is finished, may the entrance of the heaven- ly Paradise be opened. ..... Grant that, by the prayers of the same most holy [Virgin], whosoever shall take diligent heed suppliantly to honour the same Queen of Mercy and our most glorious Lady be- fore the face of this image, may be rescued from present dangers, and, in the sight of thy Divine Ma- * Pp. 671, 672. SECOND COUNCIL OF NKLEA. 37 jcsty, obtain pardon for what they have committed, and what they have left undone," &c.* When we see such superstitions habitually recog- nised and established, fostered and propagated, by solemn religious services performed by the chief pas- tors of the Roman Catholic Church, within the very sanctuary of the house of prayer, we cannot wonder at finding the same superstitions, multiplied and increased in magnitude, possessing themselves of every part of the Lord's heritage ; keeping down, and concealing, and choking the pure word of God and the precious doctrines of salvation, and establishing themselves in their place. That word struggled for a time, but was ultimately borne down, till it pleased the Lord of the vineyard, in his own good time, to restore it, when at length He rescued us and our branch of the Holy Catholic Church from the thraldom of Rome. But for ages the results of this superstition were severely felt. Among the many testimonies, with which our histo- ries abound to the overflow, of the tendencies of this superstition to check and stifle true religion and pure piety, and to take its place, the remarks of Polydore Vergil, who flourished in the end of the fifteenth, and the early part of the sixteenth century, deserve much consideration. The work here quoted seems to have been first published A. D. 1499. He is not a per- son who had taken part against the introduction and worship of images ; on the contrary, he speaks in no measured terms of those who would dare to act or even think against the decrees of the Roman Church on that point ; and yet, speaking of what took place in his own time what he witnessed himself, and what was going on when he wrote, he uses the expressions * See also Pontificate Romanum, A. D. 1818, part ii. pp. 152, 153. 38 IMAGE-WORSHIP. which we shall now quote. His introductory pas- sages, indeed, would scarcely have prepared us for the practical conclusion : in one half-page he seems to embody and concentrate all the heads of argument that can be urged with Romanists against the wor- ship of images. His opening words are these :* "Of the origin of images we have spoken in our second book : here let us speak of their worship ; which worship not only persons ignorant of our reli- gion, but, as Jerome beareth witness, almost all the old holy Fathers have condemned, through fear of idolatry, than which there can be no more execrable crime ; for since, as John says, ' no one has seen God at any time,' what form shall we give to him? though Moses says, 'God made man; in the image of God made He him.' This does Eusebiusf wisely refer to the soul ; while John of Damascus strives to distort the same to the form of the body, when he is pleading the cause of worshipping images of this sort. Yet Moses inculcates nothing more strongly (as is evident from many passages as well of Exodus as Leviticus) than that the people should ve- nerate nothing made with hands. And the prophet says, ' Confounded be all who adore graven things and boast in their images. 1 Saint Gregory, too, reproves Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, (as we read in the Ca- nonical Decrees, and as he himself, in the ninth epistle of the ninth book, testifies,) because he had broken the images ; and praises him because he had forbidden them to be worshipped." We have said that we should scarcely expect Polydore Vergil's chapter on images to close as it does. * Polydor. Vergil, De Invent. Rerum, lib. vi. c. xiii. (ed. Basiliee, 1546.) p. 425. t De Praepar. Evang., lib. ii. SECOND COUNCIL OF NIC^A. 39 For in his conclusion he says that the worship of them is against Holy Scripture and almost all the Fathers of the Church, as a dangerous step towards idolatry ; and yet he asks, " Who is so bold, after the decree of the Church, to refuse compliance with her decrees?" how- ever gross may be the abuses which he himself de- scribes in such strong colours as would be rejected for an exaggeration, or even a fable, had it been stated by one of our own Church. This only adds another to the unnumbered proofs, that, if once a man gives him- self over implicitly to the Church of Rome, the Holy Scriptures and the voice of Christian antiquity will plead with him in vain against her most novel or most perilous decrees. The closing portions of this writer (too honest not to confess that Rome now is not what Rome was when the doctrine of Scripture and of the Fathers prevailed, and yet too weak to hold to Scripture and the Fathers against the decrees of a degenerate Church) we must now cite. Having, as all others do, rested the justification and obligation of the worship of images chiefly on the second Council of Nice, he says : " Who, then, is so abandoned and possessed of such rashness, as positively to doubt or to dream, not to say entertain a sentiment or a thought on the worship of images different from what has been long ago established by the decree of so many most holy Fathers ? Nevertheless, this may most especially be desired, that the priests should more frequently teach the people in what way they ought both to venerate such sort of images and offer their gifts before them ; for because they are silent on this point, and are thought to be silent for their own inte- rest, to such a pass of madness have things come, that this part of piety differs little from impiety. For 40 IMAGE-WORSHIP. there are very many of the ruder and more stupid class, who worship images of stone, or wood, or marble, or brass, or painted on the walls, and drawn in various colours, not as being signs, but just as though the images themselves had some feeling ; and they place more trust in them than in Christ, or in those saints to whom the images are dedicated. Whence it arises, that, heaping folly on folly, they offer to them gold, silver, rings with precious stones, and all kinds of gems, destined to perish there by age. And, in order that so many more may be allured to do so, they who reap such a harvest pierce the pieces of money, and by a thread suspend them hanging on the neck or the hands of the images themselves, and place the dona- tions honourably in conspicuous places, and affix notifications by which the names of those who offer them may be the more known to gods and men. Thus a good portion of men are induced by these means to be the more foolish; and, moreover, some- times to complete long journeys for the purpose of visiting one petty image, and there leaving their dona- tions, neglecting every other duty, whether of piety or of charity ; concluding that they have entirely made a sufficiently bountiful expenditure, and have repented enough, if, for living more luxuriously on their journey, they offered gold, into whatever person's pocket it was afterwards to go. How much more wise, how much more religious would it be, for one to go on his travels with a view to bring the body into subjec- tion by labour, so that it might be compelled to obey reason ; and to venerate images, so as that the mind might forthwith be directed to God: and to make pre- sents which might be of service to the poor, since, beyond doubt, those gifts are acceptable to God ?" COUNCIL OF TRENT. 41 PART II. DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, AND THE CREED OF POPE PIUS: THEIR TRUE INTENT AND MEANING. CHAPTER I. COUNCIL OF TRENT. WE have seen, that, on the Anglo-Saxon Church, which had previously been kept free from such super- stition, the decrees of the second Council of Nice (A. D. 787) were imposed, against the remonstrance and to the great grief and dejection of the English prelates, and of the chief persons of the kingdom. We have learned also from a writer in full communion with the Church of Rome, himself a supporter of those decrees, what bitter fruits of superstition and impiety the novel and foreign doctrines produced through the country; how direct a tendency they had to coun- tenance and foster an undevotional, an uncharitable, and an uncontrite spirit ; how vast was the additional peril which they introduced of substituting outward acts and prescribed forms, and offerings of temporal good things, in place of a lowly, penitent, bruised, and obe- dient heart, and self-denial and self-abasement. We are now to inquire what was the true intent and meaning of the decrees of the Council of Trent, and of the equally binding Creed of Pope Pius IV. ; whether any and what changes in doctrine or practice in this particular point of image-worship were effected by that 42 IMAGE-WORSHIP. council, as we find its decrees maintained by the accredited interpreters of its acts. And here it cannot fail to strike every one, even on a cursory view of the rules, and orders, and mo- difications, restrictions, and cautions, and prohibitions, specifically appended to those decrees, that the evils which we have already contemplated (as the natural fruits of such a superstition) were become crying evils, known to the council as having given scandal through Christendom, and which no longer admitted of being passed over in silence. Polydore Vergil, for example, tells us, as we have seen, that the priests were negligent in teaching their flocks the true worship of images ; that their silence was attributed to the harvest which they reaped from the ignorance and superstition of the people ; and that for lucre they condescended to unworthy and base expedients for alluring people to flock to the shrines and bring their offerings. He tells us that the deluded worshippers addressed the images as beings possessed of sense, and put greater trust in the images than in God; that they thought the liberality of their gifts a sufficient satisfaction for self-indulgence and luxurious living even on their pilgrimages, without further thought of penitence and charity; and all this he attributes to the cul- pable and self-interested silence of the priests, who ought to teach the people better. And what con- firmation, or contradiction, or palliation is given to these statements at Trent? To meet these crying evils, the council prescribes, that, in the worship of images,* * Session XXV., which began on the 3rd and ended on the 4th of December, 1563. COUNCIL OF TRENT. 43 " All disgraceful gains be banished. " That all lascivious wantonness in the forms and ornaments of the images be forbidden. " That men do not abuse the celebrations of the saints, and the visiting of their relics, for purposes of re veilings and drunkenness, as though the feast-days in honour of the saints were to be passed in luxury and lasciviousness. "That no unwonted image be admitted into any church without the permission of the bishop; nor without the same consent ANY NEW MIRACLES ALLOWED, or any new relics to be received." The Decree to which these restrictions and cautions are appended is as follows, under the title "CONCERNING THE SACRED IMAGES."* " The images of Christ, and the Virgin Mother of God, and other saints are to be most especially had and retained in churches, and to them due honour and veneration is to be offered." To this decree are added, by way of explanation, the following sentences, which on various accounts require our especial attention in this place, before we examine the decree itself as to its true intent and meaning : " Not because any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be wor- shipped, or because anything is to be asked from them, or because trust is to be placed in images, as was formerly done by the Gentiles, who placed their * In the catechism composed in obedience to the Council of Trent, and published under the sanction of Pope Pius V., there is nothing which throws any additional light on this decree, or removes any doubt or difficulty. Paris, 1671, p. 319. 44 IMAGE-WORSHIP. hope in idols, but since the honour which is shewn to them is referred to the prototypes which they repre- sent ; so that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our head, and fall prostrate, we adore Christ, and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear a point sanctioned against the oppugners of images by the decrees of councils, and most espe- cially the second Synod of Nice." On these explanations it must be observed, that, from the very first introduction of image-worship into the Church of Christ, its advocates have ever laboured with especial anxiety to establish a distinction between the worship of images in the Christian Church, and the worship of idols by the heathen. This anxiety has been naturally felt in order, if by any means, to escape from the prohibitions and denunciations of Holy Scrip- ture against the making of any image, the likeness of any being in heaven or earth, for the purpose of worshipping it; and to escape also from the strong language which the earliest Fathers of the Church uniformly employed against idol or image worship. Various have been the subtle and refined distinctions by which it has been attempted to establish the differ- ence; of these abundant specimens may be seen in Cardinal Bellarmin's treatises on the subject. But the distinction chiefly relied on, from the second Synod of Nice down to the Council of Trent, (which, as above, refers to that synod by name,) is this: that the heathen worshipped the material idols of wood, or stone, or brass, as being not the representatives of unseen deities, but as being themselves gods; and that, placing their trust in those visible and tangible idols, they did not refer their worship of the idol to the unseen deity whom it represented ; whereas in COUNCIL OF TRENT. 45 the Christian Church the worshipper regards the image as the representative of a saint or of God, and offers his worship beyond and through the image, to the divine or holy being whom it represents. Now this is a most palpable fallacy. It is grounded upon an assumption not only without foundation, but absolutely contradictory to the most sure evidence of Scripture and of heathen times. The subject is of great importance, and will repay a patient and fair investigation, the result of which will be a conviction, that, instead of the worship of idols by the heathen and the worship of images by Christians being in this respect different, they are identically the same; that there is no such distinction maintainable between them both being equally contrary to God's word, and both equally condemned by the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church of Christ. And this we must make the subject of a separate chapter. 4(> IMAGE-WORSHIP. CHAPTER II. PAGAN WORSHIP OP IDOLS, AND THE ROMISH WORSHIP OF IMAGES, THE SAME IN KIND. THAT multitudes in the pagan world were so ignorant and blinded as to look only to their idols, without further reference to any unseen spiritual being whom those images visibly represented, there can be no doubt; but just so does Polydore Vergil say, when recording a state of things of which he was an eye- witness, that multitudes of Christians who frequented the images in his time, did, in consequence of the neglect of their spiritual teachers and pastors, place their trust in the images more than in the spirit- ual beings whom those images represented ; and just so does the prophet Isaiah most powerfully and graphically pourtray the perversion and blindness of a pagan, who could fall down to a block of his own workmanship from the stock of a tree of his own rearing. But that the priests and the people in the heathen world generally regarded the idol as the visible representation of an absent and unseen deity, whose anger they must deprecate and whose favour they must propitiate, is made evident by all we learn not only from the records of the ancient heathen world, but also from what we read even in the Holy Scriptures themselves, and in the Fathers of the Pri- mitive Church. If, for example,* we look to that wonderful display of * 1 Kings, xvii. PAGAN WORSHIP OF IDOLS. 47 omnipotence when the Most High vindicated His own honour and exalted His glorious name above the fabled deities of paganism by the instrumentality and at the prayer of His faithful servant Elijah, we find, that, so far from the worshippers of Baal addressing their prayers to his idol without intending them to pass on through that outward form to the invisible power represented by it, they had not, as is evident, any visible idol at all before them. The image of Baal, together with other statues, was in the temple of Baal, and was not removed till eighteen years after- wards,* when Jehu destroyed it. The people came together to meet Elijah at Mount Carmel, and there builded an altar in an open space, and there they prayed to an invisible and absent deity. The irony of the prophet is unintelligible, if we for a moment suppose that they were addressing their cries to an image. It refers to a sensible, rational, and actively engaged Being. Instead of pointing to the object of their prayer as a deaf, and dumb, and motionless, and insensible material object, (having eyes yet seeing not, having ears yet hearing not, having a mouth yet speaking not, having feet yet walking not, with all of which defects in their idol Elijah might naturally and with power have upbraided the worshippers of Baal, had they then been calling upon an image of wood or stone,) he bids them renew and recite louder their appeals and cries to him, because he was in some distant place, too much engaged with mental and bodily employments, or too much wearied, to listen to their prayers already offered. " The prophets of Baal .... called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, *O Baal, hear * 2 Kings iv. 48 IMAGE-WORSHIP. us !' But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And it came to pass, that at noon Elijah mocked them, and said, ' Cry aloud, for he is a god ; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened.' " This false god, to whom in the open air on Mount Carmel they offered their prayers and cried aloud, cutting themselves with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them, was worshipped before his idol in the temple subsequently destroyed by Jehu ; and to say that these idolaters looked habi- tually to nothing, to no invisible being, beyond the wooden or stone image, is to contradict the most palpable evidence of this whole transaction. The heathen worshipped before the idol, believing the deity to be more immediately present there; just as the Romanists worship before the image of our blessed Saviour ; but, certainly, there is no reason for saying that the heathen, more than the Romanists, looked not beyond the visible image. If, again, we direct our attention to the brief but most interesting and instructive account of what took place at Lystra immediately on the miraculous resto- ration of the lame man, the same inference must follow. The people, convinced that nothing short of divine power could, by a word, effect so wonderful and instantaneous a cure, shouted, in the speech of Lycaonia, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men !"* And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury. The statue of Jupiter was before their city ; and what did the priest of that image, and the people do ? They did not hurry to offer sacrifice * Acts, xiv. IDOL-WORSHIP AND IMAGE-WORSHIP. 49 to the image, now that they believed the original and hitherto unseen deity, of which that was the visible representative, to be before their eyes. The image, as the memorial of its absent and invisible prototype, they no longer regarded; but they hast- ened to the gates of the house where Paul and Bar- nabas were, with oxen and garlands, to offer sacrifice to them as the original powers, the image of one of whom was especially worshipped before their city. Had they habitually regarded the image as the god whom they worshipped and in whom they trusted, their conduct is strange and unaccountable; if they habitually intended their worship to pass beyond the image to the original, the prototype, the living being represented by it, their behaviour is plain, and intelli- gible, and natural. Another example we have in the case of the op- position to the Apostles raised in Ephesus by De- metrius the silversmith, who wrought the silver cha- pels or shrines for the images of Diana. The people of Ephesus boasted that they were worshippers of the great goddess Diana, and especially of that image of her which (as their mythology fabled) fell down from Jupiter. But, with the same voice, they shouted, that all Asia and the world worshipped the same Diana; not the image that fell down from Jupi- ter and was kept in her temple at Ephesus, but that Diana whose images Demetrius made for her shrines, and whose images were to be found in every city around. The divinity was one, though they wor- shipped her before and through unnumbered images; just as the advocates of image-worship adore the same Virgin, whether the image before which they fall is at 50 IMAGE-WORSHIP. Rome, or Einsiedlin, or Loretto, or any other favourite place of her worship. And this is the precise view presented to us by those Christian writers who argued with the heathen against their idol-worship. Lactantius, for example, in his elaborate work against false religion and every species of idolatry, having summed up an argument thus, " What madness, then, is it for men to make things which they must afterwards fear, or to fear what they have made !" quotes the answer, excuse, defence, or explanation usually made by idolaters in his time, when charged with worshipping and adoring insensible and lifeless images, that he might expose its futility. This defence and explanation is entirely identifiable with the defence and explanation made throughout by the second Council of Nice and by the Council of Trent, and from that time down to our own days. It may, moreover, be observed in passing, though the fact be- longs to a later branch of our inquiry, that the ancient Christian writers speak of the image-worship of the heathen in such unqualified terms (without making any distinctions or exceptions as to the images of saints, and the Virgin, and Christ) as not to leave any room for doubt, that, when they wrote, images had gained no place in the worship of Christians. Their sweep- ing condemnation of material objects of worship is universal ; and their language, in pronouncing that condemnation, is equally applicable to the images worshipped in Christian churches now, and to the idols worshipped in the pagan temples then. The plea or defence made by idol-worshippers, as cited by Lactantius, is this :* " We fear not the things which we form and fashion, but those Beings to whose * Lact. Divin. Instit., lib. ii. cap. ii. IDOL-WORSHIP AND IMAGE-WORSHIP. 51 image and likeness they are formed and fashioned, and to whose names they are consecrated." The arguments with which Lactantius presses them on this their explanation and defence, are much to our point : "That is to say, you therefore fear, because you think those beings in heaven ; and surely, if they are gods, it cannot be otherwise. Why, then, do you not raise your eyes to heaven ? and, calling on their names, offer your sacrifices in the open air? Why do you look chiefly to your walls, and blocks of wood and stone, rather than to that place where you believe them to be? What mean the temples and the al- tars? What, in a word, mean the images, which are memorials of beings either absent or present? For, at all events, the idea of forming likenesses was for this reason invented by men, that the me- mory might be preserved of those who were either withdrawn by death or separated by absence. In which class, then, shall we reckon the gods? If in the class of the dead, who is so great a fool as to worship them ? if in the class of the absent, they are consequently not to be worshipped, if they neither see what we do, nor hear what we pray. But, if the gods cannot be absent, (who, since they are divine, in whatever part of the world they be, see and hear all things, since they are everywhere present,) images * The explanations of the Council of Trent and of these idolaters, when placed side by side, are remarkably identical. Idolaters in the Fourth Century. The Council of Trent, 1563. Non ista [quae finximus] time- Honos qui eis [imaginibus] mus, sed eos ad quorum imaginem exhibetur refertur ad prototypa ficta, et quorum nominibus conse- quae illae representant. crata sunt. B 2 52 IMAGE-WORSHIP. are evidently superfluous ; for, unquestionably, it is enough to call in prayer on the names of those who hear. Yet, though present, [you say,] they are not at hand, except at their images. Evidently so ; just as the common people suppose that the souls of the dead hover about the tombs and remains [relics] of their bodies. Nevertheless, as soon as the god begins to be present, there is no longer any need of his image." Much more to the same effect may be added.* We are aware that Lactantius is under a cloud in the minds of many in the Church of Rome ; but, as a wit- ness of a matter of fact, whatever be the court, his testimony is without blemish and unassailable. He says, without any reservation, " It is not doubt- ful, that, wherever an image is, there is no religion." f Could he have said this, if images had any place in his day in the worship of Christians ? Were he a heretic, and images had been worshipped by the orthodox, he must have charged them as being guilty of the same religious crime with Pagans. But neither he nor any Christian writer of his time seems to have been in the slightest degree aware of any image being admitted into the Christian churches, or being an object of religious honour. * Cardinal Bellarmin tries to make a distinction between idola on the one hand, and simulacra and imagines on the other. But in these elaborate works, Lactantius, when speaking of heathen idols, uses the words simulacra and imagines the very words used now for the images at present worshipped, unholily as we maintain, in the Church of Rome. He also uses the word " colere" for " to worship," when he speaks of the worship of pagan idols ; the very word now used by Roman Catholics with reference to the images which they say should be worshipped. t Lib. ii. cap. xix. Quare non est dubium, quin nulla religio sit ubicunque simulacrum est. IDOL-WORSHIP AND IMAGE- WORSHIP. 53 The same conclusion follows from our examination of other ancient writers. Among the rest, Origen, in a passage which we shall cite hereafter,* contrasts the religious knowledge of those heathen who declared it was not the material image which they worshipped, with the clearer views of the most unlearned among Christians. Gregory of Nyssa, too, when charging home their inconsistency on those who, though they denied the eternity and entire Godhead of Christ, yet worshipped Him, tells them that they were wor- shipping an idol ; though in this case there could be no reference to a visible image, but only to the Sou of God in heaven.f A passage in St. Ambrose's " Epistle to Valenti- nian" can convey no other than the same notion of the professed views of the heathen : " This gold, if it be carefully handled, has ail outward value ; but, inwardly, it is mere ordinary metal. Examine, I pray you, and sift thoroughly the class of the Gentiles. The words they utter are rich and grand ; the things they defend are utterly devoid of truth : THEY TALK OF GOD THEY ADORE AN IMAGE." But, were all other proofs of the utter hollowuess of this attempted distinction wanting, St. Augustine himself would supply abundant evidence on the point to satisfy any unprejudiced mind. Words cannot speak more clearly than his ; and they prove that precisely the selfsame argument which the decrees of the Council of Trent and more recent writers plead in behalf of image-worship now, as contradis- tinguished from the worship of their idols by the heathen, those very heathen (against whose folly Au- * Cont. Gels., lib. vi. cap. xiv. t Cont. Eunom., Oral. ii. vol. ii. p. 450. 54 IMAGE-WORSHIP. gustine wrote) pleaded in behalf of their own wor- ship of idols : " We do not put our trust in the mate- rial image/' say both equally, " but we look beyond the image, to that unseen being of whom the image is the visible representative." It is, moreover, remarkable, that, as the decrees of Trent and the supporters of image-worship now urge this attempted distinction in proof that their religion is free from the folly and impiety of idol- atry, so the idolaters in St. Augustine's time urged the same distinction, in proof that theirs was a more pure and refined religion than the superstition of those who placed their trust in the material idols, and looked to no being beyond or through them. The passage we must quote at greater length when we examine the general evidence of St. Augustine : a few sentences will suffice here.* Having dwelt on the preposterous folly of men worshipping the works of their own hands, and having urged against them argu- ments equally applicable to image- worship in the Church of Rome, he proceeds : " But those persons seem to themselves to belong to a more purified religion, who say, ' I worship neither the image nor a demon ; but I regard the bodily figure as the representation of that being whom I ought to worship.' And they so in- terpret their images as to say that by one is signi- fied the earth, whence they are wont to call it the tem- ple of Tellus ; by another the sea, as by the image of Neptune ; by another fire, as Vulcan ; by another the day-star, as Venus ; by another the sun ; by another the moon ; on the images of which they impose the same names, as they do of the earth; on one this, on another that star, or this or that creature ; for we are unable * Vol. iv. p. 1261 ; on Psalm, cxiii. part ii. IDOL-WORSHIP AND IMAGE-WORSHIP. 55 to enumerate all. And when, again, they begin with regard to these to be pressed hard on the point that they worship bodies, .... they are bold enough to answer, that they do not worship the bodies them- selves, but the divinities which preside over and rule them." These excuses seem to have been constantly made, and to have been very familiar to St. Augustine. Thus, on Psalm xcvi., he says: "But some disputant comes forward, and, very wise in his own opinion, says, ' I do not worship that stone, nor that insensible image. Your prophet could not know that "they have eyes and see not," and I be ignorant that that image neither hath a soul, nor sees with his eyes, nor hears with his ears. I do not worship that, but I adore what I see, and serve him whom I do not see.' And who is he ? a certain invisible divinity which presides over that image." * In another place, he says,f "And, lest any one should say, ' I do not worship the image, but that which the images signify,' it is immediately added, 'And they wor- shipped and served the creature more than the Crea- tor !' Now, understand this well : they either worship the image or a creature. He who worships the image converts the truth of God into a lie." * Vol. iv. p. 1047. f Serm. cxcvii. vol. v. p. 905. 56 IMAGE-WORSHIP. CHAPTER III. THE TRIDENTAL DECREE. WE were led into the examination carried on through the last chapter in consequence of the distinction at- tempted to be established by the Council of Trent between the worship of images by Christians and the worship of idols by heathens ; and we have found that the distinction is utterly groundless. We must now examine the positive decree, and ascertain in what sense it was intended to be accepted and acted upon. The words of the decree are these : " Moreover, the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of other saints, are most especi- ally to be had and retained in churches, and due ho- nour and veneration must be rendered to them, not because any divinity is believed to be in them, or vir- tue for which they are to be worshipped ; or because anything is to be asked from them ; or because trust is to be placed in them, as formerly was done by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in idols; but because the honour shewn to them is referred to the prototypes which they represent ; so that, by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our head and fall prostrate, we adore Christ, and venerate the saints whose likenesses they bear the same thing which is sanctioned by the decrees of councils, especially of the second Nicene Council, against the oppugners of images." COUNCIL OF TRENT. 57 On the first part of this decree no doubt can arise. The churches in communion with Rome (however contrary to the faith and practice of the Primitive Church the command may prove to be) must have images ; and to those images due honour and venera- tion must be rendered. On the latter clause a ques- tion of no small moment must be entertained and decided, before we can fully understand the subject of image-worship ; namely, the question, In what does that due honour and veneration consist ? The bull of Pope Pius IV., published the year after the council, and which is of equal authority with the decrees of that council, contributes no additional light on this subject, its words merely being, " I most firmly assert, that the images of Christ and of the Mother of God, always a Virgin, and of other saints, are to be had and retained, and that to them due honour and veneration must be rendered." It must be observed here, that, by an oversight, and confusion, which in such a point one should scarcely have expected,* Dr. Wiseman asserts: "The Council of Trent does not decree that we are obliged to use them [images]; it only says that it is wholesome to have them, and that they are to be treated with respect, with a relative respect, that is, such as is shewn to the portrait of a father, or of any one whom we esteem or reverence." How far this " relative respect," or filial reverence shewn to a father's portrait, falls short of the reverence and worship and adoration taught by the saints and doc- tors of his Church, even among those who took a pro- minent lead in the Council of Trent, and enjoyed the greatest confidence of its members, we shall see here- after : but how mistaken a representation of the decree * London, 1836. Lecture xiii. vol. ii. p. 130. 58 IMAGE-WORSHIP. of that council is here put forth in so unqualified a manner by Dr. Wiseman, may be seen by the very words of the decree, which are, as to the point before us, these : "The council commands all bishops and others dis- charging the office and cure of instruction . . . diligently to instruct the faithful; teaching them that the holy bodies of the holy martyrs, and of others living with Christ, which were living members of Christ, and a temple of the Holy Ghost to be by Him raised up to eternal life and glorified, are to be venerated by the faithful, by which [bodies (per quce)] many benefits are conferred on mankind ; so that they who affirm that veneration and honour is not owed to the relics of the saints, or that they [the relics (eas]} and other sacred monuments are uselessly honoured by the faithful, and that the tombs or shrines [memo- rias] of the saints are in vain frequented for the pur- pose of obtaining their help, are altogether to be ac- cursed, as the Church long ago has accursed and now also accurses them : moreover, that the images of Christ and the Virgin Mother of God, and of other saints, are to be most especially had and retained in churches, and due honour and veneration is to be given to them." The words of the decree are as imperative here as in the former clause, to which a curse on all who hold a contrary doctrine is appended. The words of Dr. Wiseman, to be correct, require in the second clause a negative, which he has omitted ; and in the first the absence of the negative, which he has inserted. " The council DOES decree that we are obliged to use them : it does NOT only say that it is wholesome to have them." What the honour due to images is, forms a question COUNCIL OF TRENT. 59 which Cardinal Bellarmin""" discusses at great length ; but from his discussion no satisfaction can arise to a mind anxious to be guided to the truth. He main- tains that images are to be worshipped and adored ; and he states the several opinions entertained on the nature of the worship and adoration ; and he adopts the most refined and subtle distinctions of worship into : 1. Adoration when it is offered to, 1st, an object on its own account; and, 2ndly, when it is offered on ac- count of some other object. 2. When it is offered, 1st, absolutely and in itself; and, 2ndly, when accidentally, as in conjunction with some other things. 3. When it is offered, 1st, as due to the object itself; and, 2ndly, when it is offered to one object in place of another, or as that other's representative. In refining on these distinctions, he seems so entirely to forget the broad and fundamental principles of rea- son and of revelation, that we cannot but agree with one of his continental readers when many years ago he made this annotation: "He is at child's play." (Ludit pueriliter.} However, the three chief opinions among Roman Catholics which Bellarmin reviews are these : First, That the faithful ought to do no more than worship before the image ; and to worship not the image but the prototype, the exemplar, the original, the Being of which the image is the representation. This opinion Bellarmin rejects, and substitutes in its stead the following : " Images of Christ and the saints are to be venerated not merely accidentally and in con- nexion with anything else, but absolutely and in them- * The preface to Bellarmin's controversial works was read at Rome, A.D. 1576, only thirteen years after the close of the Council of Trent. GO IMAGE-WORSHIP. selves; not merely on account of something else, but on their own account. So that the reverence shall rest in the images themselves considered absolutely in themselves; and not only as the representatives of some other being." One argument by which he de- fends this view is, that the consecration of the image gives it a right in itself, and not only as the represent- ative of another, to be worshipped. The second opinion (to which our attention will be presently more especially directed) mentioned by Bellarmin as having been maintained by Thomas Aquinas, Cajetan, Bonaventura, and several others, is, " That the honour due to the image is the same with the honour due to the Original, of which it is the image; so that to the image of Christ the supreme worship [latria] is due ; to the image of the Virgin the worship called hyperdulia, and to the image of a saint the worship of didia." Against this opinion Bellarmin objects only so far as not to allow that latria, or the highest worship of the Supreme Being, can be directly, and on their own ac- count, given to images, one of his chief reasons being this : " To say that the image of Christ, or the cross, is to be adored with the highest and supreme worship, is very dangerous ; for the advocates of the doctrine are driven to employ most subtle distinctions, which they can scarcely understand themselves, much less the un- learned people." But in the very next section Bellar- min maintains, " That, though not both in itself and on account of itself, yet that either* accidentally or in connexion and with reference to the principal and exemplar, the image of Christ may be honoured, wor- shipped, and adored with the very selfsame worship * " Improprie vel per accidens," &c. COUNCIL OF TRENT. 61 with which we adore Christ."* It is difficult to see how these distinctions of Bellarmin are free from the danger which he points out in others; at least the whole appears an awful trifling in things concerning the soul. " Ludit pueriliter" He is at child's play. The third opinion which Bellarmin cites, as being a doctrine midway between the two former, is, " That images are to be worshipped both in themselves and on their own account, but yet with a worship inferior to that which is due to the original, whatever that original be." This seems to be the doctrine which he is disposed to espouse as his own; and yet, in announcing it, he employs such refinement with regard to analogical and reductive worship, as to leave the ordinary reader in doubt of his meaning ; except thus far, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin, and of the saints are to be honoured with a real and substantial worship, on their own account and in themselves ; yet still a worship in each case bearing a relative or proportionate, and analogical re- ference to the original. He states his argument thus : " The same ratio which the image bears to the ori- ginal, the worship of the image bears to the worship of the original. But the image is in some limited sense,-\ and analogically, identifiable with its original; there- fore the worship of the image is the same with the wor- ship due to the original, but analogical and imperfect." It is painful to make such a review of Cardinal Bel- larmin and others ; not only because it is distressing to witness so much unsound argument involved in the * Bellarmin, in this single (23rd) section, applies indiscriminately to images the words worship (cultus), honour (honos), veneration (veneratio), and adoration (adoratio). t " Secundum quid" 62 IMAGE-WORSHIP. mystery of so much apparent learning, (such abortive struggles to support a cause rotten to the core, by men who might have employed their talents and at- tainments efficiently in the cause of truth,) but also because there is a fear lest the reader might be with- drawn in disgust by a contemplation of such subtleties from pursuing the subject to the end. At all events, three points are made clear by this brief reference to Bellarmin. First, that there are irre- concilable differences on the subject of image-worship among Romanists themselves ; secondly, that, when once men will suffer themselves to be wedded to a theory inconsistent with the word of God, and the belief and practice of the primitive Church, they must have re- course to means of defending their dogmas which are equally at variance with the common sense of mankind, and with the simple faith of a sincere Christian ; and, thirdly, we are here confirmed in the assurance, that, let image-worship be guarded by whatever stringent rules can be devised, let it be fenced by whatever dis- tinctions casuistry may invent, it must at last come to the selfsame worship of the material object as the pagans offered to their idols ; it is, by the testimony of Scripture and of the Primitive Church, a heathen branch grafted on Christian worship, and, like its parent stock, it will bring forth the fruits of idolatry and paganism. The reader will bear in mind, that the point imme- diately before us is, to ascertain in what sense the Council of Trent intended its decree to be binding on all persons in communion with Rome, when it pro- nounced " that the images of Christ, of the Virgin, and of the saints are to be kept in churches, and that due honour and veneration is to be offered to them. 1 ' COUNCIL OF TRENT. C3 CHAPTER IV. REAL MEANING OP THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. SECTION I. TOWARDS forming a correct view of the meaning of any positive enactment, a knowledge of the laws in existence not dormant, but practically in operation before the passing of the new law, is of great import- ance. If the new law, in its preamble, declares it to be expedient to repeal the previous laws, or amend the practice, we must interpret the enacting clauses with that intention of the legislature in view; if, on the contrary, the preamble of the new law approves and affirms the previous laws, and their practical enforce- ment by the decisions of the courts, and expresses the intention of the legislature to ratify only and strengthen, and give greater force to them, then we must interpret the enacting clauses after taking a retrospective view of what were the judgments and rulings of the most approved judges in the preceding times. The latter of these two is the case before us. The Council of Trent was only repeating what the Church of Rome declared to be the old faith and discipline of Christendom. It becomes, then, necessary for us to see how her most approved teachers taught the people to use and worship images. We might refer with equal ease to others, but we think it here enough to quote the judgments of Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and Lyndwode. Thomas Aquinas, to whom we must hereafter refer, distinctly maintains, that the images are to be wor- G4 IMAGE-WORSHIP. shipped themselves with the selfsame adoration with which the original being, whom the image in each case represents, is adored : and as distinctly he holds, " that the image of Christ is to be worshipped with the supreme adoration exclusively appropriated to God only." This doctor was canonized, and is now prayed to in the public worship of the Church of Rome. But, perhaps, even the sanction given to his name and works is surpassed by the terms in which another canonized saint of the Church of Rome has been ex- tolled. It is impossible to conceive any human being, or any body of men, to have given more unequivo- cally, or more unreservedly, the full weight of their authority to the work of any man, than the Church of Rome has given hers to Bonaventura as a teacher, and to his works as containing her authoritative teaching. He was canonized by Pope Sixtus IV., A. D. 1482, about two centuries after his death : and that Pope declares him " to have so written on divine subjects, that the Holy Spirit seems to have spoken in him." More than a century after his canonization, A. D. 1588, Pope Sixtus V. ordered his works to be " most carefully emendated." This Pope's decretal letters pronounce Bonaventura to be an acknow- ledged doctor of the Holy Church, and direct his authority to be cited and employed in all places of education, and in all ecclesiastical discussions and studies : at the same time, plenary indulgence, (that is, a full and free pardon in this world and the next from all their sins,) on certain conditions appended, is offer- ed to all who are present at the mass on his festival. And what, on the subject of image-worship, does this saint of the Church of Rome teach all Christians to regard as the doctrine of that Church? Again and REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 65 again are we driven to ask, Are there not two Churches of Rome? Can the Church (claiming itself, in the matter of canonization, to be infallible) which canon- ized Bonaventura, be that Church of which Dr. Baines, who consecrated in 1826 the Roman Catholic chapel at Bradford, in Yorkshire, was a bishop, and of which the present Dr. Wiseman is a bishop ? that Church which gains proselytes (more than by any other means) by the assumed, but unfounded fact, that at least that Church is at unity with itself that there is no essential discrepancy in its doctrines ? What can be more antagonistic, more irreconcilable, more utterly inconsistent one with the other, than such doctrines as we heard in England a very few years ago from the Roman Catholic bishops, and the doctrines of many other of her doctors and saints ? Contrast only the doctrine of Bishop Wiseman in London, and Bishop Baines in Yorkshire, with the following doctrine of that saint of their Church, whom the Pope who canonized him declared to have spoken on divine subjects as though the Holy Spirit had spoken in him. We quote the words of Bonaventura from the very edition of his works published in Rome at the close of the sixteenth century, in the very printing-house of the Vatican > prepared, and, "with few exceptions, printed in the time of Sixtus V.," but not published till the Pontifi- cate of Clement VIII.;* and these are Bonaventura's words on the question, " Is the worship of LATRIA to be given to the image of Christ ? Conclusion : The image of Christ is to be adored with the adoration of LATRIA, because it represents Him who was crucified for us, and the image presents itself for Him." The reader will bear in mind, that the worship of * Rome, 1596. Vol. v. p. 112 ; lib. Hi. disk ix. quaest. 2. F b'6 IMAGE-WORSHIP. latria is the highest conceivable worship, to be paid only to the One only God, the Creator and Governor of the world ; and the preceding question is, " Must that worship and service be offered to the image of Christ?" and the following question is, " Must that same wor- ship be offered to the cross?" " Question : Is the worship of Latria to be given to the cross of Christ ? Conclusion : Every cross is to be adored with the adoration of latria; but to that on which Christ hung another reverence also is to be paid." These conclusions Bonaventura establishes by seve- ral arguments, answering supposed objections. Among these " supposed objections," arguments are found, some of which throw much light upon the gene- ral views of Bonaventura. Thus, to prove that the highest divine worship due to the Supreme Being is due also to the image of Christ, he says, " A man speaks to the image in his petitions, therefore he speaks to the image as to a rational creature ; there- fore he speaks to the image as to Christ ; and just as he speaks, so he worships and adores ; and therefore he ought to adore the image of Christ, as he does Christ." Again, he thus argues, with the same view : " We pay the same reverence, and we ought to pay the same reverence, to the image of the Blessed Virgin, as we pay to the Virgin herself, and so of other saints ; there- fore, the same reverence is to be paid to the image of Christ, as to Christ himself; but the honour of supreme divine worship [latria] is paid to Christ, therefore it ought to be paid to His image."* Thus this canonized man, whom the Pope who made * These passages in the edition of 1609, Mogunt., are found vol. v. p. 100. REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 67 him a saint declares to have spoken as though the Holy Spirit spoke in him, maintains, as the unques- tionable doctrine of the Church of Rome, " that the selfsame worship and adoration which Christians are bound to pay to Christ the Lord, the same they are equally bound to pay to His image, and to the repre- sentation of His cross." That this was the generally received doctrine in England between the days of Bonaventura and the Reformation, we draw abundant proof from various sources. Among other writers, Lynd wode, in his " Pro- vinciale," deserves especial notice, because he is writing a comment on the ecclesiastical statutes and laws as they were interpreted and observed in his day; and he is always appealed to as one of highest authority. He lived in the time of our Henry V., in whose service he was an ambassador, when that king died at the castle of the Bois de Vincennes. After his royal master's decease, A. D. 1422, he resumed his duties as official in the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the year following he began his celebrated work. And on the subject under consideration, what evidence do we derive illustrative of the practical state of image- worship in his day? He begins by quoting the ordinance of Robert Winchelsey, binding all rectors and parishioners in the province of Canterbury to provide certain things for the use of the church; and among other things specified are a cross for processions, a cross for the dead, images in the body of the church, and a principal image in the chancel.* On the word "images" the comment of Lyndwode, among other observations and interpreta- tions, contains the following: * Oxon, 1679: pp. 252, 298. F 2 68 IMAGE-WORSHIP. " The images of the saints are not to be despised, but reverenced ; yet the picture of the images them- selves is not to be adored, but the thing represented by it. Know that, according to Joh. [de Athona ?] it is lawful to adore images not with the adoration of latria, but with the adoration of dulia ; for latria is a worship due to God alone, but dulia is a service due to a creature. We adore God by loving Him above all things, by believing in Him, by offering Him sacri- fice, arid paying Him reverence above all things. But we adore the cross and images by paying them rever- ence, not by believing in them, or loving them above all things, or offering them sacrifice; this would be idolatry." After a very unprofitable discussion of the question, " Whether the flesh of Christ is to be adored with the worship of latria," he proceeds : " But is the image of Christ to be adored with the worship of latria ? If the image is regarded merely as a certain thing, no honour is due to it, as neither to wood nor stone : but if it be regarded as an image, then (because there is the same movement towards the image, as an image, and to the Being represented by it) one and the same honour is due to the image and to the Being represented by it ; and, therefore, since Christ is adored with latria, His image ought likewise to be adored with latria. Nor does Exodus xx. stand in the way of this, where it is said, ' Thou shall not make to thyself an image, nor any graven similitude? because that was forbidden for that time when God had not taken upon Him human nature ; for then, since God was altogether spirit, He was inca- pable of being represented by any figure. But it is otherwise after he assumed human nature." " But lo ! concerning the cross of Christ, it is usually REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 69 doubted whether it is to be adored with the worship of latria. Oil which, say thou, that honour or reverence is not due except to a rational creature ; for to an insensible thing it is not due, except in relation to a rational nature or creature, and that in two ways If, then, the question is of the cross itself on which Christ was crucified, that cross is to be venerated by us in both ways; namely in one way, inasmuch as it represents the figure of Christ stretched upon it ; in another way, from its having touched Christ's limbs, and because it was sprinkled with His blood. Where- fore, it is in both ways to be adored with the same adoration as Christ is, namely, with the adoration of latria; and, consequently, we address* the cross, and PRAY TO THE CROSS, as if to Christ Himself. But if they speak of the effigy of the cross of Christ, made of any other material, namely, of wood or stone, we vene- rate the cross just as we do the image of Christ, which we venerate with the worship of latria. Yet some say that the very cross of Christ itself, on which He hung, inasmuch as it is a certain thing, is not adored with the same adoration of latria with the Word, since it does not pertain to the person of the Word, as a part of Him ; but with the adoration of hyperdulia, inas- much as it is a certain thing belonging to Christ.' 1 However refined may be these distinctions, and how- ever positive the ruling of this great master of the Church of Rome, as to the obligation on believers to worship the image of Christ and the cross with supreme divine adoration, and however contradictory the senti- ments of different writers had been, it was by no means left open for Christians to use images or not. On the contrary, to hold opinions against the rulings of the * " Crucem alloquimur et deprecamur, quasi ipsum Christum" 70 IMAGE-WORSHIP. Church, either openly or secretly, or even by a mere insinuation,* subjected a man to the name of a heretic, and to the pains and penalties of heresy. In the Coun- cil of Oxford, under Archbishop Arundel, one of the decrees contains the following strong clauses : " Let no one presume to dispute, publicly or secret- ly, on articles determined by the Church, and espe- cially about the adoration of the glorious cross, the veneration of the images of the saints, or pilgrimages to their places or relics ; but by all henceforth let it be generally taught and preached, that the cross, and the image of the Crucified, and other images of the saints, to the memory and honour of those whom they repre- sent, and their places and relics, ought to be venerated by processions, kneelings, bowings, incensings, kissings, oblations, burnings of lights, pilgrimages, and also by any other modes and forms whatever, which have been customary in our own or our predecessors' times. Any one who asserts, teaches, preaches, or obstinately in- sinuates the contrary, unless he repent in the mode and form elsewhere ordained by us, and abjure, as is there provided, let him incur the penalties of heresy and of a relapse, and such let him be declared to be for all the effect of law;" i.e., says Lyndwode, "that he be punished with the punishment of a heretic and a relapse." And yet we are told, that all that the Roman Ca- tholic Church teaches her children regarding images and pictures set up in churches, is to pay the same veneration and affection to them, as one would shew on coming before the picture or image of a friend whom one had loved and had lost. In the time of * Lyndwode says, " to insinuate by a sign or a nod would be enough." REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 71 Archbishop Arundel, the punishment of a heretic and relapse was to be burned alive ! * Can we doubt what was the meaning of the Church of Rome in the fourteenth century? But we must refer to another and even a closer test. In the interpretation of a law, contemporaneous opinion and practice have always been considered useful and safe guides. Now, such a guide we have in interpreting the decree of the Council of Trent with regard to the worship and adoration of images in the Christian Church. Indeed, whether we look to the station and character and life of the in- dividual witness personally, or to the peculiar circum- stances under which his work was first sent out into the world, and, after ten years and more, republished, we shall, perhaps, find a difficulty in fixing upon any person whose evidence as to the meaning of a legis- lative enactment could be more unobjectionable and conclusive than is the testimony of Naclantus, Bishop of Clugium, on the true intent and meaning of the de- cree of the Council of Trent as to the nature of the honour and worship required to be paid to images by all who profess allegiance to the See of Rome. James Nacchianti (for this was his Italian name) seems from his infancy to have been closely united with the most influential personages in the Roman Church. When a boy, he was schoolfellow of Pius V. at Bononia ; and afterwards, as a writer, he se- cured the countenance and support of the several Roman Pontiffs, from Julius III. down to his former fellow-student, Pius V. He was advanced to the bishopric of Clugium, the place anciently called Fossa * 2 Hen. IV., c. 16. 72 IMAGE-WORSHIP. Clodina, and in modern times Chiozza. He is repre- sented as a man most renowned for the monuments of his learning which he bequeathed to posterity ; and as a member of the Council of Trent, who " shone with no small lustre among his brethren, the fathers of that synod, to whom also they entrusted affairs of great moment ; and the soundness of whose faith, moreover, was the subject of admiration and eulogy in the same assembly. 1 ' 1 One remarkable circum- stance renders this last record far more important and striking than it otherwise would have been. In the course of their proceedings, attention was espe- cially fixed upon him as a theological writer, in con- sequence of a charge alleged against him of un- soundness of doctrine in the matter of tradition. But, after discussion, "his faith, hitherto unassailed," was approved and applauded ; and certainly the cor- rectness of his views on the character of the worship and adoration due to images was never called in question. Those opinions are especially stated in his " Com- mentary," or, as he calls it, his " Enarrations on the Epistle to the Romans." In order to set the right value on the importance of those opinions, as bearing on the question immediately before us, the circum- stances under which they were first separately pub- lished, and afterwards edited with the rest of his works, must be borne in mind. This " Commentary on the Romans" was first pub- lished while Lawrence Prioli was Doge of Venice ; for to him as his prince, and to the senate of Venice, he inscribed that work, in a dedication which still heads the " Commentary."* Lawrence Prioli is re- * His commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians was published first, and was dedicated to Pope Julius III. REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 73 corded to have been doge from 1556 to 1559 ; so that the work was in the hands of divines, and of the public, at least fourteen years before the Trident- ine decree on the worship due to images was passed.* The work, moreover, had been commented upon through Christendom, and had been taken notice of by name, and its real drift and meaning in this parti- cular had been prominently put forward in the second book of the Homilies of the Church of England. And yet, seven years after these Homilies had been pub- lished, and four years after the decree for worshipping images had been enacted at Trent, Naclantus dedicated the new edition of his works to the reigning Pope, Pius V., in the year 1567. Immediately after the dedi- cation, his editor, Petrus Fratinus, a Florentine of the order of Preachers, (out of which order Naclantus himself was taken into the episcopate,) among many other declarations of his learning, and fame, and suc- cessful victories over heretics, says, " Of the erudition, and doctrine, and talents of so great a Father, there is nothing for us to say ; since it has already become known, more bright than the sun, to the whole Christ- ian Church, not to say the world. For who knows not, that, in the Tridentine Council, among so many most illustrious fathers, and most learned doctors, and most holy prelates and lights of the world, he, through so many years, shone out as a day-star among the twinkling stars? He may have many equals in learning and piety; but he, being superior to many, has no superior." * A contemporary English prelate (Bishop Jewel) tells us it was published in 1557; two years after, the same Bishop, in his answer to Mr. Harding, cited this work of Naclantus as utterly at variance with what that English champion of Romanism had asserted to be the doctrine of his Church. 74 IMAGE-WORSHIP. We can scarcely conceive one whose sentiments will carry with them more authority as an accredited teacher of the Church of Rome. His dissertation on image- worship Naclantus appends to his comment on the 23rd verse of the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, "And they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." He begins by giving his view of the history of the opposition made to the use and worship of idols in the Christian Church, from the time when, according to the second Council of Nice, the Manichees and Marcions rejected them, to the time when, accord- ing to his unmeasured language, "The heresy, after it had been exploded by doctors and councils, was brought up again from hell by the Waldenses, and afterwards espoused by Wickliff and others," whom he calls heretics. He then asserts, on the authority of the second Nicene Council, as an indisputable fact, that images were used in the Church from the time of the Apostles, citing in evidence, as recorded by the same council, the testimony of Athanasius, Basil, Chry- sostom, and other Fathers. And here we cannot but observe, that, whereas Naclantus, and the second Ni- cene Council, and others roundly assert that the reli- gious use of images prevailed in the Church from the very time of the Apostles, others, equally strenuous advocates for retaining their use, confess that from the first it was not so, accounting for the delay in introducing them to the fear entertained by the early Christians either of offending the lately converted Jews, or else of tempting the converted Gentiles to idolatry. We are here driven to ask, whether any REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 75 stronger arguments are needed to discountenance and o o prohibit image-worship altogether through every age of the Church.* It must, moreover, be remarked that Naclantus, and almost all others throw the responsibility of making these citations from the Fathers on that council, not taking it upon themselves : And no wonder that they do so, and also quote the same passages of the Old Testament which were there quoted ; because the quotations from Scripture are such as a child can answer, and the citations from the Fathers are from spurious works, and not from the genuine productions of Athanasius, Basil, and Chrysostom. Naclantus then affirms, that the images of the most Holy Trinity, of our Saviour, of the glorious cross, of the most Holy Mother, of angels, and all saints are of use in the Church ; and (what he states to be the whole point of his dissertation) that due honour and worship must be offered to them. Introducing his reader to this point, he says that the subject must be considered under three distinct points of view : 1. The image may be regarded in the light merely of a material figure, metal, stone, wood, colour, and painting; and in this light the image (however beauti- ful in its design and execution) cannot be honoured, or worshipped. 2. Images may be regarded as things blessed and consecrated to God ; and as soon as they are placed in a church, even without a blessing or any further dedi- cation, to deprive them of their own honour is a crime to be accursed. Being placed in the church, they are not only images of those beings whom they represent, * See Life of Gregory the Great, Opera, vol. iv. p. 285. 76 IMAGE-WORSHIP. but are, moreover, in a peculiar manner joined to them; yea, and erected in their stead. 3. In the third place, they must be regarded in a strict sense as images, or similitudes and representa- tions ; and there being a mutual relation between the image and the original, (the image existing in the ori- ginal as its foundation, on which its very existence as an image depends; and the original, or prototype, existing in the image in which it is seen, and, if the case require it, honoured,) it follows, that, when the question of adoration is entertained, the image is to be regarded not merely in its reference to the original, but more especially as in itself containing that origi- nal. " Wherefore it is wisely said, that the image is truly adored," &c. " And since the one thing is not separated from the other, (for though the prototype [or original Being] is absolutely a different thing from the image, yet, since it shines forth in the image, it is not severed from it,) so neither is the worship or adoration of the two divided, but of both the worship and adoration is one and the same." " Wherefore, not only must it be confessed that the faithful in the Church do adore BEFORE the image, (as some, perhaps for caution sake, express themselves,} but also that they do WORSHIP THE IMAGE without any manner of scruple which you may sug- gest; nay, moreover, they venerate the image with that worship with which they venerate its original ; so that, if that original has to be adored with [supreme divine worship due only to God] latria, the image also is to be worshipped with latria ; if that is to be adored with dulia or hyperdulia, this [the image] is equally to be adored with that kind of worship. 11 Words cannot be selected and put together to ex- press more strongly and plainly the practical result of REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 77 the whole ; though the nice distinctions and refined arguments by which that result is defended may be obscure, and to many minds unintelligible. This great authority in the Roman Church not only asserts that the faithful in the Church adore the image of Christ with the same worship with which they adore Christ Himself, but that this ought to be done. This is indeed a most awful statement, but it was not new : it had been held many years before by doctors and even canonized saints ; and whatever refinements and distinctions may be yet made, however some, " for caution-sake," may attempt to fence the worship of the Almighty against such encroachments ; the doctrine of Thomas Aqui- nas, and Bonaveiitura, and Naclantus will be the practical tenet of the people at large, who are taught to worship images. They may be instructed to declare that they intend to worship the spiritual being repre- sented by the image; but they will be led stealthily and unwarily to adore the image itself, at least quite as much as the pagans were ever led to worship and adore their idols. Image-worship has ever been, and must ever be, an offence, a stumbling-block, a snare, and a temp- tation. It is an offence, a stumbling-block, which, if suffered to remain, can never be avoided or surmount- ed; it is a snare from which, when the soul is once entangled in it, there is no escape ; it is a temptation, to dally and parley with which, will end in our irre- trievable seduction. The only safe course, dictated by sound reason and the word of God, by experience and by the testimony of all ages, is to remove the thing itself, once and for ever, and to allow it in the Church of Christ neither place nor name. Before we leave the evidence borne by Naclantus to the true intent and meaning of the Council of Trent, 78 IMAGE-WORSHIP. we may add, that, having attempted to draw distinc- tions, (the unsoundness of which few can at the first glance fail to detect,) he anticipates an objection, which, he conceives, some might take from the case of the Brazen Serpent. In answer to the supposed re- mark of an opponent, (to which we need not advert,) Naclantus pronounces, that, if the Israelites had looked to the brazen serpent with the eye of religion, even " if, in the desert, they had offered incense to it, clearly that would have been done without any idolatry." The reason he assigns is, that God doubtless explained to Moses and the elders its typical character as an em- blem of our Saviour ; and even the rest of the people, who perhaps did not understand this its sacramental character, and who still looked to it and worshipped it, were nevertheless not guilty of idolatry ; because they were directed by the faith of Moses, and other chosen servants of God, in their own belief; and reposing on them as exemplars, did as they saw them do. He adds, that the brazen serpent was with reason destroy- ed ultimately, because they worshipped it after all knowledge of its typical character was obliterated. Can a stronger argument be conceived for the utter annihilation of image-worship? even taking the sug- gestion of Naclantus to be correct that the brazen serpent was worshipped and had incense burnt to it in the wilderness. He says the mass of people worshipped it without any better reason than that their rulers and guides worshipped it ; and that afterwards, when the belief which justified those rulers and guides in their worship was forgotten, it was worshipped idolatrously. Human nature is the same ; and, under the changed circumstances of our- selves and our dispensation, a similar progress must REAL MEANING OF THE TRIDENTINE DECREE. 79 follow any adoption and worship of images in the Christian Church. Suppose an image be set up, as Dr. Baines assures us, merely to remind us of what Christ has done for us; the Council of Trent re- quires that image to be reverenced with due honour; the head is to be uncovered, the body is to be pros- trated, the knee is to be bent, before it. The follow- ing stages, which Cardinal Bellarmin, in his enumera- tion of the different and opposite views taken of the subject by members of his own, the Roman Church, clearly indicates, will inevitably follow. 1. Some will worship (or honestly say they worship) merely before the image. This, Naclantus informs us, is said by some persons "for caution-sake" 2. Then some will worship the image, but solely with an adoration to be passed on, and beyond the image, to the spiritual object of their worship. 3. Then some will worship the image with an inferior adoration, reserving their full adoration for the prototype. And then, 4. Others, with the ex- ample of Naclantus, the " day-star" of the Tridentine Council, Cajetan, the canonized saints Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, and others, will worship the image, and adore it with the selfsame adoration with which they worship and adore the being of which it is the figure and representative, and they " will teach men so." And thus, were the question now put to us, which, as we have seen, was put in 1826, by the Romanist Bishop of Siga, to the mixed congregation of Roman- ists and members of the Church of England and Dis- senters, at the consecration of the Romanist chapel at Bradford, in Yorkshire, " Is it possible that any of you should persuade yourselves that the most ignorant Catholic here present could be capable of adoring 80 IMAGE-WORSHIP. the ivory image, for instance, which you see on that altar?" our reply must be, " We know not the persons who are present ; but this we know, that your saints and bishops and doctors have declared, that the faithful in your Church must worship the image of Christ, and also the cross ; and, moreover, that they must adore them with the selfsame adoration with which they worship our Blessed Saviour Himself. We are not careful or competent to reconcile these contradictions in your doctrines and worship ; we leave that to you. We speak only of what we have heard with our ears, and seen with our eyes ; and we thank the God of Truth for His grace in rescuing us from such superstitions." LITURGY AND SERVICES OF ROME. 81 CHAPTER V. LITURGY AND SERVICES OF ROME. WHILE such is the ordinance of the Church of Rome in her decrees, and the doctrine of her canonized saints and teachers, no other view of the case is placed before us by her liturgies and formularies. The public services of that Church on the 3rd of May, called " The Invention of the Holy Cross," and also on the 14th of September, called " The Exaltation of the Holy Cross," or, " Holy Cross," or, anciently, " Holy Rood- day," supply us, of themselves, abundantly with proof how far the innovation of image-worship has min- gled itself, in the Church of Rome, with the worship of Almighty God, and polluted the simplicity and purity of primitive Christian worship. Before we make a more especial reference to those services, one or two points, not generally known or remembered among us, must be adverted to. In the first place, it must be borne in mind, that the crosses erected in churches are regarded, in point of religious veneration, exactly on the same footing with the images of our Blessed Saviour.* Romanist writers distinguish between the real actual cross on which our Saviour suffered, (or any the smallest par- ticle of it, of which they maintain that there are very * See St. Thomas Aquinas, Distinc., lib. iii. dist. ix. solut. iv. (Ven. 1780,) vol. xi. p. 136 ; and Cardinal Bellarmin, torn. ii. lib. ii. cap. xx vi., on the Adoration of the Cross. G 82 IMAGE-WORSHIP. many still in existence,) and the figure of that cross as erected in churches, and now consecrated for religious use. The former, the actual material cross, or any the smallest particle of it, they enumerate among the most precious of relics, and therefore to be venerated as other most precious relics are, but not with latria : while other crosses they regard as images of Christ. Peter Lombard seems to have held that the wor- ship of latria, the supreme divine service, was not to be paid to the Cross ; on which Thomas Aqui- nas says we must make a distinction. The very cross on which Christ suffered may be regarded either as an image of the crucified One, in which case it must be adored with the same adoration with which we approach the Saviour, or as a thing belonging to Christ and bearing a relation to Him; and in this light it is to be worshipped with hyperdulia, (the worship considered in later times to be appropriated to the Virgin Mary.) "But," he continues, "other crosses are adored in no other light than that of His image; and, therefore, they are adored with su- preme and divine worship." He had before, in stating the question of which he gives the above solution, drawn out formally this syllogism : " The cross is the image of Christ crucified : but the image of Christ crucified is to be adored with supreme divine worship ; therefore, the Cross is to be so likewise." It will be borne in mind that this is no ordinary authority ; and, indeed, while he himself refers to the second Council of Nice, the distinctions adopted by Bellarmin, Naclantus, and other subsequent doctors in the Church of Rome, are found in him. This Seraphic Doctor, as he was called, (it must be remembered,) LITURGY AND SERVICES OF ROME. 83 was canonized by Pope John XXII., A.D. 1325 ; and, in the very year in which Naclantus dedicated his volumes to Pope Pius V., that Pontiff, A.D. 1567, "commanded the festival and office of St. Thomas Aquinas to be kept equal with those of the four doctors of the Western Church." His festival is celebrated annu- ally on the 7th of March ; and every year the Church of Rome sets her seal to the soundness and purity of his doctrine. Two prayers offered on that day, one to God, the other to this Thomas himself, will be enough to shew on what authority the proper adoration of the cross is pronounced to be supreme divine wor- ship the same adoration which is paid to God: "O God, who dost enlighten Thy Church by the wonderful erudition of the blessed Thomas the Con- fessor, and makest it fruitful by his holy operation ; grant to us, we beseech Thee, to embrace with our understanding what he taught, and to fulfil by our imitation what he did. Through our Lord." " O best doctor, light of the Holy Church, blessed Thomas, lover of the divine law, intercede for us with the Son of God." Thomas Aquinas, in his " Solution," briefly adverts to the service in the Church of Rome to which we must now direct our attention, together with the anthems which we shall here quote. On each of the two days above mentioned, acts of adoration of the cross, containing as direct a prayer to it for spiritual blessings and even for salvation as could be made to the Saviour Himself, who died upon a cross on Calvary, are prescribed and enjoined as an essential part of the public worship of the Church. This confession to our Saviour follows the legend G 2 84 IMAGE-WORSHIP. which speaks of Chosroas, King of Persia, having car- ried off from Jerusalem the cross which Helena had erected on Calvary. " We ought to glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom is our salvation, life, and resurrec- tion ; by whom we are saved and set free. We ADORE Thy cross, O Lord, and celebrate Thy glorious passion." Among these anthems and confessions we read the following acts of prayer and adoration addressed to the cross : " O cross ! hail, our only hope ! To the pious do thou multiply grace ; and for the guilty, blot out their sins." Another prayer is couched in these words : " O thou cross ! more brilliant than all stars ; cele- brated in the world ; much to be loved by men ; more holy than all things ; thou who alone wast worthy to bear the price of the world bearing sweet wood, sweet nails, sweet burden ; DO THOU SAVE the present congregation assembled for thy praise." Among other anthems of praise are the following : " O thou venerable cross ! thou who didst bring salvation to the miserable ! with what heraldings shall I extol thee, since thou preparedst life in heaven for us?" " O victory and wonderful sign of the cross, CAUSE THOU us to obtain the triumph in the Court of Hea- ven." " The King is exalted to the sky, while the noble trophy of the cross is ADORED by all the worshippers of Christ for ever." These anthems are appended to the proper Psalms, instead of the Gloria Patri ! LITlTRGY AN 7 D SERVICES OF ROME. 85 To this we must add the rubric in the Roman Pontifical, to which we have already referred, and which states the reason why, in the procession in ho- nour of an emperor entering a city, the legate's cross should be on the right hand, and the empe- ror's sword on the left, to be no other than this " That SUPREME DIVINE WORSHIP [latria] is due to the cross."* With these authorised acts of public worship we must join the religious worship called " The adoration of the cross," enjoined by the Roman Missal to be cele- brated on Good Friday. Can any the grossest super- stition which we now witness, or have heard of among the least enlightened of the votaries of Rome, excite our wonder, when, on the very anniversary of tire Redeemer's sacrifice, such acts are exhibited and such services prescribed in their holiest acts of public worship as are these? " The priest receives from the deacon the cross already prepared on the altar, which, turning himself to the people, he uncovers a little way down from the top, and begins the anthem alone, ' Behold the wood of the cross !' and then he is assisted in the chant by the ministers down to 'Come ye, let us adore.' And when the choir is singing * Come ye, let us adore,' all except the celebrant prostrate themselves. Afterwards he comes forward, and opens the right arm of the cross ; and, lifting it a little higher than at first, he begins, 'Behold the wood of the cross!' others singing and adoring as above. Then the priest proceeds to the middle of the altar, and uncovering the cross entirely, and elevating it the third time higher, begins, ' Behold the wood of the cross !' others * Rome, 1595, pp. 671, 672. 86 IMAGE-WORSHIP. singing and adoring as above. Afterwards the priest alone carries the cross to a place prepared before the altar, and, kneeling, places it there. Presently, having put off his shoes, he approaches to ADORE THE CROSS, kneeling thrice before he kisses it. Then the minis- ters of the altar, and next the clergy and laity, two and two, kneeling thrice, adore the cross. Meantime, while the adoration of the cross is going on," &c., the choir are to sing more or fewer anthems, accord- ing to the time required for the congregation, whether large or small. "At the end of the adoration of the cross, the candles are lighted on the altar."* The reader will bear in mind that the above passage does not give an account merely of what we may see done, and what may have been done by over-zealous and superstitious members of the Church of Rome, but is the very rubric in the Missal of that Church itself on Good Friday at the present day, prescribing and en- joining what her priests and people must do annually. They adore the cross of wood, and they call the ser- vice THE ADORATION OF THE CROSS; and their most celebrated canonized saints, whom they invoke in the prayer of public worship for their intercessions, de- clare that the cross itself is to be adored and worship- ped with the same adoration and worship as must be rendered by faithful Christians to their Saviour and their God. What room is left for superstition to add anything in this department? Should the mass of the people now worship the cross and images, as the pagans in times of old, in the darkest and blackest regions of heathenism, worshipped their stocks and idols, (looking, as knowledge and experience bid us to look, to fallen human nature,) could it be regarded as * Missale Romanum, (Antwerp, 1641,) p. 201. LITURGY AND SERVICES OF ROME. 87 any other than a natural consequence of the prescribed worship of the Church herself? Put the flimsy, abstruse, subtle distinctions of worship direct and relative, primary and secondary, terminating and transitory, in the one scale, and these palpable, visible, tangible demonstra- tions of mental and bodily worship and adoration on the other, and the latter will inevitably preponderate. And then comes the awful question, At whose door will the sin of such idolatry lie ? To whom, by the eternal Judge, will the peril of this deplorable mischief be ascribed ? Naclantus says, that to wor- ship the image of Christ with the supreme divine adoration with which we adore God Himself, so far from being sin, is the custom and duty of the faith- ful; while the principle he lays down in the case of the brazen serpent would rescue the common people from the guilt of idolatry, (even were it idolatry in the priests and those who know that they must worship not the image but the prototype,) because the people only do their duty in following the out- ward acts of their spiritual authorised teachers. But can this be regarded with complacency and satisfac- tion, and be acquiesced in as an argument which should allay all disquietude in those Christians to whom the souls of others are dear, for whom, as well as for their own, Christ died? Will not the spirit of St. Paul's language rouse again the misgivings which such fallacious views may have lulled, " Through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?" Now it may be asked, whether the most super- stitious observances, and acts of prayer and adoration, addressed to images and crosses by the most ignorant on the face of the earth, cannot be justified by such 88 IMAGE-WORSHIP. solemn acts of prayer and praise as these. What avail all those nice distinctions, and refined disqui- sitions, which (as Cardinal Bellarmin himself con- fesses with regard to some) are not understood even by those who make them, much less by the ordinary worshipper ? Here are prayers and praises addressed unequivocally and directly to the cross: the people can never be influenced by abstruse speculations so powerfully as by what they hear and see. They hear and see their Church in her Liturgy, and by the persons of her priests, worshipping, and adoring, and praying to images and the cross, and praising them on their knees with eyes raised to the visible objects of their addresses, and hands uplifted to them. Deci- pit exemplar vitiis imitabile. They understand what they see and hear : even if they heard the subtleties with which some works abound, they would not un- derstand them. And if they heard the contradictory doctrines of their saints and authorised teachers, and understood them, they could not weigh the argu- ments ; and the practice being all on one side the side of adoration they would adore the cross and images, and leave the defence of the adoration to others. Indeed this seems to be the course which Naclantus and others would suggest, when they main- tain, that, though the common people adored the bra- zen serpent in the wilderness without any insight at all into its typical character, they were not guilty of idolatry, because they merely followed their rulers in things spiritual in what they did. Thus, if the people in the less enlightened Roman Catholic coun- tries should worship the cross and images with the adoration due only to God, not only would they do as learned doctors and canonized saints teach them LITURGY AND SERVICES OF ROME. 89 that it is their duty to do, but they would be guilt- less, because they would be only implicitly following the outward acts of worship, which their priests offer- ed, although with a different view from their own. But can this be justified on any principle of huma- nity, or Christian faith and truth ? The words of Holy Scripture appear to rise up in judgment, and to condemn altogether such perilous dealings and misguidings : " Take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak ; for, if any man see thee who hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him that is weak be emboldened to eat those things that are offered to idols ? and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died."* * 1 Cor. viii. 9 ; see also Rom. xiv. 90 IMAGE-WORSHIP. PART III. CHAPTER I. EVIDENCE OP HOLY SCRIPTURE. SECTION I. HAVING, under the previous heads of our inquiry on this subject, ascertained what is the theory and the prac- tice of image-worship in the Church of Rome, it remains for us now to test its spirit by the written word of God, and by the best and safest comment on that word, the faith and practice of the Primitive Church. We must not be withdrawn from the pursuit of this in- quiry by any modern assertion, that, " Whether pic- tures and images were used in the Church of old, is not a point of much importance, for their use has al- ways been a matter of discipline."* In this sentiment two considerations forbid us to acquiesce : First, even were the admission of images, accompanied by the due worship required to be paid to them, a mere matter of discipline, yet, if it have no sanction in God's most Holy word, but be proved to be contrary to the true spirit and real bearing of that word throughout, it must then be rejected by all who are not ready to make the word of God of none effect by human tra- dition, and by teaching for our guidance the command- ments of men. In the second place, we scarcely understand how that * Dr. Wiseman's Lectures, (London, 1836,) vol. ii. p. 130. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 91 can be regarded as a matter merely of discipline, which is not only so positively and solemnly enacted by the Coun- cil of Trent, and so " most firmly asserted" in the creed of Pope Pius IV, but is declared by the second Council of Nice (to the sanction of which council the Council of Trent appeals in this very article of image-worship) to be binding on all Christians, on pain of incurring " most dreadful anathemas,' 1 the curses and maledictions ap- portioned to the worst of heresies, a sentence in which the representatives of the Roman Church present at that council concurred, and on the strength of which image- worship was forced on all the Churches of the West. When we find, moreover, in the same council, that the admission and adoration of images is made (not by in- dividual bishops and patriarchs only, but by the whole council together*) an article of the selfsame creed and profession of faith in which they declare their be- lief in God, in the Holy Trinity, in our blessed Sa- viour, and in the resurrection to eternal life ; subject- ing all " who dare to think or teach otherwise" to excommunication and cursing; and, lastly, when we find the council held at Oxford in the time of Arch- bishop Arundel, a few years only after heresy had been made by the English Parliament punishable by death by burning, decreeing any person to be guilty of heresy who asserted or insinuated anything contrary to the worship of images, we cannot see how the dis- tinction which would rank the use of images among matters of discipline, can be allowed to affect the course of our inquiry. We proceed, therefore, to inquire, in the first place, whether the use and the invocation of images in the Church of Christ are sanctioned by the inspired * Syn. Nic. II. Act vii., at the close, (Paris, 1671,) p. 551. 92 IMAGE-WORSHIP. word of Revelation; or, on the contrary, whether it be not palpably contrary both to the letter, spirit, the true intent and meaning, and the bearing and ruling of that word.* Now, when we examine the Holy Scripture from its first to its last page, not with the view of accommodating its laws and ordi- nances and doctrines and examples to our opinions, but with the honest desire of conforming our belief and practice, our judgment and our will, to the prin- ciples there promulgated and established, and the inti- mations of the Almighty's mind and will there revealed, what is the result? We find throughout, over and over again, in every variety of language, the formation of any material figure whatever as an object of worship prohibited, and denounced as an abomination in the sight of the Divine Lawgiver. And we never discover any exception in favour of any form, or figure, or represent- ation whatever ; all are equally condemned on pain of incurring the displeasure of Almighty God. The re- fined and subtle distinctions of those objects into idols, likenesses, and images, and imitations, (attempted now to be drawn by the defenders of image- worship in the Church of Rome,) have in the Bible no place nor name. In our present inquiry we will not knowingly omit a single sentence of Holy Scripture usually cited as countenancing that worship. We would first, how- ever, recal some of those passages which appear to rule the case entirely, and, like a master-principle, to pro- * We would here earnestly invite the reader to reflect carefully on the principles on which alone we are persuaded that a believer, bent on arriving at the truth, can study the Holy Scriptures, either as the record of covenants between God and His fallen and redeemed crea- tures, or as the will and testament of Him who died for our salvation. The reader will find those principles stated and illustrated in " Primi- tive Christian Worship," part i. chap. ii. section ii. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 93 vide a safe and ready key to the interpretation of any expression, the meaning of which may at first sight seem doubtful or ambiguous. In the first place, we would say that such a master- principle is established against any images being made by the servants of the one true God, for the pur- pose of any religious worship whatever, by the very terms of the first and second prohibitions of the decalogue : " Thou shalt not have any other Gods beside me,"" or "in my presence." "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth be- neath, or in the waters under the earth ; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them." Again, thus solemnly is the command enforced by God's ex- treme malediction : " Cursed is the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and put- teth it in a secret place." * Again, in the 26th chap- ter of Leviticus, the enumeration of the different ma- terial and visible objects of human worship is remark- ably full and striking, intended purposely to compre- hend every kind and species of image or representation, molten, sculptured, or painted : " Ye shall make you no idols, nor graven image, nor rear you up a standing image [or statue] ; neither shall ye set up any image of stone [or figured or painted stone] in your land, to bow down unto it : for I am the Lord your God." Again, how powerfully, and at the same time with what intel- ligible minuteness, is the same prohibition repeated in a subsequent part of the law,f intentionally a repeti- tion of the original command : " And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire ; ye heard the * Deut. xxvii. 14. t Deut. iv. 12. 94 IMAGE-WORSHIP. voice of the words, but ye saw no similitude ; only ye heard a voice Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, for ye saw no manner of similitude in the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire, lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is in the earth, the likeness of any fowl that is in the air, the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth." The contrast is indeed very striking between the large, full, and comprehensive spirit of these com- mands and prohibitions, and the express sanction given by the Catechism of the Council of Trent, not only to make and retain and worship images of saints and angels, of the Virgin, and of our blessed Saviour, as God manifest in the flesh, but also to make visible and material representations of any one of the persons of the blessed Trinity.* Having thus solemnly warned them never, under any figure, image, or likeness, to worship the true God, whose voice they heard, the lawgiver cautions them against the temptation to worship any of the visible works of creation. And lest they should suppose, that, provided they did not substitute false gods, and idols, and images, in place of the one true God, but merely added the wor- ship of them over and above to His worship, associat- ing the two together, they would not break His law nor incur His displeasure, He both beforehand warns them against such delusions, and in subsequent times vindicated the single and exclusive oneness of His wor- * Ad Parochos, part iii. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 95 ship, on those who dared to join it with any other. Thus, immediately after the delivery of the decalogue : " Ye shall not make WITH me gods of silver," &c.* In the second book of Kings a striking instance is recorded of this unholy union of the worship of the only Lord with the worship of pagan deities : They feared the, LORD, and served their own gods, their graven images, f In the prophet Zephaniah we read of the fate of these worshippers : " I will cut off them that worship the host of heaven upon the house-tops, and them that worship and that swear by the LORD, and that swear by Malcham."^: A similar denouncement was made subsequently by Ezekiel : " As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the LORD God : ' Go ye, serve ye every one his idols, and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto me ; but pollute ye my holy name no more with your gifts and with your idols. 1 " Now, without insisting upon what seems most clear, that the prohibition of every kind and species of image as an object of worship had reference to the worship of the Lord God Himself, forbidding His people to worship Him through any similitude, (" in that day ye saw no similitude, only ye heard a voice,") even should we allow that all these commands and prohibitions refer- red to the idols of Egypt and Canaan, still, if no ex- ception is made, if no permission is anywhere given to worship God, or to honour his saints, through an image made after their likeness, we would ask, are not these solemn repeated injunctions and prohibitions quite sufficient to guide a single-hearted man, bent on con- forming himself and his conduct agreeably to what- ever the revealed word may declare to be God's * Exod. xx. 23. f 2 Kings, xvii. 33, 41. t Zeph. i. 5. Ezek. xx. 39- 9G IMAGE-WORSHIP. will ? With the curses, and imprecations, and ana- themas of the second Council of Nice before our eyes, in the fulness of our conviction that both our faith and our practice are primitive and apostolical, we would ask, Does the Roman Church, by insisting upon the admission and veneration of images, or our own Church, by excluding images from the .worship of God altogether, act more agreeably to the plain unso- phisticated words of His eternal truth ? The members of that council, including the two representatives of the See of Rome, pronounce an anathema on any one who should dare to apply to image-worship in the Christian Church the prohibitions against idols record- ed in the Old Testament. We cannot but regard these prohibitions not only as applicable to the case of the Church under the Gospel, but even still more authori- tatively binding, inasmuch as, from the covenant of the Law, (that divine elementary instructor to bring us to Christ,) we have passed into the covenant of faith and spiritual worship. SECTION II. But we must now examine those passages of Holy Scripture which have been commonly cited as admit- ting and countenancing the worship of images, if they do not suggest and enjoin them. It is painful to enter on this part of our inquiry, (necessary as it is,) because the greater part of the in- terpretations of such passages are so utterly indefensi- ble, and without any foundation in sound biblical criti- cism, that, were they not found in the very books of the defenders of image- worship, it would scarcely be believed that they were in good faith and seriously put forward; and we might be suspected of having suggested arguments for the purpose of answering them. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 97 The first we would mention is a passage already quoted as having received in the second Nicene Council, from Anastasius, Bishop of Theopolis, a comment fa- vourable to the views of the advocates of image- worship: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." The criticism on this passage which the council itself adopted is this : " In the first mem- ber, he says merely, ' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,' and does not add the word * ONLY ;' in the second member he adds the word * ONLY,' ' and Him only shalt thou serve ;' so that, while we must not SERVE any other than God, the same prohibition does not apply to the other word, 'WORSHIP.'" The argument in which the whole second Nicene Council not only acquiesced, but seemed to triumph, is this : "In this passage our Lord does not forbid us to worship any other objects than God, provided we do not serve them ; therefore we may worship images, provided we do not serve them." How many reflections are forced upon us here ! But, first, as to the argument, utterly groundless as it is : Satan did not, in the words recorded, tempt our blessed Lord to SERVE Him, but only to WORSHIP Him. If, then, the rebuke of our Lord only im- plied the unlawfulness, according to the Divine will, of serving any other being, and not of worshipping that being, the rebuke would have been no answer to Satan's temptation. He asked not for service at Christ's hand, but only worship. If our Lord's words meant that He was at liberty to worship, but not to serve him, as far as the mere words go, Satan might, notwithstanding the prohibition alleged, have obtained all he required. But this is too holy ground for such ir- reverent trifling. Our blessed Saviour willed, once and * St. Matthew, iv. 10. H 98 IMAGE-WORSHIP. for ever, with indignation, to silence the tempter by the universal and overwhelming first principle of the divine law, that the Lord God is the only lawful object of man's worship and service. The learned reader scarcely needs to be reminded that the same word (the same in the Greek of the Septuagint and in this passage of St. Matthew) is again and again employed, when God's people were forbidden to worship any other god. "Thou shalt not worship any other gods."* "Thou shalt not worship a strange god."f And, not to cite any more passages to prove the futility of the sup- posed distinction, one paragraph in the second book of Kings, intended, apparently, to embrace every kind of worship, adoration, and service, comes home to the point with remarkable force : " Ye shall not fear other gods, nor worship them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them ; but the Lord, Him shall ye fear, and Him shall ye worship, and to Him shall ye do sacrifice/' In the latter clause, commanding the worship of God, the very word " serve" is even omitted as superfluous, being comprehended in the word " worship," and the word " worship" is inserted in the prohibitory clause. :{: Another proof from Holy Scripture, cited both by the same second Council of Nice, and by the apolo- gists of image-worship from that time to the present, * Exodus, xxxiv. 14. -j- Psalm Ixxxi. 9. J 2 Kings, xvii. 35. The conclusive character of this passage is very much weakened to the English reader, because our translators have varied not the meaning but the expression in their rendering of the same word in the two parts of the sentence, in the one calling it " bow yourselves down," in the other " worship ;" whereas the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and the Vulgate have the selfsame word in each case, the Vulgate employing the same word in rendering the Hebrew here as in rendering the Greek in St. Matthew adorare. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 99 is the fact of Moses having, by the immediate command of God, caused two cherubim to be made, which should overshadow the mercy-seat,* or cover of the ark of the covenant. The words of Bellarminf are these : "Of necessity, the images of the cherubim, being upon the ark, were adored by those who adored the ark." But where is it ever said that God directed the people to adore the ark, or that the people ever did adore either it or the cherubim, from the day they were made to the time when they were destroyed ? But Bellarmin, and the doctors of the Roman Catholic Church in general, refer us to a passage in which David calls that mercy-seat the footstool of the Lord, and another, in which the same holy Psalmist calls upon the faithful to worship God's footstool : and hence they argue that the ark was to be worshipped, and that the images of saints and of the cross may be worshipped also. | It is scarcely necessary to observe, that the object of worship mentioned by the Psalmist here is not the footstool, but God, at whose footstool he calls upon his fellow- believers to worship; as he does elsewhere, employing the same word, declare his own desire, and invite his brethren to " worship toward," or " at His holy tem- ple" " toward," or " at His holy hill." t In the second Council of Nice, on reference being made to this argument, and the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews being quoted, in which its inspired author enumerates the mercy-seat and the cherubim among the sacred things of the first temple, the Presi- dent Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, exclaimed, " If the Old [Testament] had cherubim overshadowing * " iXaffrripiov " propitiatorium. f Bell. lib. ii. chap. xii. 1 Chron. xxviii. 2. Psalms, xcix. 5 ; cxxxii. 7- Psalms, v. 7 ; cxxxviii. 7. IT Psalm xcix. 9. H 2 100 IMAGE-WORSHIP. the mercy-seat, we, too, will have images of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Mother of God, and of his saints, overshadowing the mercy-seat." To which " the most illustrious rulers" answered, " Truly it is the ordinance of God." Another argument, urged in the same way from the first throughout down to our times, is, " that Moses caused the brazen serpent to be formed, that all who looked to it might be relieved from their plague ; therefore, since unquestionably that was a type of Christ crucified, the image of Christ on the cross is to be received in Christian churches and worshipped." We have heard Naclantus say,* that, had the Israel- ites worshipped the brazen serpent and offered incense to it in the wilderness, it would not have been idolatry. The matter of fact is, that we never read of any reve- rence whatever being paid to it in the wilderness ; and the same passage which informs us (in a most warning lesson against the use of images) that the Israelites, in their degenerate and idolatrous state, offered incense to it, records also its utter destruction, on that very ac- count, by the pious King Hezekiah, who has this testi- mony, that " he trusted in the Lord God of Israel, and clave to the Lord, and departed not from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses." When he brake it in pieces, he called it nehushtan, or " the lump of brass." We might now ask, whether it does not appear, be- yond gainsaying or further question, to have been the purpose of the Almighty to fence His own worship against the mixture of images of any kind, carved, molten, engraven, painted, stone, wood, metal, or any other material ; whether the Old Testament does * See above, p. 78. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 101 not abound with prohibitions, in every variety of lan- guage, to the same effect ; and whether, from its first to its last page, there is any one appearance of relax- ation from the uncompromising stringency of those prohibitory laws. SECTION III. It has been said, that, living under the Gospel, we are released from the obligations of the elder cove- nant. But, in a religion called by an especial and dis- tinguishing name, The Law of Faith, as opposed to the law of outward observances, would it not be a retro- grade movement to admit images into our spiritual worship, when they were excluded from the Jewish 1 Accordingly we find pervading the whole of the New Testament the same spirit which guided the prophets of old to forbid the making of any figure or similitude for the purposes of worship. Every opportunity is taken by the Apostles to withdraw the Gentiles from the wor- ship of idols; and (as we shall be often reminded when we examine the testimony of the primitive fathers) the prohibitions are so general, that, had the intention of the Apostles been to allow of any relaxation of the rule, they must have mentioned it. When Paul and Barnabas preached the Gospel at Lystra, they did not bid the worshippers of Jupiter take down the image of their fabled god, and sub- stitute the image of their master Christ in its stead. Their indignant rejection of the divine honours of- fered them admitted of no exception in favour of any being as the object of worship, beside the one living God, nor allowed the image of that God to be set up as His representative : " Sirs, why do ye these things?" were their words. "We also are men of 102 IMAGE-WORSHIP. like passions with you, and we preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities to serve the living God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein."* And the beloved Apostle makes no exception of any image of his fellow- Apos- tles, or of our blessed Saviour, when, as the closing words of his epistle, he gives believers this solemn charge : " Little children, keep yourselves from idols." A text, however, to which appeals have been made in favour of image-worship, but which Bellarmin and Coccius and others, though anxiously pressing every colourable evidence into the service, seem, from their omission of it, to have considered untenable, requires to be examined in this place. The passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, c. xi. v. 21, which our autho- rized version renders, "Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, lean- ing upon the top of his staff/' (putting the word lean- ing in italics, to notify that it is an expletive not found in the original Greek,) the Roman Catholic Douay Bible, following the Vulgate, materially changes, ren- dering the last words, " ADORED THE TOP OF HIS ROD ;" and appends the following sentences by way of com- ment : " Observe, that adoration, as the Scripture useth the word, may be done to creatures, or to God at or before a creature, as at or before the Ark of the Testament in old time, now at or before the crucifix, relics, images. By all which it is evident that it is false, that we may not adore, image, crucifix, or any visible creature, nor kneel before them." The circumstances of this passage are remarkable. The inspired author of the Epistle to the Hebrews * Acts, xiv. 15. EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 103 quotes the passage in Genesis, (xlvii. 31,) which records the fact adverted to, in the words of the Septuagint ; the Hebrew word which that version renders rod or staff", meaning also, when read with other points, a bed; our version of that passage in Genesis being, " And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head." The Vul- gate renders it, " Israel adored God, being turned to the bed's head. 11 In their interpretation of this passage, Jewish writers differ materially among themselves, some considering it to imply that Jacob bowed to Joseph in acknow- ledgment of his authority, but the greater part, that he bowed to God in acknowledgment of His mercy.* The Greek in the passage before us, identical with the reading in the Septuagint, cannot admit of the rendering of the Vulgate, but must be translated either " worshipped upon" or " worshipped towards the top of his staff;" a question then arising, whether it was Joseph's staff or Jacob's on which he worshipped, or towards which he bent.f The Roman Catholic commentators above quoted, maintaining that Jacob adored the staff of Joseph it- self, and thence concluding, that to adore crucifixes, images, and relics is lawful, appeal to the testimony of St. Chrysostom in confirmation of their view. But that ancient Father is very far from supporting their inter- pretation.:}: He speaks of Jacob worshipping upon, or towards the top of his staff, to do honour to * The reader may consult " The Sacred Scriptures, in Hebrew and English," (London, 1844,) p. 318. f The Vulgate points to Joseph's staff, ejus, the Greek of Gries- bach to Jacob's, (avrov, his own staff,) several of our own editions, both before and after Griesbach, reading O.VTOV, which would seem to refer to Joseph. t In Gen.; Homil. 66, edit. Bened., vol. iv. p. 631. 104 IMAGE-WORSHIP. Joseph, recognizing his superior power and dignity; but he suggests not the shadow of an allusion to Jacob adoring the staff. All that can be reasonably inferred from this view of the passage is, that, by bending to- wards his son's staff, (as it was usual to do towards a royal sceptre,) Jacob acknowledged him in one sense his superior, and so fulfilled the prophecy of that son's dream, that his father should bow down before him, the precise sense in which St. Chrysostom under- stands it. The celebrated Roman Catholic annotator, Cornelius a Lapide, maintaining that it was to Joseph's staff, as to a sceptre, that Jacob bent down, adverts to the use and application of the passage made by Pope Adrian in his letter to Constantine and Irene, in which he urged them to convene a council for the establishment of image- worship. Whether, as some suppose, Adrian's letter was originally written in Latin, being afterwards translated for the use of the Greeks ; or whether he sent it in Greek, and, like other Greek documents, it was afterwards translated into Latin, the passage in Adrian's letter is very remarkable. In the Greek, the reading of the Septuagint is retained, the Latin ver- sion using these words, " Sunimitatem virgsc filii sui Joseph deosculatus est:" " He kissed the top of his son Joseph's rod." Adrian adds, that Jacob did it in the love of faith, and then cites the Apostle's testimony thus: "The blessed Paul, in the Epistle to the He- brews, says, that Jacob did not worship the rod, but him who was its possessor, indicating his love; so we, too, from the desire and love which we bear to the Lord and His saints, describe their features in images, not fixing the honour on the tablet and colours, but on those whose names the images bear." EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 105 On the whole, it is difficult to perceive how this pas- sage of the New Testament can be so strained as to sup- port the doctrine and practice, in defence of which it is cited by some Romanists. Even were we, for argu- ment's sake, to allow that it was to Joseph, then pre- sent before him, and not to the Almighty, that the Pa- triarch intended to do horn age, offering an outward mark of that homage by bending before Joseph's rod as a sceptre, or, to use Pope Adrian's words, by kissing it, we cannot see how, under that view, this passage can be forced so as to sanction the image-worship of the Church of Rome. Most persons, however, who approach the question with an unprejudiced mind, will probably acquiesce in the interpretation of our authorized version, as at once the more natural rendering, more easily reconcilable with the present reading of the Hebrew, and closer to the Greek of the New Testament. This interpreta- tion recommends itself also strongly for our adoption, by the direct and full sanction given to it by St. Augustin himself, with whose words we shall close these remarks. This great Father of the Latin Church contemplates both of the two supposed cases ; first, that the staff was Jacob's ; secondly, that it was Joseph's. If the staff were Joseph's, Augustin leads us to regard it as a very natural thing for a dutiful son to place his own staff in his father's hand for the purpose of sup- porting his enfeebled and sinking frame. If, on the other hand, the staff were Jacob's own (which St. Au- gustin seems to regard as the more probable supposi- tion), what could be more natural than for an old man, seated on the side of his couch, and leaning forward, while his son bound himself by an oath to him, (the prescribed form of which was, that the person binding 106 IMAGE-WORSHIP. himself by the oath should place his hand under the thigh of the person to whom he swore,) to rest himself on his staff? The words of St. Augustin are these : " It may be easily understood that an old man, bear- ing a staff in the way in which that age usually did as he bent himself to adore God, did so on the top of his own staff, which he thus bore, so that by bending his head upon it, he would adore God.' 1 * That no opening is made in the New Testament for such admission of images, and no relaxation of the universal law of the Mosaic dispensation, we not only see for ourselves in our study of the New Testament, but might even have concluded, the advocates of image-worship themselves, with Thomas Aquinas at their head, being judges, from the gratuitous assump- tion made by them, when they assert that many rules for the guidance of the Church in after ages were enact- ed by the Apostles, which are not found in the Sacred Scripture,! and, among other points, on the use of images. The supporters of image-worship cannot ad- duce a single word correctly translated and interpreted, " according to the common consent of the Fathers," ^ to countenance their doctrine and practice from * Facile intelligeretur senem, qui virgam ferebat eo more quo ilia aetas baculum ferre solebat, ut se inclinavit ad Deum adorandum, id utique fecisse super cacumen virgse suae quam sic ferebat, ut super earn caput inclinando adoraret Deum. Quaest. in Gen., ed. Bened., vol. iii. p. 418. t Thomas Aquinas, distinc. ix. quaest. vii. sol. iv. J Coccius, indeed, in his celebrated work on the Church, resolved not to leave the New Testament without extracting from it some contribution to countenance the use and worship of images, quotes the passage, Matthew, xii. 16, " Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him ' Caesar's.' " EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 107 the New Testament ; and instead of such sanction, they boldly substitute the assertion, that the Apostles made rules for image-worship which the inspired writers did not record, but left them to the custody of tradition. This is a most groundless assumption. Such a fact seemed necessary to support the theory of image- worship, and therefore its supposed existence was maintained not only without proof, but contrary to the clearest evidence ; for, had such rules existed, they must have been found somewhere in the remains of the ancient Fathers ; and, had they been even thought of in the first ages, they would unquestionably have been inserted in what are called The Apostolical Canons and Constitutions. The total silence on the subject there not only refutes the fable of such rules having ever been in existence, but, as we shall see under our next head, proves that images were not in use in the churches of Christ when those Canons and Constitutions were framed. And now having before our eyes the anathemas, and reproaches, uttered by the second Council of Nice against all, as maintainers of heresy, who should apply to the images set up and worshipped in the Christian Church the threats and prohibitions and warnings in the Holy Scriptures against idols, we are bold enough (in the strength of the cause of truth) again to ask, even at the risk of unnecessary repetition, whether of the two bodies more closely and faithfully fulfils the will of God, as made known to us in His holy word, we of the Church of England, who admit no image to be placed in God's house as an object of veneration, (whatever be the kind of veneration,) or the Church of Rome, which requires images to be had and retained in the churches, and to be venerated ? If God says, " Thou 108 IMAGE-WORSHIP. shalt make no image to worship it;" we ask, which shews himself the more ready to receive that command with free, full, and perfect obedience, the person, on the one hand, who not only admits, but requires images to be used in the worship of God, (by what- ever nice distinctions and subtle arguments he may try to separate between the worship paid to them and to idols, and by whatever abstract rules he may en- deavour to preserve the veneration of images from degenerating into palpable idolatry,) or, on the other hand, the person who resolves to preserve the worship of Almighty God from the possibility of such con- tamination, and consequently at once and for ever excludes all images, as objects of religious vene- ration, from the sanctuary of the Lord ? We cannot for a moment doubt what would be the righteous ver- dict of upright and enlightened men on this issue joined between the two Churches. EVIDENCE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 109 CHAPTER II. EVIDENCE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. SECTION I. HAVING seen that image-worship, so far from resting on any foundation of Holy Scripture, runs counter to the spirit of God's commands throughout, we might well let the matter rest there ; for when we have once ascertained the mind and will of our heavenly Law- giver, all human authority will not weigh as a grain of dust in the balance of the sanctuary. But it has ever been, and always must be, a satisfaction of very high value, to be confirmed in the view which we take of the doctrines and laws of the Bible, by finding it coin- cide with the teaching and practice of the Primitive Church ; to be assured that the principles on which we frame and regulate our own worship of Almighty God are identifiable with those which, in the ages next to the Apostolic, guided the saints and martyrs and con- fessors, and the faithful at large as a body, in their de- votions ; that, when we worship the God of our fathers, though it be after the way which the Church of Rome calls heresy, yet, in very deed and truth, we are tread- ing the path along which the footsteps not only of the Apostles but of their successors also are visible through- out. It is indeed our satisfaction, and a constant well- spring of thankfulness to the Divine Founder of our faith and hope, to trace those marks of pure and primitive worship in any department of the doctrines and practice 110 IMAGE-WORSHIP. of our Church. But in no one point does the voice of antiquity speak with a more certain sound, than on the subject of our present inquiry ; in no one point does it bear more unequivocal witness to the fact, that we of the Church of England have retained the precious trust of the old religion, and that the Church of Rome has em- braced an innovation not a development, as their in- novations have of late been called, but a dangerous and unhallowed novelty never heard of in the Primitive Church except to be condemned, and never suffered to obtain a footing among Christians till the corruptions of Paganism (finding too ready and willing a response in fallen human nature) succeeded in mingling them- selves stealthily with the pure and simple institutions of the Gospel, and in bringing down again its spiritual worship to a level with the associations of heathenism. The transition of heathen converts from a religion in which they had worshipped the fabled gods of their coun- try represented by their idols, to a religion in which, though the objects were changed, the mode of worship was the same, (the images of Christ and the Virgin Mother and the saints being substituted for the ma- terial forms of their " gods many and lords many,") was much more easy transition, far less disturbing to their prejudices and habits, than an entire change from the outward adoration of various visible and material ob- jects, to the spiritual worship of one only and invisible God. On the ever fatal principle of doing evil that good may come, instead of persevering in the right course with uncompromising firmness and patience, waiting for God's good time to bring about His merci- ful designs in His own way, Christian teachers at length began to yield, and gradually to accommodate the wor- ship of the Church to the wishes of those who were on EVIDENCE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. Ill those terms more ready to adopt it. But these inno- vations were no sooner attempted in any of the churches, than solemn protests arose against them on every side ; and voices loud and clear were heard in the East and re-echoed from the West, re- calling those who had already been misled back to the ancient and primitive worship, and warning the rest of the faithful to resist the temptation, and to remain unshaken in their adherence to the service of Almighty God, as it had been delivered down from the first. At length, after image-worship had been again and again forbidden and condemned by saints and bishops and councils, it was (as we have already seen) estab- lished by the second Council of Nice, which was opened by the Patriarch of Constantinople in per- son, and attended by the Roman Pontiff through his two representatives. But even the very Em- peror (Constantine V.) in whose name, conjointly with his mother Irene's, (who held the reins of govern- ment during his minority,) the council was held, no sooner came to man's estate, than he professed his adherence to the ancient worship, and set at nought the decrees of that council.* We have already ad- verted to the repeated struggles by which Christian nobles and bishops and kings, in Germany, France, and England, strove to protect their own churches against the enforcement of the papal decrees on this subject. But they were unavailing. The fatal innova- tion prevailed through the dark ages, gaining strength more and more, till the era of the Reformation. These observations, however, are only prefatory to our examination of the evidence of the earliest records * See Naclantus, vol. i. p. 203. 112 IMAGE-WORSHIP. of the Church, through the first five centuries and more, on the subject of image- worship. That evidence seems to offer itself to our considera- tion under three points of view : First, The total absence of any intimation that images were admitted into churches as objects of reli- gious veneration. Secondly, The full, free, unguarded, and unreserved condemnation of the worship paid by the heathen to images, couched in such universally comprehensive language, together with such reasonings, and illustra- tions, as must have required exceptions to be made, and distinctions and illustrations to be appended, had the writers been aware that images of our Saviour, of the Virgin, of angels, and saints, existed in the churches, or were worshipped by their fellow-Christians. Thirdly, The positive condemnation of images, as soon as they began to appear, by contemporary teach- ers and writers, and by councils, as well in the East as in the West. It now remains for us to state the testimony, whether negative or positive, borne by those writers to whom an appeal must be made when we would ascertain the views, either in doctrine or discipline, of the Primitive Church. For a brief account of each of the witnesses in succession, their character, station, and age, their writings and circumstances, the reader is referred to the volumes entitled " Primitive Christian Worship," and " The Romish Worship of the Virgin ;" and to the Tracts called "What is Romanism?"* As far, how- ever, as relates to the first and purest ages of the * Nos. 6 and 7, and 12, 13, 14, 15, 16; also in the separate volumes, " Primitive Christian Worship," chapter iv.; " Romish Wor- ship of the Virgin," part iii. and iv. EVIDENCE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 113 Church, the only question will be, whether Christians admitted images of CHRIST, and representations of the BLESSED TRINITY, into their churches, for the pur- poses of religious veneration and worship ; since, saints and angels themselves not being then addressed with any kind of worship or invocation, it would be prepos- terous to suppose that their images would be set up and worshipped. SECTION II. EVIDENCE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. In the works of the Apostolic Fathers, Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, we are re- freshed with many glowing and elevating passages of instruction, exhortation, and encouragement on the subject of prayer, and of our drawing nigh unto God in full assurance of faith through the mediation of our crucified Redeemer. But there is no allusion to any visible and material representation of that Saviour on earth, before which, as His likeness, we should kneel and offer our supplications and praises, as honouring the image for the sake of the heavenly Original. The following passage from Clement, Bishop of Rome, in his first epistle to the Church at Corinth, will convey a fair notion of the spirit and tone, with regard to Christian worship, which pervades the literary remains of the five apostolic Fathers :* " This is the way, beloved, in which we find Jesus Christ our salvation, the Chief Priest of our offerings, our protector, and the succourer of our weakness. By Him let us look stedfastly to the heights of heaven ; by Him let us behold the most high and spotless face ; by Him the eyes of our heart are opened ; by Him our * Clement, 1st Epist. to Corinth, chap, xxxvi. I 114 IMAGE-WORSHIP. ignorant and darkened minds shoot forth into his mar- vellous light ; by Him the Supreme Governor willed that we should taste immortality; who being the brightness of His magnificence, is so much greater than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they." Such pure and apostolical and scriptural views con- trast strongly and brightly, but yet painfully, with the sentiments of Clement's later successors in the See of Rome; especially with the profession and declaration of Adrian, in his letter to Constantine and Irene, at the close of the eighth century, just before the second Nicene Council. That letter abounds with doctrines which Clement could not have recognised as belonging to the faith once delivered to the saints ; and on the subject before us, among other sentences, we read these, which Adrian adopts as his own, and which he quotes as the words of St. Basil : words which no more came from the pen of that holy man, than from Clement himself: " I confess the holy Mary, who gave Him birth ac- cording to the flesh, to be Mother of God ; I receive also the holy Apostles, prophets, and martyrs, who offer supplications to God, that, through their media- tion, God, who loves man, might be merciful to me, and grant remission of sins. Wherefore also I honour and openly worship the forms, or representations,* or spectacles of their images ; for this has been delivered down from the holy Apostles, and must not be forbid- den ; but in all our churches we raise representations of them." * The Greek is rag iaropiaq TWV elKovw avr&v ri/nw KO.I irpotncvvw : the Latin translation, or rather, perhaps, Adrian's original, reads, ' Figuras imaginum eorum." JUSTIN. 115 It is not agreed, among learned men, at what pre- cise time the several apostolic Fathers lived ; some critics maintaining that they were contemporary with the Apostles, and others assigning to them a con- siderably later date : all, however, agree that the latest of them lived before the commencement of the fourth century. JUSTIN MARTYR, ABOUT A.D. 150. Of this holy man, whose praise has been in the churches from his own time to ours, the evidence on the subject before us is far from being either only negative, or unimportant, or equivocal. So far is he from sug- gesting any idea that the Christians in his time ad- mitted images of Christ into their places of worship as objects of religious reverence, that, had images then been used, his arguments often would not only have naturally led to some notice of them, but would have necessarily required an explanation of their use, and a distinction between them and those idols the wor- ship of which he condemns. Whether we examine the noble defences which he made before the empe- rors and senate of Rome, or his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, we feel it next to an impossibility either that he should not have anticipated the objection of hea- then and Jewish auditors, or that they should not have objected to image-worship as an inconsistency in men, who were ever denouncing it as having originated either in man's ignorance and depravity, or in the suggestion of wicked spirits. Take, for example, the ninth section of what is now classed as his first Defence :* "We do not with many sacrifices and wreaths of * Paris, 1742, p. 48. i 2 11G IMAGE- WORSHIP. flowers honour those whom men, bringing into form, and placing in temples, call gods ; since we know them to be without spirit and dead, and not to have the form of God, (for we do not believe God to have such a form as some say they imitate for his honour,) but to have the forms and names of those who have appeared to be evil demons. Why need we say to you who know it, how the artificers dispose of the material, scraping, and cutting, and melting, and beat- ing it? And out of it, and often out of vile vessels, only by their art changing the shape, and giving them a form, they call them gods ; which we think not only an unreasonable thing, but done to the insult of God, whose name, though He has a glory and a form unutterable, is thus placed on things corruptible and requiring protection."* How easily and triumphantly would such a state- ment and reasoning have been turned against himself by his heathen audience, had Christians then placed the Saviour's name on images of wood or stone, either carved or painted, or of ivory, or metal, and set them up, and burned incense to them, and fallen down before them ! If we examine Justin's dialogue with Trypho the Jew, our inference from the whole is no less certain, that neither he, nor they knew anything at all of images being used by Christians. How easy and natural, for example, would it have been for Trypho and his com- panions to reproach Justin (at the close of his disser- tation on the brazen serpent) with making images of their own accord without God's special suspension of His own prohibition, by which alone Justin repre- sents Moses as justified in making the brazen serpent ! * Apol. i. c. 9. TATIAN, ATHENAGORAS, AND THEOPHILUS. 117 "Tell ine," he says, "was it not God who command- ed, through Moses, to make neither image nor likeness of anything in heaven above or in the earth beneath ? and yet He himself, in the wilderness, through Moses, caused the brazen serpent to be made ; and He fixed it for a sign, by which sign those who were bitten by the serpents were cured, and He was not guilty of ini- quity. For by this, as I said, He proclaimed a mystery, by which He preached that He destroyed the power of the serpent which caused Adam's transgression; and He preached to those who believe on Him who by this sign (that is, Him who was about to be cruci- fied) should save them from the bites of the serpent, namely, evil deeds, idolatries, and other iniquities. Now, if this be not so understood, give me some reason why Moses should set up the brazen serpent for a sign, and bid those who were bitten look upon it, and those who were bitten were cured; and this though he himself had commanded that they should altogether make no likeness of anything whatever." * We have seen how, in after ages, as soon as image- worship began to grow, the formation of the brazen serpent was alleged in justification both of the making and the worshipping of images in the Christian Church. Justin alludes to no religious honour paid to this serpent, and says that the formation of it was only justified by the direct suspension by God Himself of His own universal prohibition. TATIAN, ATHENAGORAS, AND THEOPHILUS. Precisely to the same result will a careful study of these three Christian writers lead, who lived towards * Dial. c. 94. 118 IMAGE- WORSHIP. the latter part of the second century. Their writings chiefly consist of defences of the Christian religion, and exposures of the fallacies and follies of heathen- ism. They are naturally led to speak much of the fabled deities of the pagan world, and of the images by which they were represented ; and, had Christians then made use of images of our Saviour, or worshipped any representations of the Divinity, they would inevitably have been driven to distinguish between heathen wor- ship and their own. In Tatian there are many passages bearing more or less directly on our subject,* but we need not dwell on them. In Athenagoras, among much of similar tendency, these passages deserve to be well weighed, j" " In a word we say, Not one of them" (he has enu- merated many famous images, such as Venus, the work of Praxiteles, and ^sculapius, from the hand of Phi- dias) " has escaped being the production of a man. If these are gods, why were they not from the first ? Why are they younger than those who made them ? What need have they of men and art for their existence? These are stones, and matter, and cunning device." "Since then, some say, These indeed are images, but those whose images they are, are gods; and that the supplications with which they approach them, and their sacrifices, are referred to those and are made to those ; and that there is no other mode of approach- ing the gods than this, (for the gods are very difficult to be seen openly;) and since to prove that this is so, they urge the effectual energies shewn by some images ; come, let us inquire what power they can have from the names assigned to them." How strikingly are we here reminded of the argu- * See chap. iv. v. vi. &c. t Chap. xvii. and xviii. TATIAN, ATHENAGORAS, AND THEOPHILUS. 119 ments put forth by the advocates of image-worship among Christians ! From the second Council of Nice to the Council of Trent, and thence to the present day, the argument has been the same: "We do not worship the image, but the divine being which the image represents, the original, the prototype." And how solemnly are we assured that the miracles* done by the images (merely another word for the " effectual energies" urged by the heathen on Christians in the time of Athenagoras) prove that their worship is sanc- tioned by heaven. If Athenagoras had been familiar with the use of images in Christian churches, could he, without any exceptions or explanations, have employ- ed such language as this? If we compare also this passage with a subsequent chapter, a clear proof is afforded of the futility of the distinction made, both at Nice and at Trent, be- tween the worship given by heathens to their idols and by Christians to their images in as much as (they say) Christians make their worship pass on to the proto- type, and the heathen make theirs rest in the idols. " How comes it (you will say) that some images put forth effectual energies, if they to whom we erect them are not gods ; for it is not probable that lifeless and motionless images can have any power of them- selves without some one to move them?"f So true is it, that, when Christians leave the sim- plicity of the Gospel, there is, if any, only a narrow and shallow stream between them and idolatry. * See Bellarmin, vol. ii. book ii. chap. xii. t Chap, xxiii. 120 IMAGE-WOKSHIP. SECTION III. ST. IREN^EUS, ABOUT A. D. 180. In the works of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, there appears very little that bears on our immediate sub- ject ; but, certainly, whatever reflexions may be sug- gested by his sentiments, not a shadow of anything like image-worship, or the admission of images into the Christian churches in his time, can be found. On the contrary, if compared with the assertions and doc- trines of the advocates of such worship in later times, several passages shew that they did not draw their ideas of the image of God, and the cross, and the present reign of the saints with Christ in heaven from the same fountain with himself. His works are chiefly devoted to the exposure and refutation of errors which had then crept into the Church ; and he especially, and repeatedly condemns the errors of Mar- cion and his followers. Now Naclantus and others tell us, that Marcion and his followers were among the first heretics who opposed image-worship in the Church ; but we find in Ireneeus no allusion to the practice of setting up and venerating images, or to the errors of those who discountenanced such practice. This could scarcely have been so, had the practice been in existence when Irenaeus lived. Instead of arguing that Christians may make images to represent the Almighty, as Cardinal Bellarmin and others do, Irenaeus speaks only of man as made in the image of God, and of that image having been made visible and permanent when the Word of God became flesh.* But of any image to represent that Saviour * Cont. Haeres., lib. v. cap. xvi. IREN^US. 121 now, he speaks not a word, except to number the possession of such images among the faults of heretics. He speaks again and again of the cross of Christ as the instrument by which He saved man from death ; but of any visible and material cross, to be set up for the purpose of being worshipped, he says not a word. Instead of maintaining, as the Council of Trent (condemning those who hold the contrary) maintains, that the souls of the saints are already reigning with Christ, and that their bodies are to be venerated, and their sepulchres and shrines to be frequented for the purpose of obtaining their good offices with the Al- mighty, Irenaeus holds that "the souls of Christ's disciples go to the place assigned to them by God, and there dwell till the resurrection, waiting for the resurrection ; then taking again their bodies, and rising wholly, that is bodily, as also the Lord arose, so will they come into the presence of God."* The passage in which Irenseus speaks of images of Christ as being in the possession of the Carpocratian heretics, and worshipped with the rites of heathenism, is very striking; and it is altogether so identifiable with a passage of Epiphanius to the same effect, that we quote both their testimonies together in this single passage : f "The Carpocratian heretics (from whom the Gnos- tics derived their origin) possessed themselves of images representing Christ, some painted in colours, some made of gold or silver, or other materials. These they affirm to be images of our Saviour, made by Pontius Pilate as resemblances of His person when He * Lib. v. cap. xxxi. t See Irenaeus, book i. chap. xxv. ; see also Epiphanius, Hser., xxvii. (Cologne, 1682, vol. i. p. 108). 122 IMAGE-WORSHIP. lived among men. These images they keep concealed ; but they set them up, together with images of philoso- phers, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and others; and having set them up, they worship them, and perform towards them the heathenish rites of sacrificing to them, crowning them, with other mysterious ceremonies." This we believe to be the earliest mention of any images being possessed, for the purpose of religious worship, by any calling themselves Christians. Both Irenseus and Epiphanius describe the whole affair as the work of heretics. Like the chosen people of old, " they mingled among the heathen, and learned their works, insomuch that they worshipped their idols, which turned to their own decay," or " which were a snare unto them." Thus did image-worship derive its origin from heresy, and thus from the first was it inseparably interwoven with the superstitions of heathenism. ST. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, ABOUT A. D. 180. While Irenaeus enables us to infer that in the West- ern Church, in his day, the use and worship of images was unknown, his contemporary Clement, of Alexandria in Egypt, bears irrefutable testimony, that he knew nothing of such an innovation having cor- rupted the purity of Christian worship in the Eastern churches. Instead of arguing, with Naclantus, Bellar- min, and others, that images of the Deity may law- fully be made and set up and venerated, he maintains, in every varied form of language, that no represen- tation of God can be made, by the art of the carver, the goldsmith, the statuary, the carpenter, or the painter. Passage after passage leaves no room for doubt as to the impossibility of his having written CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 123 and left these statements without modification, or ex- ceptions, or explanations, if he were aware that, in any part of the Church, his fellow-Christians used the images of saints, or angels, or the Virgin Mother, or our blessed Saviour, or the holy Trinity, in their re- ligious services. A few specimens will be enough. Having said, " Pythagoras prohibited the practice of engraving images of the gods on rings,"* he adds, "just as Moses long before had expressly en- acted, that no statue or image must be made, either graven, or molten, or of clay, or painted; that we might not give ourselves to objects of sense, but pass on to objects to be contemplated by the mind. For the familiarity of the sight, always at hand, lessens the majesty of God, and makes it cheap ; and to worship the intellectual essence through matter, is to dishonour it through sense."f In his allegorical interpretation of the cherubim overshadowing the ark of the covenant,:]: so far from supposing, with the advocates of image-worship now, that the people of God were at that time taught to worship those visible objects, he denies that they were intended to represent the forms of holy beings in heaven. In conveying his sentiments on this point, Clement of Alexandria employs these striking ex- pressions : " Whether by it [the ark] is signified the intellectual world, or God who surrounds and compre- hends everything, and is without form and invisible, let the question be put off for the present ; it inti- mates, however, the repose and rest that is with the glorifying spirits, which spirits the cherubim signify by a figure ; for never surely would He who commanded * Strom., lib. v. cap. v. t See book vi. | Strom., lib. v. cap. vi. 124 IMAGE-WORSHIP. them not to make even a graven image, Himself have shapen an image in the likeness of the holy beings [or the saints]." TERTULLIAN, A.D. 190. MINUTIUS FELIX. Contemporary with Irenseus in Gaul, and Clement in Alexandria, was Tertullian. We find in his writings no intimation, that the images either of the saints or of Christ, or any representation of the Almighty, were ad- mitted into the Christian Church in his time. And yet it is scarcely possible, that, had they been then used, he would have made no allusion to it, when he is pursuing the question, as put by the heathen in his time, "If men worship none of these things, what do they worship?"* But he makes no allusion of the kind, nor does he (any more than Clement of Alexandria) make any exceptions or explanations with reference to the vene- ration of images. Had Tertulliau himself used or worshipped images, or had he known of the worship and use of them in the Christian Church, he could not possibly, without any exceptions or reservations, have written passages so condemnatory of the whole system of image-worship as these : " Sometime in past ages there was no idol. Before the workers of this monster burst forth, there were only temples and empty buildings, as even to this day in some places the vestiges of antiquity remain. Yet idolatry was carried on not in the name, but in the deed ; for even now it can be carried on outside of a temple, and without an idol. But when the devil in- troduced into the world framers of statues, and images, and representations of all kind, that rude work of hu- * Apologet., chap. xv. TERTULLIAN. MINUTIUS FELIX. 125 man calamity both derived its name and proceeded from idols ; thereafter every act which in any way put forth an idol became the head of idolatry. For it matters not whether the potter forms it, or the en- graver cuts it out, or Phrygio weaves it ; because it is of no consequence as to its material, whether the idol be formed of gypsum, or by colours, or stone, or brass, or silver, or thread. For since there can be idolatry without an idol, surely, when the idol is present, it matters not of what sort it is, of what material, of what form ; let no one think that alone must be con- sidered as an idol which is consecrated in the human form. Here it is necessary to interpret the meaning of the word. Idos [ei'^oj] in Greek means a figure, from which is drawn the diminutive idolon [gi&yXop], in our language implying * a small figure.' Consequently every figure or small figure must be called an idol, and therefore all idolatry is service or servitude about any idol. Hence every maker of an idol is guilty of one and the same crime; unless, forsooth, the people were not guilty of idolatry, because they consecrated for themselves the image of a calf, and not of a man. God forbids an idol to be made, no less than to be worshipped. As much as the making a thing which can be worshipped precedes the worship of it, so much, if it is not lawful to worship it, must the first prohibition be, not to make it. Wherefore, in order to tear up by the roots the matter of idolatry, the divine law proclaims, * Thou shalt not make an idol ;' and, by adding ' nor the likeness of anything in heaven, in earth, or in the sea through the whole world,' He forbad these acts to the servants of God."* One passage from Tertullian, and another from * De Idolat., chap. iii. 126 IMAGE-WORSHIP. Minutius Felix, (whose name, therefore, though he lived in the following century, we have joined with Ter- tullian's in this chapter,) are quoted triumphantly by Bellarmin in proof that at all events the cross was venerated from the first. We have no doubt the si