y hard to deny that
many usages of their church bear the stamp of Paganism.(83) This is
particularly the case with the author of "Hierurgia," a work which I have
already quoted, and which may be considered as the fairest expression of
what the Roman Catholic Church teaches on the subject in question. Thus
the use of images in churches is represented as being authorised by
Scripture, by the following curious arguments:--

"The practice of employing images as ornaments and memorials to decorate
the temple of the Lord is in a most especial manner approved by the Word
of God himself. Moses was commanded to place two cherubim upon the ark,
and to set up a brazen figure of the fiery serpent, that those of the
murmuring Israelites who had been bitten might recover from the poison of
their wounds by looking on the image. In the description of Solomon's
temple, we read of that prince, not only that he made in the oracle two
cherubim of olive tree, of ten cubits in height, but that 'all the walls
of the temple round about he carved with divers figures and carvings.'

"In the first book of Paralipomenon (Chronicles) we observe that when
David imposed his injunction upon Solomon to realise his intention of
building a house to the Lord, he delivered to him a description of the
porch and temple, and concluded by thus assuring him: 'All these things
came to me written by the hand of the Lord, that I may understand the
works of the pattern.'

"The isolated fact that images were not only directed by the Almighty God
to be placed in the Mosaic tabernacle, and in the more sumptuous temple of
Jerusalem, but that he himself exhibited the pattern of them, will be
alone sufficient to authorise the practice of the Catholic Church in
regard to a similar observance."--(_Hierurgia_, p. 371.)

All this may be briefly answered. There was no representation of the
Jewish patriarchs or saints either in the tabernacle or in the temple of
Solomon, as is the case with the Christian saints in the Roman Catholic
and Graeco-Russian Churches; and the brazen serpent, to which the author
alludes, was broken into pieces by order of King Hezekiah as soon as the
Israelites began to worship it.

The author tries to prove, with considerable learning and ingenuity, that
the primitive Christians ornamented their churches with images, and I have
already given, p. 51, his explanation of the Council of Elvira; but his
assertions are completely disproved by every dir