t at Paneas in Palestine was more probably that of some temporal
savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were reprobated;
and the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided by the
clandestine imitation of some heathen model. In this distress, a bold
and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of the image and
the innocence of the worship. A new super structure of fable was raised
on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ
and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly deserted
by our modern advocates. The bishop of Caesarea records the epistle, but
he most strangely forgets the picture of Christ; the perfect impression
of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the faith of the royal
stranger who had invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city
of Edessa to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance
of the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the
image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of five
hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and seasonably
presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most glorious
exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of Chosroes
Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine promise,
that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is true,
indeed, that the text of Procopius ascribes the double deliverance
of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who purchased
the absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian monarch. He was
ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is compelled
to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium
was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been sprinkled
on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel to the flames
of the besieged. After this important service, the image of Edessa was
preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians rejected the
legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude, which was not
the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine
original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how
far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "How can we
with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor
the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven,
condescends this day to vis