Patriarchal Lordships will not consider them with abatement on that score.
Our reply to the answer to the 5th Article, is, that since we cannot be convinced of any liberty for invocating the saints and paying religious worship to them, we conceive the argument lies strongly against giving relative worship or religious respect to their images. For since the prototype cannot be thus addressed, 'tis still more difficult to imagine the bare representation of such a being can claim any such honour. To proceed—That neither the worship, nor so much as the use of them, was very early in the Christian Church, is pretty plain from St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia, in Cyprus, in his letter to John of Jerusalem, where he declares strongly against this practice. "When I came into a country church of Palestine, called Anablatha, I found a certain hanging over the door, upon which there was a picture painted like that of our Saviour or some saint, for I cannot certainly remember whose picture it was. However, seeing the figure of a man in the Church of Christ, contrary to the authority of the Holy SS, I tore it, and gave orders to the church-wardens to wrap it about some corpse and bury it, &c." And though this Father went too far in asserting the unlawfulness of having images in Churches, yet we may fairly infer, that this practice was not customary in Cyprus or Palestine in Epiphanius's time. See Council of Nice 2nd: Epiph. Hæres: 27, which last agrees with the testimony cited.
To this we may observe, that the Council of Constantinople held under Constantine Copronymus, against images, asserts, that there was no prayer in the Church Service for consecrating images, which suggestion the 2nd Council of Nice does not deny.
