V. Images and Relics

As regards Images the Council of Trent expressly " forbids us to believe that they possess any inherent quality in virtue of which they should be worshipped, or to ask any thing of them, or to place any confidence in them, and distinctly teaches that what honour we show them has reference entirely to the objects they serve to represent." These words of the Council are so many characteristics which distinguish us from idolaters, for instead of believing, as they do, that images possess any indwelling divinity, we attribute no virtue to them, beyond that of exciting in us the remembrance of their originals. This is the whole meaning of the Church's doctrine of honouring images. Who will deny, for instance, that the image of Jesus crucified whenever we turn to it, recals the most lively remembrance of Him " Who so loved us as to die upon the Cross for us." And while the image is before us, and the remembrance so vividly impressed upon the mind, our gratitude is awakened, and we must make some external act of reverence in token of our submission to the Divine original. To speak accurately and to use ecclesiastical language, when we do homage to the image of an Apostle or Martyr, our intention is not to honour the image, but "the Apostle or Martyr whose image we behold."

Thus, at least, I quote from the Roman Pontifical, and the Council of Trent expresses the same idea, in saying, " That the reverence we pay to images relates so entirely to the sacred originals themselves, when we kiss them, or incline before them, we are virtually adoring Jesus Christ, and honouring the saints whose resemblance they merely are." Lastly, we can understand how the Church honours images, by observing it is the same kind of respect she offers to the Cross and to the Book of the Gospels ; every one feels in kneeling to the former we are adoring " Him who in His own body bore our sins upon the tree;" and that when her children bow the head before the Holy Book, or rise as it is carried before them, or if they kiss it, it is out of reverence for the sacred and eternal words it contains. It is very unfair for our adversaries to call that reverential movement of the body to which we are prompted at the sight of the Crucifix, idolatry, when we do so only in memory of Him who was crucified for love of us. And it is only wilful blindness in them, not to see the very great difference there is between those who put their trust in idols, by reason of their belief that they possess some inherent holiness, so to speak, and those who declare as we do, they only use them to draw their minds to heaven, to realize more readily the honour they pay to Jesus Christ, or His saints, and in the saints God Himself who is the Author of all saintliness and grace.

We wish it to be understood, we pay no other regard to relics, than did the Early Church. And if our adversaries would remember, that we look upon the bodies of the saints as victims consecrated to God by martyrdom or penitence, they could never imagine, that honouring them with this view, we are in the slightest degree interfering with that honour which we offer to God. To speak in a general way, if they would understand how our affection for a friend extends itself, without diminishing aught of our love for him, to his children, his friends, and indeed to all that concerns him, and to all that recals him; and that honour is capable of the same gradations and shades, for honour is really only love mixed with fear and respect ; and lastly, if they would reflect that the whole external as well as internal worship inculcated by the Catholic Church has its beginning and end in God alone, they could not be so mistaken as to suppose that what He Himself inspires and takes delight in can for an instant excite His jealousy. They would see on the contrary, jealous though He be of our love, that if our regard for His creatures springs from an overflow of love for Him, and the honour we pay them is only a means of greater honour being offered to Him, whom He Himself delights to honour, He cannot be offended at it.

To prove even more fully that the Church's teaching on this head has nothing in view but the glory of God, she only allows these external aids to be used to excite and enliven devotion, for these outward marks of reverence have never been made by her of absolute necessity, nor are her children bound to any servile obedience to visible things, but they may vary these practices according to circumstances, disposition and feeling, always bearing in mind the end in view, which is to offer that reasonable service to God which His faithful creatures desire daily and hourly to do in spirit and in truth. We may learn from the teaching of the Church, on this one doctrine alone, how much for want of clearness of statement and openness of confession, is misconstrued of the tenets of the Catholic Church. And on other subjects of which we have been treating, if I may claim a fair hearing, I cannot imagine that we can any longer be accused of violating the doctrine of the Mediation of Jesus Christ, or of destroying the fundamental truth of offering homage to God alone, by the invocation of saints, or by the veneration we express for images and relics. I grant that it is very easy by an improper application of the terms, Mediation, Invocation, and Adoration, to certain points at issue, in the Church's Articles, to render our teaching so odious, that it will not be possible all at once to disarm men of their prejudices ; but if a fair statement such as is here made will be attentively weighed, it must in the end prevail, to dispel the darkness which calumny and ignorance have so long shed upon all her practices. How repeatedly do we hear men boldly asserting that she conceives piety to consist in " this devotion to the saints," than which, I will not hesitate to say, there is not a more unjust or untrue aspersion ; for does she not, in the Council of Trent, expressly declare, that it is a " a good and wholesome practice," and nothing more. And though she naturally condemns those who refuse to conform to it, out of carelessness or irreverence, she does so because she cannot allow what she sets forth as wholesome, to be slighted by individuals. Nor is it likely she can allow reformers of so recent an age to condemn what primitive antiquity has fully sanctioned.