THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 437
cLarged the Christians that they made use of no images in the wor- ship of God, telhng them that therein they were hke tlie Persians, Scythians, Numidians, and Seres ; all which impious nations hated all images, as the Turks do at this day. To which discourse of his, Ori- gen, returning answer, grants that the Christians had uo images in their sacred v/orship, no more than had the barbarous nations men- tioned by Celsus; but withal adds the difterence that was between those and these, and tells you that their abstinence from image-wor- ship was on various accounts. And after he hath showed wherefore those nations received them not, he adds, " That Christians and Jews abstained from all sacred use of images, because of God's command, ' Thou shalt fear' (as he reads the text) ' the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve;' and, ' Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath:" and adds, that they were so far from pray- ing to the images, as the Pagans did, that, saith he, Ov ti/j[,o!)/mv to, dyuXfjMra (a thing expressly commanded in the Nicene conventicle); — " We do not give any honour at all to images, lest we should give countenance to the error of ignorant people, that there were some- what of Divinity in them;" with very much more to the same pur- pose, expressly condemning all the use of images in the worship of God, and openly testifying that there was no such usage among the Christians in those days heard of in the world. Arnobius or Minu- tius Felix acknowledgeth the same: " Cruces nee colimus nee opta- mus;" — " We do no more worship crosses than desire them;" and grants that Christians had " nulla nota simulachra," because no image could be made to or of Him whom alone they worshipped. What was the judgment of the Eliberine council I have before told you. Lactantius, in his Institut. ad Constant., lib. ii., by a happy anticipa- tion, answers all the arguments that you use to this day in defence of your image-worship, and concludes peremptorily, that " where there are any images, there is no religion;" showing how' perverse a thing it is that the image of a dead man should be worshipped by a living image of God. The time would fail me to relate the words of Euse- bius, Athanasius, Hilarius, Ambrosius, Cyrillus, Chrysostom, Epi- phanius, Jerome, Austin, and others, to the same purpose. I cannot but think that it is fully evident, to any one that consults antiquity, that the image use and worship, which is become the " tessera" of your church communion, by your espousing the canons and deter- minations of the second Nicene synod, was in part utterly unknown unto, and in part expressly condemned by, the whole primitive church for six lumdred years after Christ ; and that you have plainly, by your Tridentine decree and Nicene anathematisms, cut off yourselves from the communion of the catholic church of Christ, and all parti-
438 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVEKSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
cular assemblies that worship him in sincerity, for the space of some hundreds of years in the world.
Thus things went in the church of God before your Nicene con- vention. How did they succeed afterward? Did image- worship pre- sently prevail upon their determinations? or was that then the faith of the generality of the church of Christ which was declared by the fathers of that convention? Nothing less. No sooner was the rumour of this horrible innovation in Christian religion spread abroad in the world but than upon it there was a full assembly of three hundred bishops of the western provinces assembled at Frankfort in Germany, wherein the superstition and folly of the Nicene assembly was laid ojDen, their arguments confuted, their determinations rejected, and image-worship absolutely condemned as forbidden by the word of God, and contrary to the ancient, constant, known practice of the whole church of God.
And now, sir, as I said, you may begin to see what you have to do, if you intend to speak any thing to the purpose concerning your figures and images. You must take the decree of your council of Trent, and the Nicene canons therein confirmed, and prove, confirm, and vindicate them from the opposition made to them by Tertullian, Arnobius, Origen, Lactantius, the synod of Frankfort, and others of the ancients innumerable, by whom they are rejected and con- demned; and yet, when you have done so, if you are able so to do, your work is not one quarter at an end. You can make nothing of this business until you have confuted or burned the Scripture itself, wherein your image-making and image-worship is as fully condemned as it is possible any superstition or idolatry should be. Your present loose discourses, whereby you endeavour to possess the minds of un- wary men that you do not do that which indeed you do every day, and which almost all the world know that you do, and which you curse others for not doing, will not, with considering persons, redound at all unto your advantage.
2. That you may the better also discern what is incumbent on you, and expected from you the next time you talk of figures, I shall make bold to mind you of what is the doctrine of the chief masters and instructors of your church; from whence, certainly, we may better learn what the doctrine and practice of it is, than from one who dis- covers enough in what he says and writes to keep us from laying any great weight on his authority. Now, I confess that you do in this, as in sundry other points of your religion, give us an egregious speci- men of that consent and unity among yourselves which you so fre- quently boast of Raphael de Torre, in his Sum. Relig., qua3st. 94, artic. 2, disput. 6, dub. 5, gives us an account of five several opinions maintained by your doctors in this matter; of all which he rejects