Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/268

246 THE DECLINE AND FALL pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honours of the original were transferred to the copy ; the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint ; and the Pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense again stole into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles ; and the pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colours, the infinite Spirit, the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the uni- verse.'^ But the superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the human shape which, on earth, they have con- descended to assume. The second person of the Trinity had been clothed with a real and mortal body ; but that body had ascended into heaven, and, had not some similitude been pre- sented to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ might have been obliterated by the visible relics and representations of the saints. A similar indulgence was requisite, and propitious, for the Virgin Mary ; the place of her burial was unknown ; and the assumption of her soul and body into heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins. The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly established before the end of the sixth century ; they were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics ; the Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition ; but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the rude barbarians and the Arian clergy of the West. The bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled the temples of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or conscience of the Christian Greeks ; and a smooth sur- face of colours has ever been esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of imitation." ^Oi) yap TO ©eioi' ajrAoOi' vnapxov Kot aKriirrov (jiop<<>ati Tttri Kal 07i;i}/io<rti' an-eiKofo/iei'. ovre KTjpu) (cat fvAois ttjc invepova-iov Kal jrpoavapxoi' ouo-iar TLp.a.i' rnxeli Sieyviixaiiei' (Concilium Nicenum, ii. in Collect. Labb. torn. viii. p. 1025, edit. Venet.). II seroit peut-C'tre k propos de ne point souffrir d'images de la Trinity ou de la DivinitiS ; les dt^fenseurs les plus z^l^s des images ayant condamn^ celles-ci, et le concile de Trcnte ne parlant que des images de J6sus Christ et des Saints (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccl^s. torn. vi. p. 154). 8 This general history of images is drawn from the xxiid book of the Hist, des Eglises Ri§form6es of Basnage, torn. ii. p. 1310-1337. He was a Protestant,