ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 153
rious gTace !) do instantl}^ serve God in all good conscience day and night, and holding the Head, grow up into him who is the fulness of him that filleth all in all.
To close this discourse, and to come to that which he seems to love as a bear doth the stake, — the practice of the Romish church in the invocation and adoration of saints, — he tells us, to usher it in, two pretty stories out of antiquity ; the first, of the Jews, and last, of tlie Pagans. 1. For the Jews, " that they accused the Christians before the Roman emperors for three things : — that they had clianged the Sabbath ; that they worshipped images of the saints ; that they brought in a strange God named Jesus- Christ." What if they did so ? was all true that the Jews accused the Christians of? Besides, what is here about the invocation of saints? Somewhat, indeed, we have about pictures and images, which, it seems, are contrary to the Judai- cal law ; not a word do we meet with about their invocation of saints. But indeed this is a pretty midnight story to be told to bring child- ren asleep; as though the Jews durst accuse the Christians before Pagans for " having images and pictures," Avhen the Pagans were ready every day to destroy those Jews because they would have none. A likely matter, they would admit of their complaint against them that had them, or that the Jews had no more wit than to disadvan- tage themselves in their contest by such a complaint ! Besides, the whole msinuation is false. Neither did the Jews so-accuse them, nor had the Christians admitted any religious use of pictures or images in those days. And this their defence to the accusation of the Pagans, " that they rejected all images," makes as evident as if it were written by the sunbeams to this day. Being charged by the Pagans with an imageless religion, they everywhere acknowledged it, giving their reason why they neither did nor could admit of a religious use of any image at all. I presume our author knows this to be so ; and I know if he do not, he is a very unfit person to talk of antiquity.
2. Of the like nature is the story which he tells us of the things the Pagans laughed at the Christians for. Amongst these was " the Avorship of an ass's head : which shows," saith he, " the use and re- spect they had for images ; for the Jews had defamed Jesus Christ our Lord, whose head and half-portrait Christians used upon their altars, even as they do at this day, — amongst other things of his great simplicity and ignorance."^ So use men to talk, who either know not or care not what to say. I would gladly impute this story of
' The last clause is literally quoted from " Fiat Lux," but in such a way as to cause some misconception. It is there connected with the conduct of the Pagan who, " amongst other things of his great simplicity and ignorance," is said to have laughed at the Christians for their worship of the objects to which reference is made in the rest of the quotation. The clause, therefore, is quite irrelevant, and might have been omitted. — Ed.
15-i ANIMADVERSIOXS ON A TREATISE
the ass's head, and the Jews' accusation, to our author's simplicity and ignorance, because if I do not so, I shall be compelled to do it unto somewhat in him of a worse name ; and yet that by-insinuation of the use of " the head and half-portrait of our Saviour upon altars by the old Christians," before Constantine's days, of whom he speaks, will not allow me to lay all the misadventure of this tale upon ignor- ance. Surely he cannot but know that what he suggests is most notoriously false, and that he cannot produce one authentic testimony, no not one, of any such thing; whereas innumerable lie expressly against it, almost in all the preserved writings of those days. For the story of the ass's head : seeing, it seems, he knows not what I thought every puny scholar to be acquainted with, I hope he will give me leave to inform him that it was an imputation laid upon the Jews, not the Christians, and that the Christians were no otherwise concerned in the fable but as they were at any time mistaken to be Jews. The figment was invented long before the name of Christians was known in the world, and divulged before and after by as great wits as any were in the world, as Apion, Tacitus, Trogus, and others ; the whole rumour arising from their worshipping a golden calf in the wilderness, and afterward his imitation progeny at Dan and Bethel. The confutation of the lie by Josephus is known to all learned men, who tells Apion that " if he had not had the head of an ass, and the face of a dog, he would never have given credit unto or divulged so loud a lie." Little countenance, therefore, is our author like to obtain from this loud lie, invented against the Jews, to prove the worshipping of pictures and images among Christians; nor is that his business in hand, if he be pleased to remember himself, but the invocation of saints, which now at length he is resolved (but I see unwillingly) to speak unto.