the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression,
the honors of the original were transferred to the copy: the
devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the
Pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense, again stole
into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were
silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the
pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a
divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of
religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in
the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite
Spirit, the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the
universe. ^5 But the superstitious mind was more easily
reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and, above all,
the Son of God, under the human shape, which, on earth, they have
condescended to assume. The second person of the Trinity had
been clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body had
ascended into heaven: and, had not some similitude been presented
to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ
might have been obliterated by the visible relics and
representations of the saints. A similar indulgence was
requisite and propitious for the Virgin Mary: the place of her
burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul and body into
heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins.
The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly established
before the end of the sixth century: they were fondly cherished
by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics: the Pantheon
and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition;
but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the
rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the West. The bolder
forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled the temples