meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and
decrees of many provincial synods introduced the summons of the general
council which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed
of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of
Europe and Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria
were the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the
churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general
council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding
assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic
faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and
thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree, that
all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either
blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of
Christianity and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of
idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse
to deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In
their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their
temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they intrusted the
execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in the
former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith;
but on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of
the prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of
hope and fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it easy for
them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth.
The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious
fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy
ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves
of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of
obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging
a royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the
Catholics, but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private
creed of his bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast mi