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statues. Notwithstanding the oppo- bated in the Greek church, whether sition to the worship of images by the there was an inherent sanctity "in emperors of the West, yet at length, the images of Jesus Christ and of the through the influence of the Roman saints; and though it was deter pontiffs, even "the Gallican clergy be- mined in a council, that the images gan to pay a certain kind of religious of Christ and of the saints .... did in homage to the saintly images," towards no sense partake of the nature of the the end of the ninth century; and in divine Saviour, or of these holy men,' this "their example was followed by yet it was maintained that "they were the Germans and other nations." 2 enriched with a certain communication of divine grace."

It has been asserted that, properly speaking, worship never was paid to The Latin church has by no means images by Christians, but that when been behind that of the Greeks in this they bowed before them, they only ad- respect. For, if we judge by the pracdressed themselves to the saints whom tice of the church of Rome, and even they represent. But that their regards by some of their acknowledgments, it do terminate in the image itself, as will be evident that a proper Latria, much as they do in any living man, or such worship as they themselves whom they should address, is evident, think is due to God, is also to be given not only from a variety of considera- to images. Those who write in favour tions, suggested by the history of image of it frequently cite this hymn, worship, but from the acknowledgment Crux ave, spes unica, auge piis jusof those who practise it; which puts titiam, reisque dona veniam; that is, it beyond all doubt, that they suppose a real power to reside in the image itself, just as they suppose the spirit of a man to be in a man.

In the eleventh century it was de

The following relations are by an intelligent observer, who was Chaplain to the British Embassy at Constantinople in 1669: "Before you enter the church, is a covered porch, usually arched, running out at each side the portal, with scats against the wall, upon which are painted several images, as of our blessed Saviour, the Virgin Mary, St. John, St. George and the like, and of that saint particularly to whose memory the church is consecrated; but very wretchedly,

and without beauty or proportion." Account of the Greek Church, by Tho. Smith, 1680, p. 63.

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This

Hail cross, our only hope, increase righteousness in the godly, and pardon the guilty." "It is expressly said in the Pontifical, Cruci debetur Latria," that Latria is due to the cross. favours the opinions of those who say that Latria is "to be given to all those images, to the originals of which it is due," as to Christ; as the Dulia is to be given to the images of the saints, and the Hyper-dulia to those of the Virgin Mary. The Council of Trent only decreed that due worship should be given to images, but did not define what that due worship is.

4

"The Greeks have so great prejudice to all engraven images, and especially if they are emAmong acts of worship, they reckon bossed and prominent, that they inveigh severely the oblation of incense and lights; and and fiercely against the Latins, as little less than the reason given by them for all this idolaters, and symbolizing with the very heathen. But as for the pictures, whether in colours is, because the honour of the image or or painted, of our Saviour and of the saints, they type passes to the original or protoaccount them sacred and venerable. These they reverence and honour by bowing, and kissing type; so that direct worship was to them, and saying their prayers before them. terminate in the image itself. And With these the partition that separates the Durandus passed for little less than a Bema, or chancel, from the body of the church, is adorned. At set times, the priest, before heretic, because he thought that images were worshipped only improperly; because at their presence we call to mind

he enters into it, makes three low reverences (προσκυνήσεις, μετανοιας) before the image of Christ, and as many before that of the Virgin Mary and he does the like in the time of celebration, and oftentimes perfumes them with his incense pot." Ibid. pp. 211, 212.

2 Mosheim, II. p. 151. (P.) Cent. ix. Pt. ii. Ch. iii. Sect. xvi.

OF THE RESPECT PAID TO RELICS IN not human; and recourse was some

The greatest traffic for relics was during the Crusades; and that many impositions were practised in this business, was evident from the very pretensions themselves; the same thing, for example, the skull of the same person, being to be seen in different places, and more wood of the true cross of Christ than, they say, would make a ship. In this the Greeks had the same advantage that the Romans had by means of the catacombs, which contained a sufficient quantity of bones, to which it was easy to give the names of celebrated Christian martyrs; and, at a distance from Rome, no inquiry could be made concerning them.

crease grace and merit, to fright away devils, to still winds and tempests, to secure from thunder, lightning, blasting, and all sudden casualties and misfortunes; to stop all infectious disorders, and to cure as many others as any mountebank ever pretended to do. Who that had money would choose to be without such powerful preservatives?

The fathers of the Council of Trent appointed relics to be venerated, but, with their usual caution, they did not determine the degree of it. This great abuse was effectually removed in all Protestant churches at the Reformation, though many other things equally near to the first principles of Christianity were left to the sagacity and zeal of a later period.

Besides all this, a happy method was thought of by Gregory I., or some other person of that age, to multiply the virtue of relics, without multiplying Among the Catholics the respect for the relics themselves; for, instead of relics still continues, though, with the giving the relic of any saint, he con- general decrease of superstition, this tented himself with putting into a box must have abated in some measure. a piece of cloth, which was called bran- The Holy Land is still a great mart for deum, which had only touched the these commodities. Haselquist says, relics. It is said, that, in the time of that the inhabitants of Bethlehem Pope Leo, some Greeks having doubted chiefly live by them, making models of whether such relics as these were of the holy sepulchre, crosses, &c. any use, the Pope, in order to convince these there was so large a stock in them, took a pair of scissors, and that Jerusalem, that the procurator told him on cutting one of these cloths, blood he had to the amount of fifteen thoucame out of it.' sand piastres in the magazine of the convent. An incredible quantity of them, he says, goes yearly to the Roman Catholic countries in Europe, but most to Spain and Portugal. Many are bought by the Turks, who come yearly for these commodities.2

We cannot wonder at the great demand for relics, when we consider the virtues that were ascribed to them by the priests and friars who were the vendors of them in that ignorant age. They pretended that they had power to fortify against temptations, to in

1 Basnage, Histoire, I. p. 305. (P.)

2 Travels, p. 149.

Of

PART V.

THE HISTORY OF OPINIONS CONCERNING THE STATE OF THE DEAD.

THE INTRODUCTION.

other than a property of a living man, and therefore as what ceased of course when the man was dead, and could not be revived but with the revival of the body.

I THINK that I have sufficiently proved, in my Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, that, in the Scriptures, the state of death is repreAccordingly, we have no promise of sented as a state of absolute insensi- any reward, or any threatening of bility, being opposed to life. The punishment, after death, but that doctrine of the distinction between which is represented as taking place soul and body, as two different sub- at the general resurrection. And it is stances, the one material and the observable that this is never, in the other immaterial, and so independent Scriptures, called, as with us, the of one another, that the latter may resurrection of the body (as if the soul, even die and perish, and the former, in the meantime, was in some other instead of losing anything, be rather place), but always the resurrection of a gainer by the catastrophe, was ori- the dead, that is, of the man. If, ginally a doctrine of the oriental therefore, there be any intermediate philosophy, which afterwards spread into the Western part of the world. But it does not appear that it was ever adopted by the generality of the Jews, and perhaps not even by the more learned and philosophical of them, such as Josephus, till after the time of our Saviour; though Philo, and some others, who resided in Egypt, might have adopted that tenet in an earlier period.

Though a distinction is made in the Scriptures between the principle, or seat, of thought in man, and the parts which are destined to other functions; and in the New Testament that principle may sometimes be signified by the term soul; yet there is no instance, either in the Old or New Testament, of this soul being supposed to be in one place and the body in another. They are always conceived to go together, so that the perceptive and thinking power could not, in fact, be considered by the sacred writers as any

state, in which the soul alone exists, conscious of anything, there is an absolute silence concerning it in the Scriptures; death being always spoken of there as a state of rest, of silence, and of darkness, a place where the wicked cease from troubling, but where the righteous cannot praise God.

This is the sum of the argument from the Scriptures, and comes in aid of the arguments from reason and the nature of things, which show the utter incapacity of any connection between substances so totally foreign to each other, as the material and immaterial principles are always described to be; things that have no common property whatever, and therefore must be incapable of all mutual action. I think I have shown that, let the immaterial principle be defined in whatever manner it is possible to define it, the supposition of it explains no one pheno

1 See [Rutt's Priestley] Vol. II. pp. 60, 354-364.

menon in nature; there being no more those of breathing and moving; and conceivable connection between the we might just as well inquire where powers of thought, and this imma- the latter had been in the interval of terial, than between the same powers apparent death, as where the former and a material principle; and for any had been at the same time. thing that appears, our ignorance concerning the nature of this principle should lead us to suppose that it may, just as well as that it may not, be compatible with matter.

There is not, in fact, any one phenomenon in favour of the opinion of the soul being a separate substance from the body. During life and health, How men came to imagine that the the sentient powers always accompany case was otherwise, is not easy to say, the body, and in a temporary cessation any more than how they came to imof thought, as in a swoon, apparent agine that the sun, moon, and stars drowning, &c., there never was an in- were animated, and the proper objects stance in which it was pretended that of adoration. But when once, in consethe soul had been in another place, and quence of any train of thinking, they came back again when the body was could suppose that the effects of the revived. In all these cases, the powers heavenly bodies, and of the other inof sensation and thought are, to all animate parts of nature, were owing appearance, as much suspended as to invisible powers residing in them, or