\ 100. THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 453
decided stand against the abuse, without, however, going to the extent of the iconoclasts in the East.
In the course of time the Latin church went just as far if not further in practical image- worship as the Eastern church after the seventh oecumenical council. Gregory II. stoutly resisted the iconoclastic decrees of the Emperor Leo, and made capital out of the controversy for the independence of the papal throne. Gregory III. followed in the same steps, and Hadrian sanc tioned the decree of the second council of Nicaea. Image- worship cannot be consistently opposed without surrendering the worship of saints.
The same theories and parties reappeared again in the age of the Reformation : the Roman as well as the Greek church ad hered to image-worship with an occasional feeble protest against its abuses, and encouraged the development of fine arts, especially in Italy ; the radical Reformers (Carlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox) renewed the iconoclastic theory and removed, in an orderly way, the pictures from the churches, as favoring a refined species of idolatry and hindering a spiritual worship ; the Lutheran church (after the example set by Luther and his friend Lucas Krauach), retained the old pictures, or replaced them by new and better ones, but freed from former superstition. The modern progress of art, and the increased mechanical facili ties for the multiplication of pictures have produced a change in Protestant countries. Sunday School books and other works for old and young abound in pictorial illustrations from Bible history for instruction; and the masterpieces of the great re ligious painters have become household ornaments, but will never be again objects of worship, which is due to God alone.
NOTES.
The Council of Trent, Seas. XXV. held Dec. 1563, sanctions, together with the worship of saints and relics, also the "legitimate use of images" in the following terms : " Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and re tained particularly in temples, and that due honor and veneration are to
454 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
be given them ; not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshiped ; or that anything is to be asked of them ; or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in idols ; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent ; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ, and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear : as, by the decrees of Councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicaea, has been defined against the opponents of images." The Profession of the Tridentine Faith teaches the same in art. IX. (See Schaff, Creeds, II. p. 201, 209).
The modern standards of the Eastern Church reiterate the decision of the seventh (Ecumenical Council. The Synod of Jerusalem, or the Confession of Dositheus, includes pictures of Christ, the mother of God, the saints and the holy angels who appeared to some of the patriarchs and prophets, also the symbolic representation of the Holy Spirit under the form of a dove, among the objects of worship (rrpoaKwov/iev KO.I n/uu/nev KOI amraZ6(ie$a). See Schaff, I. c. II. 436. The Longer Russian Cate chism, in the exposition of the second commandment (Schaff, II. 527), thus speaks of this subject:
" What is an icon (E'IKUV] ?
" The word is Greek, and means an image or representation. In the Orthodox Church this name designates sacred representations of our Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate, his immaculate Mother, and his saints.
" Is the use of holy icons agreeable to the second commandment ?
" It would then, and then only, be otherwise, if any one were to make gods of them ; but it is not in the least contrary to this commandment to honor icons as sacred representations, and to use them for the religious remembrance of God's works and of his saints ; for when thus used icons are books, writen with the forms of persons and things instead of letters. (See Greg. Magn. lib. ix. Ep. 9, ad Seren. Epis.).
"What disposition of mind should we have when we reverence icons?
" While we look on them with our eyes, we should mentally look to God and to the saints, who are represented on them."