and the conclusion, therefore, at which we must arrive, is that images are prohibited only in as much as they may be the means of transferring the worship of God to inanimate objects, as though the adoration offered them were given to so many Gods.
By the violation of this commandment the majesty of God is grievously offended in a two-fold manner: the one, by worshipping idols and images as gods, or believing that they possess any divinity or virtue entitling them to our worship, by praying to, or reposing confidence in them, as the Gentiles did, who placed their hopes in idols, and whose idolatry the Scriptures universally reprobate: the other, by attempting to form a representation of the Deity, as if he were visible to mortal eyes, or could be represented by the pencil of the painter or the chisel of the statuary. " Who," says Damascene, " can repre sent God, invisible, as he is, incorporeal, uncircumscribed by limits, and incapable of being described under any figure or form?" [1] This subject, however, the pastor will find treated more at large in the second Council of Nice. [2] Speaking of the Gentiles, the Apostle has these admirable words: " They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things." [3] Hence the Israelites, when they exclaimed before the molten calf: "These are thy Gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt," [4] are denounced as idolaters; because they "changed their glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass." [5]
When, therefore, the Almighty forbids the worship of strange gods, with a view to the utter extinction of all idolatry, he also prohibits the formation of an image of the Deity from brass or other materials, as Isaias declares when he asks: "To whom then have you likened God, or what image will you make for him?" [6] That this is the meaning of the prohibitory part of the precept is proved, not only from the writings of the Holy Fathers, who, as may be seen in the seventh General Council, give to it this interpretation; but also from these words of Deuteronomy, by which Moses sought to withdraw the Israelites from the worship of idols: "You saw not," says he, "any similitude in the day that the Lord God spoke to you in Horeb, from the midst of the fire." [7] These words this wisest of legislators addressed to the people of Israel, lest through error of any sort, they should make an image of the Deity, and transfer to any thing created, the honour due to God alone.
To represent the Persons of the Holy Trinity by certain forms, under which, as we read in the Old and New Testaments, they deigned to appear, is not to be deemed contrary to religion, or the Law of God. Who so ignorant as to believe that such forms are express images of the Deity? - forms, as
