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"adoration is to the Virgin, she hath wrought

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more miracles within these last seven or eight “hundred years, than God hath wrought since the "creation by Moses and the prophets, by Jesus "Christ and his apostles, and by all the saints

together. Her images have spoken, they have 66 sung, they have resisted the fire and the ham“mer, they have soared in the air like birds, they "have sweat blood, and oil and milk have run 'from them. Some of them have been turned into 'flesh; they have wept, lamented, groaned; they "have made the lame to walk, the blind to see, the "deaf to hear. They have cured all kinds of dis

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eases, and wrought all sorts of prodigies. For "these reasons, people will go to the end of the "world to visit these consecrated images. They "kiss*, fall down before them, and render them

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*Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees, "which have not-bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which "hath not kissed him" (1 Kings xix. 18). "And now they "sin more and more, and have made them molten images of “their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, "all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, let "the men that sacrifice kiss the calves:" that is the statues of Moloch and Baal (los. xiii. 2). The excuse, which Papists are wont to make for their idolatry, effectually proves them to be idolaters. They deny that they worship the images; asserting, that they only kiss them, and bow down before them, în token (as the council of Trent expresses it) of their “worship"ping the saints, whose likeness images do bear." What is this but explicitly acknowledging, that they worship dead men through the medium of certain fanciful representations of

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"an external worship, accompanied with a most "fervent internal devotion. They rub their chap"lets or beads, and their handkerchiefs, upon "these images; and wear about them these chap"lets and cloths, which have touched the images "of the Virgin; and believe, that they are relics "which have a virtue to preserve from all evils. "That which we have discoursed concerning the

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Virgin, may be applied to saints proportionably. "There is no folly or extravagance that we have "now related, but every order of monks say such "like of their founder and author: the Cordeliers "and Capuchins, of their St. Francis; the Jaco"bins, of their St. Dominic; and, in general of "all the pretended saints of their orders, they are "more holy than seraphim; they raise the dead; "they heal all diseases; the whole creation is sub"ject to them*."-Another of the Popish idols is the consecrated wafer or sacramental bread, the worship of which naturally followed the monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation. This likewise hath been honoured by its own proper miracles.

them? So perfectly does the idolatry of the revived papal beast resemble the idolatry of the old pagan beast that was wounded to death by the sword of the Spirit, that the ancient heathens gave precisely the same reason for worshipping their images, that the modern Papists do for worshipping theirs. Their language was, as we learn from Arnobius, "Not that brass, gold, silver, and the like materials of statues are gods; "but that through them the invisible gods are honoured and worshipped."

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* Cited by Whitaker, p. 341.

A saint,

A saint, named Malachy, was employed by the Pope to convert the Irish to the discipline and canons of the church of Rome; and, in order to further this laudable undertaking, he received, say the Papists, the power of working miracles in as eminent a degree as any of the ancient saints of the church. One of these miracles was the pu nishment by sudden death of a man, whom the saint could not convince of the real presence in the sacrament*. A yet more stupendous proof of the truth of this doctrine was vouchsafed to the foundress of the reformation of the discalced Carmelites in the sixteenth century. In one of her works, called The way of perfection, "she "declares that our Lord was, many times, pleased "to let her see him in the sacred host. In par❝ticular, going one day to receive the blessed sa"crament, she saw him in great majesty, in the "hands of the priest, in the host which he was

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going to administer to her. At the same time "she understood by a vision, that this same priest

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was in a state of sin, which troubled her ex<< Iceedingly. But, says she, our Lord himself "said unto me, that I should pray for him; and "told me, that he had suffered what I had seen, "that I might understand what power and force "the words of consecration have; and that God "would not be kept from thence, how wicked soever the priest were who pronounced themf.".

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* Whitaker's Comment. p. 393.

+ Ibid. p. 239.

For

For these enormous lies this woman was sainted. -In fine, the worship of images which began very early to infect the church, and which was first openly established by Boniface the fourth in the year 607, was ultimately confirmed by the second council of Nice, in the year 787. The decrees of this council, which is justly called by Mr. Mede the idolatrous council, contain some curious narratives, full of fabulous invention, adapted to the promotion of image-worship, the purpose for which this misnamed theopneust assembly met together*.

As for the manner in which they that dwelt upon the earth were induced by the two-horned beast to espouse the cause of image-worship, it has already been shewn in part by the preceding account of Popish nairacles wrought for that express purpose, and will yet further appear from the famous contest betweed Gregory the second, and the Emperor Leo respecting the worship of bodily representations of our Lord, his saints, and martyrs. The Emperor had suppressed idolatry at Constantinople and in the East, and attempted to do the same in his Italian dominions. Upon this, Gregory informs him, that he exceeds his proper commission by interfering in spiritual matters; and teaches him, that, although the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate, the more formidable weapon of excommunication is intrusted to

* Zouch on the Prophecies, p. 215, 216.

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the clergy, who will not spare a heretic even though he be seated upon a throne." You accuse "the catholics of idolatry," says he in one of his epistles to Leo, "and by the accusation you be

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tray your own impiety and ignorance." He then proceeds to point out to the undiscerning Emperor the distinction between pagan idols and Christian images. "The former were the "fanciful representations of phantoms or demons, "at a time when the true God had not mani"fested his person in any visible likeness. The "latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his "mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a "crowd of miracles, the innocence and merit of "this relative worship." The difference indeed between idols and images, hard as it is to be comprehended by the less subtle intellect of a heretic, is according to Gregory so clear, that the very children would be provoked to cast their hornbooks at the head of the imperial enemy of so catholic a mode of adoration, "You assault us, O "tyrant, with a carnal and military hand-You declare, with foolish arrogance, 1 will dispatch my orders to Rome; I will break in pieces the image of St. Peter-Are you ignorant, that the Popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East and the West? The <6 eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility: "and they revere, as a god upon earth, the "Apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. The remote and interior kingdoms of

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