The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

oo6OF THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES.nounces as image-worslilj) ; this It strictly prohibits ; andthis is enough to substantiate the charge which Protestantshave brought against the Church of Home as guilty of idolatry.Her practice in this point is manifestly a revival ofthe pagan worship in one of its grossest and most offensiveforms. She, as really as the ancient idolaters, " worshipsthe creature more than the Creator."But let us hear whatRome has to say in her own behalf.She introduces the element of INTENTION, and on thismainly rests her defence. She pleads that she does notbelieve these images to be inspired with the Divinity,—shedoes not believe them to be gods. She pleads also, thatshe does not believe that the wood, or stone, or gold, ofwhich they are composed, can hear prayer, or that theimage of itself can bestow the blessings supplicated for;that she believes them to be only images, and therefore directsher worship and prayers past or beyond them, to thesaint or angel whom the image represents. The Papist doesnot pray to, but through, the image. We accept this as afair statement of what is the theoretic practice of theChurch of Rome on the subject of images, but we reject itas a statement of what that practice is in fact, and especiallydo we reject it as a defence of that practice. We doso for the following reasons.In the first place, if the Papist is acquitted of idolatry onthis ground, there is not an idolater on the face of the earthwho may not on the same ground demand an acquittal.None but the most ignorant and brutish ever mistook thestock or stone before which they kneeled for the Creator.This representative principle, on which the image-worshipperof the Popish Church founds his justification, pervadedthe whole system of the pagan worship.It was this whichled the world astray at first, and covered the earth with arace of deities of the most revolting character. Whetheritwas the heavenly bodies, as in Chaldea, or a class of demigods,as in Greece and Rome, it was the great First Causethat was professedly adored through these symbolizations and