sions, have
been rather the unhappy victims of mental disease than the instruments of
wilful imposture.

Perhaps some one may ask why, seeing that the mysterious principles of
the Roman Catholic faith and those of the Protestants are equal, there
should be so much difference in their devotional characters, the one
being opposed to the other? why in the one case it is entirely mental,
while the other largely participates in a physical nature? why in
Protestant devotion there is thinking and reflection, while in that of
Roman Catholics all is feeling and affection? The problem is resolved in
a single expression,--the worship of images.

This practice, which neither the fathers nor the councils have enforced
or authorised to the extent to which it has been carried by modern Roman
Catholics, and especially by Spaniards, exercises so powerful an
influence, or rather so irresistible an imperium, over the mind of man,
that it entirely perverts his reason, and radically extinguishes in it
the difference between the spiritual and the physical world. This great
enigma, the solution of which the Eternal has, in his wisdom, reserved
from mortal creatures, loses all its obscurity and ceases to be a mystery
to the man who converses with a figure made of wood or painted on canvas;
for he not only believes that it sees him, but that it can protect him,
grant him favours, and even obtain for him salvation. In vain it will be
said that the Roman Catholic sees in the image a symbol, an emblem, a
representation. It is not so. In his eyes the image is the saint
itself, and therefore he adorns it, covers it with splendid attire,
surrounds it with flowers and with lights, kneels down before it,
confides to it his griefs, and asks its intercession. If the object of
veneration and of worship were the saint itself,--that is to say, a
beatified spirit, which is supposed to dwell in heaven, and there enjoy
the favour of the Eternal Being,--the prayer made and the homage rendered
would be to that pure essence, and would be purged of all the external
accidents of humanity. But not so do Roman Catholics generally pray. In
order to pray it is necessary for them to have a material object; they
must enter with that object into similar relations as those which exist
between man and man; they must bring down the saint to their own level,
instead of endeavouring to lift up themselves to the level of the saint,
by means of a communication purely sp