custom of depositing the remains of the saints under altars, and burning incense and lamps before their tombs.1
Remarks.
1. From all this it appears that the Romanists worship im- ages in the same way that the heathen of old did, and pagans of our own day still do. They " bow down to them and serve them." They pay them all the external homage which they render to the persons they are intended to represent.
2. The explanations and defence of such worship are the same in both cases. The heathen recognized the fact that the images made of gold, silver, wood, or marble were lifeless and insensible in themselves ; they admitted that they could not see, or hear, or save. They attributed no inherent virtue or supernatural power to them. They claimed that the homage paid to them terminated on the gods which they represented ; that they only worshipped before the images, or at most through them. So far as the Greeks and Romans are concerned, they were less reverential to the mere image, and claimed far less of the supernatural in con- nection with their use.
3. Both among the heathen and the Romanists, for the unedu- cated people the images themselves were the objects of worship. It would be hard to find in any heathen author such justification of image- worship as the Romish theologians put forth. What heathen ever said that the same homage was due to the image of Jupiter as to Jupiter himself? This Thomas Aquinas says of the images of Christ and of the saints. Or what heathen ever has said, as Bellarmin says, that although the homage to be paid
1 In the Decreta et Articuli Jidei jurandi per Episcopos et alios Pralatos in susceptione muneris consecrationis, publicati Roma in Consistorio ap. 8. Marcum d. IV. Septbr. a. MDLX., are the following articles: " Virgo Dei genitrix, Angeli, et Sancti, religiose coli debent, et invocari, ut eorum meritis, et precibus juvemur.
" Crux Christi, et imagines, ac quaecunque attigerunt, adoranda sunt, juxta Ecclesiae catholicse doctrinam, et fidem.
" Deiparae Virginis Mariae, angelorum, et sanctorum sunt imagines adorandse (id est in honore habendae, as it reads in the margin) turn corpora, et reliquiaB quaevis." See Streit- wolf, Libri Symbolici Ecclesias Catholicce, Gottingen, 1846, vol. ii. p. 328.
Notwithstanding such authoritative declarations, Bellarmin enumerates it as among the " mendacia" of the Centuriators and of Calvin that they say that the Catholics " Non solum sanctos Christi loco adorant, sed etiam eorum ossa, vestes, calceos, et simulacra; " and asks: " At quis unquam Catholicorum reliquias invocavit? Quis unquam auditus est in precibus, aut litaniis dixisse: « Sanctae reliquias, orate pro me? ' Et quis easdem un- quam divino honore affecit, vel Christi loco adoravit: nos enim reliquias quidem hono- ramus, et osculamur ut sacra pignora patronorum nostrorum: sed necadoramus ut Deum nee invocamus ut sanctos, sed minore cultu veneramur, quam sanctorum spiritus, nedum quam Deum ipsum." De Ecclesia Triumphante, lib. ii., De Reliquiis Sanctorum, cap. ii.; Disputationes, edit. Paris, 1608, vol. ii. pp. 745, e, 746, a.
802 PART in. Ch. XIX. — THE LAW.
to the image is not strictly and properly the same as that due to its prototype, it is nevertheless improperly and analogically the same ; the same in kind although not in degree ? What can the common people know of the difference between proprie and im- proprie ? They are told to worship the image, and they worship it just as the heathen worshipped the images of their gods. As the Bible pronounces and denounces as idolatry not only the wor- ship of false gods, but also the worship of images, ■ the bowing down to them and serving them,' it is clear that the Roman Church is as wholly given to idolatry as was Athens when visited by Paul.
4. The moral and religious effects of image worship are al- together evil. It is enough to prove that it is evil in its conse- quences that God has forbidden it, and threatened to visit the worshippers of idols with his severe judgments. It degrades the worship of God. It turns off the minds of the people from the proper object of reverence and confidence, and leads the un- educated masses to put their trust in gods who cannot save.
5. As to the worship of relics, it is enough to say, (a.) That it has no support from Scripture. The outline of Bellarmin's arguments given above, is sufficient to show that the Bible fur- nishes no apology for this superstitious custom. (5.) What pass for relics, in the great majority of cases, are spurious. There is no end to the deceptions practised on the people in this regard. There are, it is said, enough fragments of the cross exhibited in different sanctuaries, to build a large ship ; and there are innumer able nails which are reverenced as the instruments of our Lord's torture. Bones not only of ordinary men, but even of brutes, are set before the people as relics of the saints.1 In one of the cathedrals of Spain there is a magnificent ostrich feather preserved in a gorgeous casket, which the priests affirm fell from the wing of the angel Gabriel. Romanists themselves are obliged to resort to the doctrine of u economics " or pious fraud, to justify these palpable impositions on the credulity of the people. Of such impositions the most flagrant example is the blood of St. Janua- rius, which is annually liquefied in Naples. (<?.) Ascribing mirac-
1 Luther in the Smalcald Articles, says: " Reliquiae sanctorum refertae multis mendaciis, ineptis et fatuitatibus. Canum et equorum ossa ibi saepe re porta sunt." In German it reads thus: " Das Heiligthum (reliquiaB sanctorum), darinne so manche offentliche Liigen unci Narrenwerk erfunden, von Hunds- unci Rossknochen, das auch um solcher Biiberei willen, das der Teufel gelacht hat, langst sollte verdammt worden seyn, wenn gleich etwas Gutes daran ware, dazu auch ohne Gottes Wort, weder geboten noch gerathen, ganz un nothig urn! unnutz Ding ist." Pars n. art. ii. 22.
In the church at Wittenberg there hangs an original portrait of Luther under which is written, " All his words were thunderbolts."