her. In the same manner he hath altered the Te Deum. We praise thee, O Mary, we acknowledge thee to be the Lady; and so in the other hymns of the Church. Nay, he hath made a Creed for her in imitation of St Athanasius's. Whoever will be saved, it is necessary that he hold the true faith concerning Mary; which except a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall perish everlastingly. Now if their Church do really disapprove these things, why do they never censure them? Why is this very man canonized for a Saint, whilst we are condemned as heretics? For not content with thinking this kind of worship lawful, they pronounce accursed whoever shall think otherwise.

Another thing we differ in, is this: they make pictures of God the Father under the likeness of a venerable old man. They make images of Christ and of his Saints, after their own fancy. Before these images, and even that of his cross, they kneel down and prostrate themselves: to these they lift up their eyes, and in that posture pray. The least appearance of command, or even the allowance, of such practices in Scripture they pretend not; and yet against those who disallow them, they thunder out anathemas. Now as to pictures of the Father Almighty, whom no man either hath seen or can see* ; all visible figures must represent him such as he is not, must lead the ignorant into low and mean ideas of him, and give those of better abilities, from a contempt of such representation, a contempt of the religion that uses them. Anciently the Heathens themselves had no images of God; and a very learned Heathen observes, that if they had never had any, their worship would have been the purer; for the

1 Tim, vi. 16.

inventors of these things, says he, lessened among men the reverence of the Divine Nature, and introduced errors concerning it *. The Jews, though the Old Testament figuratively expresses, in words, the power and attributes of God by parts of the human form, were yet most strictly forbidden all sensible representation of him under any form. Take good heed unto yourselves, says Moses, for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spoke to you in Horeb; lest ye corrupt yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, and make the similitude of any figure; for the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous Godt. Accordingly we find, that when they had made a golden image, though it was expressly designed in honour of that God who brought them out of Egypt, it was notwithstanding punished as idolatry. And far from allowing to Christians, what was then forbidden the Jews, St. Paul most severely condemns it in the very Heathens, that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, but became vain in their imaginations, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God, into an image made like to corruptible man. Yet how near doth this approach to what the Church of Rome doth now, in making pictures of God the Father! Our blessed Saviour indeed, having taken on him human nature, is capable of being represented in a human form. But, as all such representations must be imaginary ones, so they are useless ones too: the memorial of himself, which he hath appointed in the Sacrament, we may be assured is sufficient to all good

* Varro ap. S. Aug. de Civ. Dei. 1. 4. c. 31. where he says they had none for 170 years. But Tarquinius Priscus introduced them. See Tenison on Idol. p. 59.

+ Deut. iv. 15-24.

Rom. i. 21. 23.

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purposes; and these other memorials have always produced absurd and wicked superstitions. As for the images of the Saints, it is sufficient to say, that there being no pretence for worshipping the Saints themselves, there is yet less pretence for worshipping these representations of them. But here the Church of Rome will say we wrong them: they do not worship images, but only Christ and his Saints by these images. But indeed it is they who wrong themselves then. For not a few of their own writers* frankly own they do worship images, and with the same degree of worship that they pay to the persons whose images they are. And for the cross particularly, in their public offices, they expressly declare themselves to adore it, and in plain words, petition it in one of their hymns, to give increase of grace to the righteous, and pardon to the guilty. This they say is a poetical licence; and truly, in so serious a thing as worship, no small one. But farther had they no regard to the image, but only to the person represented, why is an image in one place looked upon to have so much more power and virtue, than an image of the same person in another place? Why hath that of our Lady of Loretto, for instance, so much more honour done it, than that of our Lady any where else? We own the council of Trent does give a caution, that no divinity be ascribed to images, nor any trust put in them: and the Heathen gave the like caution often with respect to theirs: but this never hinders the Scripture from condemning them as idolaters. And the reason

Aquinas, &c. See Trapp. Ch. of England defended, p. 219. They put in the Index exp. those passages in marginal notes and indexes, that say the contrary. See instances, ib. p. 235. They are to be worshipped, says Bellarmine, ita ut ipsæ terminent venerationem, ut in se considerantur et non solum ut vicem gerunt exemplaris. Bellarm. de Imag. 1. ii. c. 21. ap. Vitr. in Is. xliv. 20.

is, that such cautions never are, or can be observed by the multitude. Place sensible objects before them to direct their worship to and in those objects their worship will terminate. This the primitive Christians saw too plainly in the Heathens, ever to think of imitating them. Accordingly neither images nor pictures were allowed in Churches for near 400 years. And when, after being more than once condemned, they came to be allowed, no honour was intended to be paid to them. On the contrary, when it began to be paid, which indeed was not long, it was severely censured, and particularly in the eighth century, by above 300 Bishops, assembled in council at Constantinople. But about thirty years after, the second council of Nice, (so ill did councils agree,) established it. Yet even this council held representations of God to be unlawful. And all the Western countries, except Italy, under the Pope's immediate direction, continued to condemn the worship of all representations, for some ages afterwards. But by degrees it first became general; and then so grossly scandalous, that the Church of Rome, it seems, hath judged it the wisest way to leave the second Commandment, which too plainly forbids these things, out of their smaller books of devotion, under the absurd pretence of its being only a part, I suppose an insignificant one, of the first: though, since they have been charged with this, they have thought fit in some of them, but not in all, to restore it again. And here let us quit the article of imageworship, with the Psalmist's remark upon it. They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them. O Israel, trust thou in the Lord*. But there still remains another object of Popish worship, the Sacramental bread and wine. For they

* Psalm cxv. 8, 9.

have made it an article of faith, that the substance of these is, by the words of Consecration, intirely changed into the substance of the living body and blood of Christ which change therefore, they call transubstantiation. Now, were this really the body of Christ, 'tis allowed we have no command to worship it under this disguise, and therefore commit no sin in letting such worship alone. But if it be really not so, they own themselves to pay that honour to a bit of bread, which belongs only to the eternal Son of God. And surely one should think it a question easily decided, whether a small wafer, which is the bread they use on these occasions, be the body of a man, and whether wine in a cup be blood. Almost every one of our senses will tell us it is not: and though, in some hasty or distant appearances of things, our senses may be deceived, yet, if, where there is all possible opportunity of examining the matter, we cannot be sure of what our own eyes and our own feeling, our smelling and tasting, all inform us of, then we can be sure of nothing. 'Tis only by such evidence that we know any thing in this world: 'tis by no other that we know we have a Revelation from God, and that this Sacrament is appointed in it. If therefore we are not to believe our senses, how are we to believe any thing at all? But indeed what they tell us in this case, is as contrary to all reason, as it is to all sense. That a human body in its full dimensions should be contained in the space of an inch or two, looks as like a contradiction as any thing well can do: that the substance of bread should not be in the Sacrament, where they own all the properties of bread are, and that the substance of flesh should be there, and not one of the properties of it appear, is very monstrous; and that the very same body of Christ, which is now in Heaven at