lied to the statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues,
these splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who
had died for their celestial and everlasting country. At first, the
experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the venerable 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 honors of the original were
transferred to the copy: the devout Christian prayed before the image of
a saint; and the Pagan rites of genuflection, 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 colors, the infinite Spirit, the eternal
Father, who pervades and sustains the universe. [5] 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 condescended 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 presented
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 surface
of colors has ever been esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of
imitation. [6]

[Footnote