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that one person was just as well qualified to lay it down as another? Or again, on the opposite hand, because he conceded all due authority to the learned in the law, would he think himself therefore bound to put a mere commentary, even if written by an ermined judge, upon the same footing as the law itself? Would he admit an exposition, on however high authority it might rest, which was plainly contradictory, or which palpably militated against common sense? Because some points are of less clear explication, does it therefore follow that no moral certainty can be attained?

Thou shalt not commit murder; says the law of the land. Now, if any body of men were to lay it down as the undoubted sense of the law, that it was illegal indeed to shed blood, but that it was perfectly justifiable to confine a man until he was starved to death should we receive their comment, and forthwith deem all those lawyers heretical and schismatical who presumed to differ from them?

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Thou shalt not worship the similitude of any thing, either celestial or terrestrial or aquatic; says the law of God. True," replies an orthodox teacher of the Romish school, "nothing can be more impious and more abominable than idolatry; but, provided only you call the statue of a saint an image and not an idol, you may pray to it as long "and as often as you please: this is the sense of the "Catholic Church; and, according to the golden "rule of St. Vincent, you must apply it to the Scrip66 tures, as a rule to a line, and as a clue to con"duct

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"duct us in this labyrinth of opinions: if however you will not receive this catholic exposition of the very obscure and ambiguous text before us, you are a manifest heretic and sehismatic.'

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To so luculent a gloss upon what we must all confess to be a locus vexatissimus, a gloss for which I believe (but I speak with due submission to the better informed Romanist) the Catholic Church is indebted to no less a personage than Pope Gregory II*: to this soduculent gloss we protestant interpreters can only reply, that, though we venture not to deem ourselves infallible expositors of Scripture, yet moral truth does sometimes approximate so closely to ma

"You accuse the Catholics of idolatry," says Pope Gregory to the mistaken Leo Isauricus; "and, by the accusation, you "betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our style " and arguments.

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What then are the formidable arguments, which are to cover the undiscerning iconoclast with confusion? Neither more nor less than these.

The pagans were undoubted idolaters; because they worshipped certain statues, which the sense of the Catholic Church denominates idols: but Gregory and his adherents were clearly not idolaters; because they only worshipped certain statues, which the sense of the Catholic Church denominates images. Gregor. Epist. apud Act, Concil. Nicen. vol. viii. p. 651-674. cited by Gibbon.

Whether the ingenious pontiff were absolutely the inventor of this irresistible argument, which must needs put every obstinate heretic to the blush, I cannot positively affirm: but he had certainly the merit of using it, with no small dexterity, against his imperial opponent.

thematical,

thematical, that we know not how to deem ourselves mistaken in supposing a prohibition to worship ANY thing beside God, a prohibition too which specially particularises the bowing down before any species of statuary; in supposing this identical prohibition to mean, that the statue of a saint or of the holy Virgin or of Jesus Christ, provided only it be called an image and not an idol, may be safely and even laudably worshipped *.

(3.) The

The modern Papists, like Gregory of old, deny the accusation of idolatry. This they can only do on Gregory's plea, that to worship an image is quite a different thing from worshipping an idol for the orthodoxy of image-worship was established by the council held under Pope Stephen III; and, as Bp. Walmesley assures us, "when a dogmatical point is to be deter"mined, the Catholic Church speaks but ONCE, and her decree ❝is IRREVOCABLE." Gen. Hist. p. 224. The decision of that theopneust council ran, as follows.

"The holy images of Christ, the blessed Virgin, and other "saints, ARE WORTHY OF HONOUR AND WORSHIP'

Accordingly, that sound expositor of Scripture, James Naclantus bishop of Clugium, thus undertakes to elucidate St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

"Therefore it is not only to be confessed, that the faithful in "the Church do worship before an image (as some too cautious "souls may perhaps be inclined to speak), but THEY LIKEWISE "WORSHIP THE VERY IMAGE ITSELF WITHOUT ANY SCRUPLE

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OR DOUBT AT ALL. Nay more: they worship the image WITH THE VERY SAME KIND OF WORSHIP as its original pro"totype. So that, if the prototype be worshipped with "LATRIA, or THAT PECULIAR AND SUPREME WORSHIP WITH WHICH JEHOVAH IS ADORED; the image must also be wor"shipped with LATRIA: if with Dulia or Hyperdulia, that is to

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(3.) The Romanists, I know, will tell us, that they do not pray to the image, but to the person whom it represents.

Their

This however does not mend the matter. demonolatrous predecessors of the pagan school, as we are expressly taught by themselves, did not absolutely pray to the block out of which the image of Jupiter was formed, but to the god represented by the image and supposed by a certain divine energy to animate it *: and we have yet to learn, even if the decalogue had not strictly forbidden prostration before ANY image, on what scriptural authority or on what sound Christian principles the Romanists invoke the saints and the virgin Mary †.

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say with the less or more intense worship which is paid to the "saints or the Virgin; then must the image also be worshipped "with Dulia or Hyperdulia."

It seems, that some over squeamish persons even in the Romish Church were subject to qualms as to the orthodoxy of image-worship: but James Naclantus assures them, that they may safely swallow the worship of the very images themselves without any scruple or doubt or roundabout explanation.

* Such we learn to have been the case from Porphyry and Jamblichus and Hermes Trismegistus: so that Arnobius does not belie them, when he gives exactly the same account. See Mede's Apost. of the latter times. chap. v. p. 632. See also Æneid. lib. ii. ver. 171-174. from which the Romish miraclemongers seem to have taken some hints for the benefit of the Virgin's statues. See Whit. on the Rev. p. 341.

+ Can they justify their practice, I will not say by a direct quotation from Scripture, but even by a fair train of inductive reasoning from any single text? Yet have they cruelly persecuted hundreds to death because they would not bow down before senseless stocks and stones.

Our

Our modern Papists in England, ashamed (I sup pose) of the gross idolatry of their fathers and their Spanish contemporaries, will say, that they only beg of the saints and the Virgin to intercede for them, just as we ask the intercessory prayers of any pious living man.

But this will not serve their turn; even if they could shew the same scriptural authority for asking the prayers of the departed, as we can shew for asking the prayers of the living. Supplications of a very different stamp are yet extant, in which the Virgin and the saints are directly and unreservedly invoked to give what God alone can bestow *. Do

they

* I cite the two following, out of many similar prayers, to shew, that intercession alone is not that which the Romanists supplicate from their demon-gods.

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"Comfort a sinner, and give not thine honour to a stranger or "the cruel; I pray thee, Queen of heaven. Have me excused "with Christ thy son, whose anger I dread; for against thee only have I sinned. O virgin Mary, be not estranged from "me, thou who art full of heavenly grace. Be the guardian of 66 my heart; impress me with the fear of God; bestow on me in66 tegrity of life; and give me honesty of manners: and grant, "that I may avoid sin and love what is righteous, O virgin "sweetness."

To those, who should use this prayer, Pope Celestine granted three hundred days of pardon.

"We now beg you, patron, industrious preacher, holy Alban, "who art our true glory, loose the crimes of thy servants by thy "supplications." Coll. et Hymn. in usum Sar. Paris 1520. apud Burnet's Records. numb. 29.

Such blasphemy might be renounced by the modern Papists;

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