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. Leo, however, dissatisfied with this luminous exposition of the precept in the decalogue, brought to a practical issue the important dispute, whether the worship of images ought to be maintained or abolished: and the result of the struggle was the ruin of his affairs in Italy and the complete establishment of catholic idolatry in the Western Patriarchate. Nor was A MIRACLE wanting, in this grand contest, to decide the orthodoxy of image-worship. For the purpose of recovering his Italian dominions, Leo invaded the Exarchate and prepared to besiege Ravenna. Upon this occasion, the women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms for the defence of their country: and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hardfought day, as the two armies alternately yielded and advanced, ▲ PHANTOM WAS SEEN, A VOICE WAS HEARD: and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory. The institution of an annual feast perpetuated THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the catholic arms, the Roman Pontiff convened a synod of ninety three bishops against the heresy of the Iconoclasts: and, with their consent, he pronounced a general excommunication against all, who, by word or deed, should

attack the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints'.

In this manner, did the second beast cause the deluded inhabitants of the Roman earth to make an image for the first beast: and, to what an extent the worship of that image was at length carried, is best shewn by the declaration of a Prelate, who, less cautious or more honest than certain of his apologetic brethren, has stoutly exhibited and explained and defended the idolatry of his Church in all its naked and unblushing deformity.

We must not only confess, says James Naclantas Bishop of Clugium, that the faithful in the Church worship BEFORE an image (as some over squeamish persons are wont to speak); but that, without the least scruple, THEY ADORE THE VERY IMAGE ITSELF, paying to it the SAME worship as they pay to its prototype. So that, if they worship the prototype with DIVINE HONOUR, they also worship the image with DIVINE HONOUR: or, if they worship the prototype with different degrees of subordinate adoration, they also worship the image with the same degrees.

Hist. of Decline, vol. ix. p. 112-141. It is not altogether unworthy of observation, that the precise word ɛikov, used by St. John, is the word employed to describe the images which receive the adoration of the apostate Church. Hence was formed the compound title of Iconoclast or the image-breaker, which was borne by the Emperor Leo and his party.

2 Ergo non solum fatendum est, fideles in ecclesia adorare CORAM imagine (ut nonnulli ad cautelam forte loquuntur), sed

This extraordinary decision of a learned Roman doctor, who seems to have been a perfect helluo of idolatry, was actually printed at Venice, not during the Cimmerian darkness of the middle ages, but in the reign of our own Elisabeth and after the torch of religious light had been rekindled at the Reformation: nor am I aware, that it ever incurred the censure of the Vatican.

(8.) The second beast had power to give life to the image, in order that the image should even speak.

As the pretended miracles of the ecclesiastical beast are simply called miracles; so the simulated life, which he bestowed upon the image, is simply denominated life. In each case, however, imposture is plainly implied, and ought doubtless to be understood'. St. John, I apprehend, beheld, in his vision, the image apparently discharging the functions of animal life; precisely as it seemed to discharge them in the eyes of those, who were induced to bow down before it for all the marvel

et ADORARE IMAGINEM sine quo volueris scrupulo; quin et EO illam venerantur cultu, quo et prototypon ejus: propter quod si illud habet adorare LATRIA, et illa LATRIA; si dulia vel hyperdulia, et illa pariter ejusmodi cultu adoranda est. Jac. Naclant. Episc. Clug. Comment. in Rom. i. cited in the Homily against Peril of Idolatry.

St. Paul, accordingly, tells us, in explicit terms, that the miracles, wrought by the man of sin, should be mere lying wonders or rank impositions upon the credulity of those who should be given up to a strong delusion. 2 Thess. ii. 9. See Farmer's Dissert. on Miracles, chap. iii. sect. 4. § IV, `

V.

lous stories, which are told respecting the consecrated images, are by no means to be rejected as mere fabrications. To the deluded populace they did appear both to speak and to move and to be instinct with life: for, in truth, the ridiculous puppets, which by the ecclesiastical beast were held forth to the blind adoration of the secular beast, were so contrived with internal springs as to be easily worked by a concealed operator; whose voice, at proper intervals, seemed to issue from the mouth of the miraculous image itself.

These juggling tricks were the boast of a profligate hierarchy and they employed them, with much success, in the promotion of idolatry'. At the time of the Reformation, the machinery, employed for such nefarious purposes, was, in many instances, actually discovered: and nothing tended so much to wean the people from their attachment to image-worship as the public exposure of the contemptible tricks employed by the popish ecclesiastics 2.

'See Jurieu's Contin. of the Accomp. of Proph. chap. xix. Her images, remarks M. Jurieu, have SPOKEN.

2 See Burnet's Hist. of the Reform. vol. i. p. 243. Similar mummeries have been exhibited even in the present generation. In the year 1796, upon the approach of the republican French, various miraculous appearances are asserted to have been observed at Rome. Pictures of Madonnas opened and shut their eyes images of saints altered their position: and crucifixes moved their eyelids. See Zouch on Prophecy, p. 180. and Phillpotto's Supplem. Letter, p. 22-38.

The rationale of these pretended miracles was doubtless the

: (9.) When the second beast had thus given apparent life to the image, he caused those to be slain who refused to worship it.

prevailing notion, that the divine energy of the saint, represented by the puppet, was physically or personally present in the puppet itself. As the existence of this paganising superstition is acknowledged and lamented by Erasmus (Erasm. Epist. lib. xxxi. epist. 47.): so is it openly avowed and defended, as ́a' matter of undoubted orthodoxy, by Peter de Medrano. I subjoin his own words, that our liberalising Protestants of the present day may see the doctrines inculcated by the Latin Clergy upon the Latin Laity.

Dicendum sit, concessum Deiparæ Domina privilegium assistendi, physicè et realiter, in aliquibus simulachris seu imaginibus-quod, in aliquibus simulachris seu imaginibus ipsius, PIE credatur, assistere, adesseque, personaliter, physicè, et realiter:-ut in illis debitas adorationes recipiat a fidelibus cultoribus. R. P. Petri de Medran. Rosetum Theologic. p. 311. Hispal. A. D. 1702. See Lewis's Life of Bp. Pecock, p. 79.

This strange notion accounts for the fact, that some of the dolls, which are decorated with the name of Madonnas, are deemed so much more holy and more influential than others. If, as the worthy Bishop of Aire would persuade us, images are, in the Roman Church, esteemed nothing more than useful aids to devout recollection; all images, under such a view of the question, must be alike: the use of no one in particular could be more beneficial than the use of any other of its fellows. But, in point of fact, this, as we all know, is by no means the case. Our Lady of this place is a far more important and influential personage, than our Lady of that place: and, as such, she receives from the faithful a much larger share of the debita adoratio recommended by Peter de Medrano. Now, on the modest theory of the Bishop of Aire, this could not possibly be the case: but the Pie credatur, enforced by the devout Peter, accounts