are to be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration are to be given to them.'*

A. D. 395.

authority

quity op

the errors

We may talk of the authority and the antiquity Apostolical of the Fathers, but if authority is to be re- and antispected, what authority should weigh heavier posed to with us than that of the apostolical age itself? of the 4th And if the Fathers of the Church claim our defer- century. ence, who are to set themselves up against the opinion and the express injunction of the inspired Fathers of the first Christian Church? How can any Church of later days annul the sacred canons of those, who had the mind of Christ, and the spirit of the Holy Ghost? Everything that can be said to us on the authority of the Church, or on antiquity, and on the opinions of the Fathers and Councils, or even on Tradition, must, of necessity, by all the laws of sound argument, reason, and religion, enjoin us to hear the Church of the first century speaking to us in the Gospels, in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, and in the canonical Epistles (which have received the sanction of the holy Catholic Church, that is, the whole congregation of Christian men dispersed throughout the whole world) before the Church of any after-period whatever. So thought Vigilantius, as soon as his mind was free to take a clear view of the subject; and therefore he then protested against saint worship, image worship, and relic worship, and all the old wives' fables' connected therewith.

And Vigilantius was not the only witness of his

* Creed of Pope Pius IV.

A. D. 395.

Epipha

nius.

time against the fatal corruptions, which were stealing into Christian sanctuaries, under the pretence of teaching the illiterate worshipper by means of pictorial descriptions. I beg the reader to remember the anecdote related of Epiphanius, who avowed and justified his hasty destruction of a painted curtain hanging before a shrine, because it was ornamented with a picture of Jesus Christ, or of some saint, he cared not which. 'I tore it down, and I rent it,' said he,' because it presented to view the image of a man in a Church of Christ, contrary to the authority of Scriptures. Cum ergo hoc vidissem in ecclesia Christi contra autoritatem Scripturarum hominis pendere imaginem, scidi illud, &c.'*

In another passage, speaking of the same profane use of pictures, Epiphanius declared, that it was contrary to the Christian religion: contra religionem nostram. '† The letter, addressed to John of Jerusalem, from which this account is taken, and in which Epiphanius protested that the use of images and pictures (for he expressly calls the picture of a man an image) is contrary to Scripture, and contrary to the Christian religion, was written in the year 396. It was the epistle of one bishop of the Christian Church to another; and yet at this very period, Paulinus was setting up images and pictures in his Church at Nola, and his authority for the practice has ever since been triumphantly appealed to by the Latin Church. So much for the consistency of Romanism ! * Hier. Op. IV. 828. + Ibid. 829.

And so much for the unity, and the wisdom of the
fourth century, when one saint practised what an-
other condemned! The uncompromising Chris-
tians of the primitive ages, and those who followed
their example, sternly refused every compli-
ance which looked like the most distant ap-
proach to the forbidden thing, but the pliant Pau-
linus, and the indulgent clergy of his age baited,
instead of springing, the trap, which was so likely
to catch the unwary. Romanists have since
stopped short of nothing; they have even pre-
sumed to pourtray in their churches Him, who has
said, "To what will ye liken me?" and there
are soft and crafty counsellors now among our-
selves, who would persuade us that we may safely
make use of pictures, and such like prohibited
helps to devotion, and who would tell us that
painted representations of Christ, and the Virgin,
and the saints, are not included in the com-
mandment against idolatry. But the honest and
plain spoken fathers of the Reformation, have pro-
claimed in the Homily against the peril of Ido-
latry, that Images came first from the Gentiles to
us Christians; '* and that they teach no things
of God, of our Saviour Christ, and of his saints,
but lies and errors, and change the truth into a
lie.'
No true representation can be given of
Christ, it must be a misrepresentation, a caricature.
There is no simpler test to be made of the ab-
surdity and falsehood of image- worship, than to

* Citing Eusebius and Jerome.

A. D.

396.

A. D.

396.

set people of different quarters of the world to make similitudes of adorable objects, and then to observe how the European would turn away in disgust from the woolly-haired, and thick-lipped Jesus of the Hottentot; and how the coppercoloured face, and Tartar brow of a Chinese Virgin Mary, would inspire anything but reverence or devout admiration in the mind of an Italian votary. A negro's effigy of the first or second Person of the Holy Trinity would absolutely be an object of horror to a white man!

I have not been able to make out the exact time or manner, in which pictures and images were first introduced as objects of adoration into Christian sanctuaries, but the language of Epiphanius, when he maintains that the practice was contrary to the authority of Scripture and of the Church, corresponds with that of his great contemporary Augustine, and convinces me that it was a profane novelty of the fourth century. I know,' said Augustine, that there are many worshippers of sepulchres and pictures, and that there are many who feast most luxuriously at the graves of the dead. And I mean to show in another volume how vain, and pernicious, and sacrilegious these practices are. But I admonish you not to reproach the Catholic Church, and to blame her for the practices of men, whom she condemns, and is constantly endeavouring to correct.' *

* Novi multos esse sepulchrorum et picturarum adoratores: novi multos esse qui luxuriosissime super mortuos bibant ; et epulas cadaveribus exhibentes super sepultos se ipsos sepeliant, et voracitates ebri

Jerome on the other hand intimates that the veneration of sepulchres and relics was universal at the end of the fourth century. Martyrum ubique sepulcra veneramur, et sanctam favillam oculis apponentes si liceat etiam ore contingimus.' Op. Hier. 4, 550.

A. D. 396.

NOTE TO CHAPTER IX.

Fleury's account of this proceeding of Epiphanius is worth transcribing from the Oxford translation, to exhibit the sophistry of Romanism. The Oxford Editor's apologetic note is also curious, inasmuch as it attributes the exclusion of images from the early churches not to obedience to God's word, but to abhorrence of pagan idols.

'At the end of his (Epiphanius) letter are these words :-" Moreover, I have been informed, that some have murmured against me, because when we were going to the holy place named Bethel, in order to perform the Collect there with you, on coming to the village Anablatha, and seeing there, as I passed, a lamp lighted, I asked what place it was, and on being told it was a church, I went in to pray accordingly. I found a curtain fastened to the door of this church, upon which was painted a picture, to represent Christ or some saint, for I do not perfectly remember the subject. Having, therefore, seen the image of a man exposed to view in the church of Christ against the authority of Scripture, I tore the curtain, and advised those who kept that place rather to wrap the dead body of some poor man in it, for his burial. They murmured and said, If he must tear our curtain, he ought at least to give us another in exchange.' When I heard this I promised to do it, and accordingly I now send the best I could meet with, and I beg you to order the priests of the place to receive it, and to forbid

etatesque suas deputent religioni. . . Sed et illa quam vana sint, quam noxia, quam sacrilega, et quemadmodum a magna parte vestrum, atque adeo penè ab omnibus vobis non observentur, alio volumine ostendere institui. Nunc vos illud admoneo, ut aliquando, Ecclesiæ catholicæ maledicere desinatis, vituperando mores hominum, quos et ipsa condemnat et quos quotidie tanquam malos filios corrigere studet.' -Aug. de Moribus Eccl. c. 34.