Chapter 17: Images

Images. SECT. 24.

The next excellency of the Roman Church, which so exceedingly delighted our Author in his travails, is their images. It was well for him that he travailed not in the days of the Apostles, nor for 4 or 500 years after their decease. Had he done so, and, in his choice of a religion, would have been influenced by images and pictures, he had undoubtedly turned Pagan; (or else a Gnostic; for those pretended Christians, indeed wretches worse than Pagans, as Epiphanius informs us, had got images of Christ, which, they said, were made in the days of Pontius Pilate, if not by him.) Their temples being richly furnished and adorned with them, while Christian oratories were utterly destitute of them. To forward also his inclination, he would have found them not the representations of ordinary men, but of famous heroes, renowned throughout the whole world, for their noble achievements and inventions of things necessary to human life; and those portrayed to the life, in the performance of those actions which were so useful to mankind, and by which they had stirred up just admiration of their virtue in all men. Moreover, he would have found their learned men profound philosophers, devout priests, and virgins, contemning the Christians for want of those helps to devotion towards God, which in those images they enjoyed; and objecting to them their rashness, fury, and ignorance in demolishing of them. As far as I can perceive by his good inclination to this excellency of religion (the imagery of it) had he lived in those days, he would have as easily bid adieu to Christianity, as he did in these to Protestantism.

But the excellent thoughts, he tells us that such pictures and images are apt to cast into the minds of men, makes them come to our Mount Zion, the City of the living God, to celestial Jerusalem, and society of angels, and so onward, as his translation somewhat uncouthly, and improperly renders that place of the Apostle (Hebrews 12). A man indeed distraught of his wits, might possibly entertain some such fancies upon his entering of a house, full of fine pictures and images; but that a sober man should do so, is very unlikely. It is a sign how well men understand the Apostle's words, when they suppose themselves furthered in their meditation on them by images and pictures; and yet it were well, if this abuse were all the use of them in the Romish Church. I wish our Author would inform us truly, whether many of those whom he tells us, he saw so devout in their churches, did not lay out a good part of their devotion upon the fine pictures, and images he saw them fall down before. Images began first in being ignorant people's books, but they ended in being their gods or idols. Alas poor souls! they know little of those many curious windings, and turnings of mind, through the meanders of various distinctions, which their masters prescribe to preserve them from idolatry, in that veneration of images, which they teach them; when it is easy for them to know, that all they do in this kind, is contrary to the express will and command of God. But that our Author may charge home upon his countrymen, for removing of images out of churches, he tells us, that it is the judgment of all men, that the violation of an image, redounds to the prototype. True, provided it be an image rightly and duly destined to represent him that is intended to be injured. But suppose, any man against the express command of a King, should make an image of him, on purpose to represent him deformed and ridiculous to the people, would he interpret it an injury, or dishonour done to him, if any one, out of allegiance, should break or tear such an image in pieces? I suppose, a wise and just King would look on such an action as a rewardable piece of service; and would in time take care for the punishment of him that made it. The hanging of traitors in effigie, is not to cast a dishonour upon the person represented, but a declaration of what he does deserve, and is adjudged to. The Psalmist indeed complains, that they broke down the [illegible], or carved works, in the walls and ceiling of the Temple; but that those apertiones, or incisurae, were not pictures and images for the people to adore and venerate, or were appointed for their instruction, if our Author knows not, he knows where to repair to be instructed, namely, to any comment, old or new, extant on that Psalm. And it is no small confidence to use Scripture out of the Old Testament, for the religious use of images, of men's finding out and constitution; whereas they may find as many testimonies for more gods; enough indeed, wherein the one are denied, and the other forbidden.

Nor will the ensuing contemplation of the means whereby we come to learn things we know not, namely by our senses, from where images are suited to do that by the eye, which sermons do by the ear, and that more effectually, yield him any relief in his devotion for them. There is this small difference between them, that the one means of instruction is appointed by God himself; the other, that is pretended to be so, absolutely forbidden by him.

And these fine discourses of the activity of the eye above the ear, and its faculty of administering to the fancy; are but pitiful weak attempts for men that have no less work in hand, than to set up their own wisdom in the room of, and above, the wisdom of God.

And our Author is utterly mistaken, if he think, the sole end of preaching the cross and death of Christ, is to work out such representations to the mind, as oratory may effect for the moving of corresponding affections. This may be the end of some men's rhetorical declamations about it. If he will a little attentively read over the epistles of Paul, he will discern other ends in his preaching Christ, and him crucified, which the fancies he speaks of, have morally little affinity with all.

But what if Catholics having nothing to say for their practice in the adoration of images, seeing the Protestants have nothing but simple pretences for their removal out of churches; these simple pretences are express reiterate commands of God: which what value they are of with the Romanists, when they lay against their ways and practice, is evident. The arguments of Protestants when they deal with the Romanists, are not directed against this, or that, part of their doctrine or practice about images, but the whole; that is, the making of them, some of God himself, the placing of them in churches, and giving them religious adoration; not to speak of the abominable miscarriages of many of their devotionists in teaching, or of their people in committing with them as gross idolatry, as ever any of the ancient heathens did; which shall at large be proved, if our author desires it. Against this principle, and whole practice, one of the Protestants' pretences, as they are called, lies in the second Commandment, wherein the making of all images for any such purpose, is expressly forbidden: But the same God, say they, commanded Cherubims to be made, and placed over the Ark. He did so; but I desire to know, what the Cherubs were images of; and that they would show, he ever appointed them to be adored, or to be the immediate objects of any veneration, or to be so much as historical means of instruction, being always shut up from the view of the people, and representing nothing that ever had a real subsistence in rerum natura. Besides, who appointed them to be made? As I take it, it was God himself, who did therein no more contradict himself, than he did, when he commanded his people to spoil the Egyptians, having yet forbid all men to steal. His own special dispensation of a law constitutes no general rule. So that (whoever are blind, or fools) it is certain, that the making of images for religious veneration, is expressly forbidden of God to the sons of men. But alas! they were foreign images, the ugly faces of Moloch, Dagon, Ashtaroth; he forbad not his own. Yes, but they are images or likenesses of himself, that in the first place, and principally, he forbids them to make, and he enforces his command upon them from hence, that when he spoke to them in Horeb, they saw no manner of similitude (Deuteronomy 5:15), which surely concerned not the ugly face of Moloch. And it is a very pretty fancy of our author, and inferior to none of the like kind, that we have met with, that they have in their Catholic churches, both, 'You shall not make graven images,' and 'You shall make graven images;' because they have the image of Saint Peter, not of Simon Magus; of Saint Bennet, or good Saint Francis, not of Luther and Calvin. I desire to know, where they got that command, 'You shall make images?' — in the original and all the translations, lately published in the Biblia Polyglotta, it is, 'You shall not.' So it is in the writings of all the ancients; as for this new command, 'You shall make graven images,' I cannot guess from where it comes; and so shall say no more about it. Only I shall ask him one question in good earnest, desiring his resolution the next time he shall think fit to make the world merry with his witty discourses; and it is this. Suppose the Jews had not made the images of Jannes and Jambres, their Simon Maguses, but of Moses and Aaron; and had placed them in the Temple and worshipped them as Papists do the images of Peter or the Blessed Virgin, whether he thinks it would have been approved of God or no. I fear, he will be at a stand. But I shall not discourage him, by telling him before hand, what will befall him, on what side soever he determines the question.

He will not yet have done, but tells us, The Precept lies in this, That men shall not make to themselves: as if he had said, When you come into the Land among the Gentiles, let none of you make to himself any of the Images he shall see there set up by the Inhabitants contrary to the Law of Moses, and the practise of the Synagogue, which does so honor her Cherubims, that she abominates all Idols and their Sculpture — and thus if any Catholic should make to himself contrary to what is allowed, any peculiar Image of the Planets, &c. But that Nil admirari relieves me, I should be at a great loss in reading these things; for truly a man would think, that he that talks at this rate, had read the Bible no otherwise than he would have our people to do it, that is, not at all. I would I could prevail with him for once to read over the Book of Deuteronomy. I am persuaded, he will not repent him of his pains, if he be a lover of truth, as he pretends he is. At least, he could not miss of the advantage of being delivered from troubling himself and others hereafter with such gross mistakes. If he will believe the Author of the Pentateuch, it was the Image of the true God, that was principally intended in the prohibition of all Images whatever, to be made objects of divine adoration, and that without any respect to the Cherubims over the Ark, everlastingly secluded from the sight of the people. And the Images of the false Gods are but in a second place forbidden; the Gods themselves being renounced in the first Commandment. And it is this making to a man's self any Image whatever, without the appointment of God, that is the very substance of the Command. And I desire to know of our Author, how any Image made in his Church comes to represent him to whom it is assigned, or to have any religious relation to him; for instance to Saint Peter, rather than to Simon Magus, or Judas, so that the honor done to it, should redound to the one, rather than to the other. It is not from any appointment of God, nor from the nature of the thing itself; for the carved piece of wood, is as fit to represent Judas as Peter; not from any influence of virtue and efficacy from Peter, into the Statua, as the Heathens pleaded for their Image-worship of old. I think, the whole relation between the Image and the pretended Prototype, depends solely on the imagination of him that made it, or him that reverences it. This creative faculty in the imagination, is that which is forbidden to all the sons of men in the Non facies tibi, You shall not make to yourself; and when all is done, the relation supposed, which is the pretended ground of adoration is but imaginary and phantastic. A sorry basis for the building erected on it. This whimsical termination of the worship in the Prototype by virtue of the imagination's creation of a relation between it and the Image, will not free the Papists from down-right idolatry in their abuse of Images; much less will the pretence that it is the true God they intend to worship, that true God having declared all Images of himself set up without his command, to be abominable Idols.