ng the assertion of Baronius,
never was excluded from the communion of the church, or even condemned by
her legal authorities.

We know from Vigilantius' opponents that his opinions were approved by
many, and there can be no doubt that there was, not only in his days, but
long after him, a good number of witnesses for the truth, who opposed the
rapid spread of Pagan ideas and practices in the church. Thus, at the end
of the sixth century, Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, removed all the
images from his church, because the people worshipped them. This produced
a great discontent amongst many people of his diocese, who appealed to
Pope Gregory I. in favour of the images. The Pope advised a middle course,
_i.e._, that the images should remain in the church, but that it should
not be allowed to worship them. Serenus, however, who well knew that the
one infallibly led to the other, refused to comply with the papal
injunctions, upon which Gregory wrote to him again, saying that he praised
his zeal in not suffering the worship of any thing that was made by the
hand of man; but that images should not be destroyed, because pictures
were used in churches to teach the ignorant by sight what they could not
read in books, &c.(53)

We therefore see that at the end of the sixth century, the celebrated Pope
Gregory I., surnamed the Great, considered the worship of images as an
abuse to be prohibited, but which was afterwards legalised by his
successors, and an opposition to it declared heresy.

I could produce other evidences to show that the worship of images was
condemned by many bishops and priests of the period which I have
described, though they approved their use as a means of teaching the
illiterate, or tolerated them as an unavoidable evil. The limits of this
essay allow me not, however, to extend my researches on this subject, and
I shall endeavour to give in the next chapter a rapid sketch of the
violent reaction against the worship of images in the east by the
iconoclast emperors, and of the more moderate, but no less decided,
opposition to the same practice in the west by Charlemagne.

Chapter V. Reaction Against The Worship Of Images And Other Superstitious
Practices By The Iconoclast Emperors Of The East.

The worship of images, as well as other Pagan practices, introduced into
the church during the fourth and fifth centuries, were prevailing in the
east as much as in the west; and I have mentioned, p. 9, that t