N.B. It is hardly necessary to remark, that the term worship is used throughout this tract in that general sense which it familiarly bears in the English tongue, and which most exactly corresponds with the Latin term cultus, employed by Catholic theologians.

Emage-Worship not Edolatry.

THE objections usually brought by Protestants against the Catholic use of images may be briefly stated as follows: 1. That it is expressly forbidden by the second commandment; 2. That as sanctioned by the Church, and especially as expounded by Catholic theologians, it cannot be separated in principle from idolatry; and 3. That whatever be the formal doctrine of the Church herself, or the intention of her theologians, such use, as exemplified in popular devotion, is in fact idolatry.

1. First, then, as to the Catholic use of images being forbidden by the second commandment-the simple truth is, that what Protestants have ruled to be the second commandment is in reality part of the first. Protestants have divided the first commandment into two, and thrown the ninth and tenth into one, without any other warrant or authority but that of their own private judgment. Up to the time of what is called the Reformation, all Christendom recognised that division of the ten commandments which is sanctioned by the Catholic Church; and Holy Scripture, to which Protestants profess to appeal as their only rule of faith, is altogether silent on the subject. The Bible, in the original tongue, makes no separation between one commandment and another,―the very division into verses is but an arbitrary arrangement; on the Protestant, therefore, lies the burden of showing why his division, which is an innovation upon the tradition of the Church, is to be taken as the true one.

But, moreover, reason and common sense are opposed to this division. According to the Catholic and ancient mode of separating the commandments, the inward desire and

the outward act are distinguished, both in the case of stealing and coveting another man's goods, and in that of committing adultery and coveting another man's wife. The Protestant falls into the inconsistency of making the outward acts the subjects of separate commandments, and the inward desires the subjects of one and the same commandment, thus confounding sins of simple injustice with sins of impurity. Will any man say that the desire of stealing another man's ox is a sin similar in kind to the desire of seducing his wife?

However, when convicted of this confusion, the Protestant attempts to retort upon the Catholic, by alleging that what according to the Protestant division is the first commandment forbids the worshipping any but the one true God, and the second forbids the worshipping Him in a peculiar way, viz. under a visible form. But this, when looked into, will be found to be a distinction without a difference. For observe, the worship of an image of God can be sinful only in one or other of two ways: either the worshipper believes his image to be God, and so worships, not God, but his image; or he degrades God to the level of his image by believing Him to be like it, and so worships, not God, but his own idea of God. These sins are in fact identical, and are therefore forbidden by one and the same commandment: "Thou shalt have none other Gods but Me.' In proof of which it may be observed, that all the arguments used in Scripture against the worship of graven images may be classed under these two heads: either they proceed on the supposition that the worshipper believes his image to be God, and remind him that it can neither see nor hear, neither hath it breath in its nostrils ; or they warn him against the sin of imagining the Invisible God to be like unto gold or silver, or the work of men's hands. (e. g. Acts xvii. 29.)

But why then, it may be asked, is the specific prohibition added, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, &c. ?" Plainly for the reason God Himself assigned (Deut. iv. 15): “Ye saw no manner of similitude (or likeness) in the day in which the Lord spake unto you." God had not revealed Himself under any visible form; in making

such form or representation of Him, therefore, the Jews must necessarily have followed their own mean and earthly ideas. God had revealed His NAME, which is an image to the ear, as a visible form is to the eye; and the distinct homage and special worship paid to the Name of God is one of the most prominent facts of the Old Testament. But God not having yet become Incarnate, and thus taken upon Himself a visible form, any attempt to make an image or likeness of Him could only have been to represent the Essential Divinity which no man hath seen nor can see, and would, therefore, have given a gross and carnal idea of the Infinite and Incomprehensible Godhead.

Now the Catholic Church has ever condemned any attempt at representing the Nature of God, or worshipping It under a sensible form. The Second Council of Nicæa, which formally sanctioned the veneration of holy images, expressly declares again and again, "We never portray any image, form, or likeness of the Invisible Godhead." So again, the Council of Treut decrees, that where Scripture histories are represented by painting or sculpture, the people should be taught that the Divinity is not meant to be depicted therein, as though It could be seen with the bodily eyes or expressed in colours and figures. Such representations of God the Father as may be occasionally seen in Catholic paintings are purely allegorical; they express His attributes or the relations in which He has been pleased to reveal Himself to men, and are analogous to the modes in which He is displayed to us in parables; for instance, as a human father, a king, a householder, or the master of a vineyard, &c. Who ever heard of a Catholic paying his devotions before an image of God the Father as he would before his Crucifix? Indeed the Church has forbidden separate images of the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, that no one may imagine that any representation is intended of His Invisible and Divine Nature. The same remark of course applies to any human representation of the Holy Ghost: pictures of Him under the form of a dove are so clearly symbolical, and are moreover so plainly justified by Scripture, that they require no defence or explanation. It should also be observed that, as in the case of