' The words aic extracted trom Can. et Dec. Cone. Trid. sess. 25. The sentence is obscure, as it stands above, from the omission of the following words after "credatm-:" • — ^" inesse aliqua in iis divinitas vel vii-tus, propter quam sint colcndie, vel quod ab eis sit aliquid pctenduni, vel quod tiducia in imaginibus sit figcnda veluti olim ficbat a gen- tibus qnee in idolis spcm suam coUocabant; scd ." — Ed.
THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 429
SO pictured, whereby all your pictures and images of God the Father as an old man, of the Trinity as one person with three faces, and the Holy Ghost as a dove, are approved. 2. Religious worship of images is confirmed. "Due honour and veneration," or worship, " is to be given unto them," saith the council. Now, it is not mutual compliment they are discoursing about. There is no such intercourse between their images and them ordinarily, though sometimes civil salutations have passed between them; nor is it any token of civil subjection, for images have no eminency or authority of that kind: but it is divine or religious veneration and worship Avhich they affirm is to be assigned unto them. 3. They say that " due honour and veneration," that is religious, is to be assigned unto them, but what in especial that honour and worship is, they do not determine: whether it be the same that is due to the sampler, as some, the most of your divines think, or whether it be an honour of some inferior nature, as others contend, " pugnant ipsi nepotesque," the synod leaves them where it found them, sufficiently at variance among themselves. 4. They farther assert the worship that is given by tliem to images to be re- ligious or divine, in that they affirm the honour done to the image is referred unto the prototype which it doth represent. Now, suppose this be Jesus Christ himself: I suppose that they will grant that all the honour we yield to him by any way or means is divine or religi- ous; and therefore so, consequently, that which they would have to be given unto his image (that is, a stock or stone, which they fancy so to be) must be so also. Now, sir, you may see from hence what it is that you are to speak unto and to defend, or else to hold your peace in this matter. And I shall yet make it a little more plain unto you. Your Trent councU approves and commends the second coun- cil of Nice, as that which taught and confirmed that doctrine and practice about images and tlieir worship which your church allows. I shall, therefore, briefly let you know what was the judgment of that council, and what was the doctrine and practice confirmed in it, under many dreadful anathematisms.
This second of Nice, or pseudo-synod of the Greeks, as it is called by the council of Frankfort, whereunto we are sent by the Tridentine fathers to be instructed in the due worship) of images, was assembled by the authority of Irene the empress, a proud imperious woman, and her son Constantino, whose eyes she afterward put out, and thrust him into a monastery, in the year 490. Tharasius was then patriarch of Constantinople, and Hadrian the first bishop or pope of Rome. This man, most zealously or superstitiously addicted unto the worship of images, and that contrary to the judgment of most of the western churches, as soon afterward appeared in the council holden at Frankfort by the authority of Charles the Great, had a par-
430 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
ticular advantage both over the empress and the patriarch of Constan- tinople. The eastern empire being then greatly weakened by its own intestine divisions, and pressed on all sides by the Saracens, the em- press began to entertain some hopes of relief from the French in the west, whose power was then grown very great ; and to that end soli- cited a marriage for her son with the daughter of Charles the Oreat, and supposed that she might be helped therein by the mediation of Hadrian, — the bishops of Rome having no small hand in the promo- tion of the attempt of Pepin and Charles the Great for the crown of France, and afterward for the conquest of Italy and Germany. And, besides, she was a woman herself zealously addicted to that kind of superstition which Hadrian had espoused, as having in the time of Leo her husband kept her images in private, contrary unto what she had solemnly sworn unto her father, as Credenus relates in his annals. As for Tharasius, he was, contrary to all ecclesiastical canons, of a mere layman, at once, "per saltum," made patriarch of Constantinople ; which Hadrian, upon his first hearing of, greatly exclaimed against, and refused to receive him into the society of patriarchs upon his sending of his significatory epistle. This is fully declared in the epistle of Hadrian, extant in the acts of the council. But yet after- ward, bethinking himself how useful this man might be imto his design in getting the worship of images established in tlie east, he declares that if he will use means to get the '' heresy," as he called it, of the image-opposers extirpated, and their veneration established, he would consent to his election and consecration, or else not. Finding how the matter was like to go with him, this lay-patriarch undertakes the work, and effectually prosecutes it in this synod, assembled at Nice by the authority of Irene the empress and her son Constantine. But by the way, when the council was assembled, he omitted not the opportunity of improving his own interest, getting himself styled Oecumenical or Universal Patriarch; which Anastasius Bibliothe- carius, in his dedication of his translation of the Acts of this Con- vention unto John VIII., bewails, and ascribes it unto the flattery of the Greeks. The frauds, forgeries, and follies of this council, and ignorance and dotage of the fathers of it, have been sufficiently by , others discovered. Our present concernment is only to inquire, — first. What they taught concerning image-worsliip; and, secondly, Hoiu they proved what they taught; seeing unto them we are sent by the Tridentine decree to be instructed in your faith in this matter.