nk that it will not be uninteresting to my readers to know how
the Roman Catholic Church explains this prohibition, and which may
be best seen from the following piece of ingenious casuistry, by one
of her ablest defenders in this country:--"Canon xxxvi. of the
Provincial Council held in 305, at Eliberis, in Spain, immediately
refutes the error of Bingham. (Bingham maintained the same opinion
on the images which is expressed in the text.) The pastors of the
Spanish church beheld the grievous persecution that Diocletian had
commenced to wage against the Christian faith, which had for a
lengthened period enjoyed comparative repose, under the forbearing
reign of Constantius Caesar, father of Constantine the Great. They
assembled to concert precautionary measures, and amongst other
things, they determined that, in the provinces under their immediate
jurisdiction, there should be no fixed and immovable picture
monuments, such as fresco paintings or mosaics, no images of Christ
whom they adored, nor of the saints whom they venerated, on the
walls of the churches which had been erected and ornamented during
the long interval of peace which the Christians had enjoyed.
'Placuit,' says the council, 'picturas in ecclesia esse non debere,
ne quod colitur et adoratur, in parietibus depingatur,' (Con. Elib.,
_apud Labbeum_, tom i. p. 972.) This economy was prudent and adapted
to the exigency of the period. The figures of Christ and of his
saints were thus protected from the ribaldry and insults of the
Pagans. But this well-timed prohibition demonstrates, that the use
of pictures and images had already been introduced into the Spanish
church."--_Hierurgia, or Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints,
Relics, &c., expounded by D. Rock, D.D._, second edition, p. 374,
_note_. There can be no doubt that the enactment in question proves
that images were used at that time amongst the Spanish Christians,
as a law prohibiting some particular crimes or offences shows that
they were taking place at the time when it was promulgated; but the
opinion that the above-mentioned enactment was not a prohibition of
images, but a precautionary measure in their favour, must be
supported either by the other canons of the same council, which
contain nothing co