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away. And surely we commended you that you had that zeal, that nothing made with hands should be worshipped; but yet we judge that you should not have broken those images. For painting is therefore used in churches, that they which are unlearned may yet by sight read those things upon the walls which they cannot read in books. Therefore your brotherhood ought both to preserve the images, and to restrain the people from worshipping of them, that both the ignorant might have had whence to gather the knowledge of the history, and the people might not sin in worshipping the picture."

There would be no end if we should lay down at large the fierce contentions that afterwards arose in the Church touching this matter of images; the Greek emperors, Leo Isaurus, Constantinus Caballinus, Nicephorus, Stauratius, Leo Armenus, Michael Balbus, Theophilus, and others, opposing them in the East; and on the other side, Gregory the Second and Third, Paul the First, Stephen the Fourth, Adrian the First and Second, Leo the Third, Nicholas the First, and other popes of Rome, as stiffly upholding them in the West. In a Council of 338 Bishops, held at Constantinople in the year of our Lord 754, they were solemnly condemned in another Council of 350 Bishops, held at Nice in the year 787, they were advanced again, and the veneration of them as much commended. This base decree of the second Nicene Council, touching the adoration of images, although it were not by the hundredth part so gross as that which was afterwards invented by the popish schoolmen, yet was it rejected, as repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of God, by the princes and bishops of England first, about the year 792, and by Charles the Great afterward, and the Bishops of Italy, France, and Germany, which by his appointment were gathered together in the Council of Frankfort in the year of our Lord 794.

The four books, which by his authority were published against that Nicene Synod and the adoration of images defended therein, are yet to be seen; as the resolution also of the doctors of France, assembled at Paris by the command of his son Ludovicus Pius, in the year 824, and the book of Agobardus, Bishop of Lyons, concerning pictures and images, written about the same time; the argument

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whereof is thus delivered by Papirius Massonus, the setter out of it: "Detecting most manifestly the errors of the Grecians touching images and pictures, he denieth that they ought to be worshipped; which opinion all we Catholics do allow, and follow the testimony of Gregory the Great concerning them." This passage, together with the larger view of the contents of this treatise following afterwards, the Spanish Inquisitors, in their Index Expurgatorius, command to be blotted out; which we find to be accordingly performed by the divines of Collen, in their late corrupt edition of the 56 great Bibliotheque of the ancient Fathers. Gretser professeth, that he "extremely wondereth that this judgment of the book of Agobardus should proceed from a catholic man. For Agobardus," saith he, "in that whole book doth nothing else but endeavour to demonstrate, although with a vain labour, that images are not to be worshipped." 658 And who be these Grecians, whose errors touching images Agobardus doth refell, as this publisher saith? Surely these Grecians are the Fathers of the Nicene Council, who decreed that images should be adored and worshipped; against whom whosoever disputeth doth mainly dissent from right believers." To which blind censure of the Jesuit we may oppose not only the general judgment of the ancient "Almains, his own countrymen, who within these four or five hundred

years

did flatly disclaim this image-worship, as by Nicetas Choniates is witnessed; but also the testimony of the divines and historians of England, France, and Germany, touching

54 Græcorum errores de imaginibus et picturis manifestissime detegens, negat eas adorari debere; quam sententiam omnes catholici probamus, Gregoriique Magni testimonium de illis sequimur. Papir. Masson. Præfat. in Agobardi Opera, edit. Paris. ann. 1605.

55 Expungantur omnia quæ sub hoc titulo, De Imaginibus, continentur. Index Librorum Expurgatorum, Bernardi de Sandoval et Roxas Card. de consilio Senatus Generalis Inquisit. Hispan. excus. Madriti, ann. 1612.

56 Magna Bibliothec. Veter. Patrum, Tom. IX. part. 1. edit. Colon. ann. 1618, p. 548 et 551.

57 Vehementer profecto hoc judicium de

libro Agobardi ab homine catholico profectum miratus sum; nam Agobardus toto libello nihil aliud facit quam quod demonstrare nititur, quamvis casso conatu, imagines non esse adorandas. Jac. Gretser. de Cruce, lib. i. cap. 58.

58 Et quinam sunt Græci, quorum de imaginibus errores Agobardus refellit, ut editor ait? Nimirum Græci isti sunt Patres Nicæni Concilii, qui sanxerunt imagines adorandas et colendas esse; contra quos qui disputat, is ab orthodoxis toto cælo discordat. Ibid.

50 Αρμενίοις γὰρ καὶ Ἀλαμανοῖς ἐπί σης ἡ τῶν ἁγίων εἰκόνων προσκύνησις ἀπηγόρευται. Nicet. Choniat. Annal. lib. ii.

the Nicene Council in particular, rejecting it as a 60 PseudoSynod, because it concluded 61that images should be worshipped; which thing," say our chroniclers, "the Church of God doth utterly detest." And yet for all that we have news lately brought us from Rome, that 62 it is most certain and most assured that the Christian Church, even the most ancient, the whole and the universal Church, did with wonderful consent, without any opposition or contradiction, worship statues and images:" which, if the cauterized conscience of a wretched apostata would give him leave to utter, yet the extreme shamelessness of the assertion might have withheld their wisdoms, whom he sought to please thereby, from giving him leave to publish it.

But it may be I seek for shamefacedness in a place where it is not to be found; and therefore, leaving them to their images, like to like, (for 63 they that make them are like unto them, and so is every one that trusteth in them), I proceed from this point unto that which followeth.

OF FREE-WILL.

THAT man hath Free-will, is not by us gainsaid; though we dare not give him so large a freedom as the Jesuits presume to do. Freedom of will we know doth as essentially belong unto a man as reason itself; and he that spoileth him of that power doth in effect make him a very beast. For this is the difference betwixt reasonable and unreasonable

creatures, as Damascen rightly noteth: "The unreason

60 Hincmar. Remens. lib. contra Hincmar. Laudunens. cap. 20; Egolismens. Monach. in Vita Caroli Magni; Annal. Fuldens. Ado, Regino, et Hermann. Contract. in Chronic. ann. 794.

61 Imagines adorari debere; quod omnino ecclesia Dei execratur. Simeon. Dunelmens. Roger. Hoveden. et Matth. Westmonaster. Histor. ann. 792 vel 793.

62 Ecclesiam porro Christianam, etiam antiquissimam, totam, ac universalem, summo consensu, absque ulla oppositione |

aut contradictione, statuas ac imagines veneratam esse, est certissimum ac probatissimum. M. Anton. de Dominis, de Consilio sui reditus, sect. 23.

63 Psal. cxv. 8, and cxxxv. 18.

1 Ὅθεν καὶ τὰ ἄλογα οὐκ εἰσὶν αὐ τεξούσια· ἄγονται γὰρ μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως, ἤπερ ἄγουσι. διὸ οὐδὲ ἀντιλέγουσι τῇ φυσικῇ ὀρέξει, ἀλλ ̓ ἅμα όρεχθῶσι τινὸς, ὁρμῶσι πρὸς τὴν πράξιν. Ο δὲ ἄνθρωπος λογικὸς ὢν ἄγει μᾶλλον τὴν φύσιν, ἤπερ ἄγεται. διὸ καὶ ὀρεγόμενος,

able are rather led by nature, than themselves leaders of it; and therefore do they never contradict their natural appetite, but as soon as they affect anything they rush to the prosecution of it but man, being endued with reason, doth rather lead nature, than is led by it; and therefore, being moved with appetite, if he will, he hath power to restrain his appetite or to follow it." Hereby he is enabled to do the things that he doth neither by a brute instinct of nature, nor yet by any compulsion, but by advice and deliberation; the mind first taking into consideration the grounds and circumstances of each action, and freely debating on either side what in this case were best to be done or not done, and then the will inclining itself to put in execution the last and conclusive judgment of the practical understanding. This liberty we acknowledge a man may exercise in all actions that are within his power to do, whether they be lawful, unlawful, or indifferent; whether done by the strength of nature or of grace; for even in doing the works of grace our free-will suspendeth not her action, but being moved and guided by grace, doeth that which is fit for her to do; grace not taking away the liberty, which cometh by God's creation, but the pravity of the will, which ariseth from man's corruption. In a word, as we condemn Agapius, and the rest of that mad sect of the Manichees, for bringing in such a kind of necessity of sinning, whereby men were made to "offend against their wills;" so likewise with Polychronius, and other men of understanding, we defend, that "virtue is a voluntary thing and free from all necessity;" and with the author of the books de Vocatione Gentium, attributed unto Prosper, "we both believe and feel by experience that grace is so powerful, that yet we conceive it no way to be violent."

2

But it is one thing to enquire of the nature, another to dispute of the strength and ability, of free-will. We say with Adamantius, in the dialogues collected out of Maximus

εἴπερ ἐθέλοι, ἐξουσίαν ἔχει ἀναχαιτίσαι τὴν ὄρεξιν ἢ ἀκολουθῆσαι αὐτῇ. Jo. Damascen. Orthodox. Fid. lib. ii. cap. 27, edit. Græc. vel 44 Latin.

2 Ανάγκη τε καὶ ἄκοντας τοὺς ἀν θρώπους πταίειν διατείνεται. Phot. Bibliothec. num. 179.

3 Αδέσποτον γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ, καὶ ἑκούσιον, καὶ ἀνάγκης πάσης ἐλεύθερον. Polychron. in Cantic. p. 93, edit. Meursii.

4 Hanc quippe abundantiorem gratiam ita credimus atque experimur potentein, ut nullo modo arbitremur esse violentam. Prosp. de Vocat. Gent. lib. ii. cap. 26.

against the Marcionites, that "God made angels and men αὐτεξουσίους, but not παντεξουσίους ; he endued them with freedom of will, but not with ability to do all things. And now since the fall of Adam we say further, that freedom of will remaineth still among men, but the ability which once it had to perform spiritual duties and things pertaining to salvation is quite lost and extinguished. For who is there of us," saith St Augustine, "which would say that by the sin of the first man free-will is utterly perished from mankind? Freedom indeed is perished by sin; but that freedom which was in paradise, of having full righteousness with immortality, for which cause man's nature standeth in need of God's grace, according to the saying of our Lord, If the Son shall free you, then ye shall be free indeed; namely, free to live well and righteously. For free-will is so far from having perished in the sinner, that by it they sin, all they especially who sin with delight, and for the love of sin, that pleaseth them which liketh them.” When we deny therefore that a natural man hath any free-will unto good, by a natural man we understand one that is without Christ, and destitute of his renewing grace; by free-will, that which the philosophers call τὸ ἐφ' ἡμῖν, a thing that is in our own power to do; and by good, a theological not a philosophical good, bonum vere spirituale et salutare, "a spiritual good and tending unto salvation." This, then, is the difference which God's word teacheth us to put betwixt a regenerate and an unregenerate man. The one

is alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord; and so enabled to yield himself unto God, as one that is alive

5 Τοὺς ἀγγέλους καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους αὐτεξουσίους λέγω ὑπὸ Θεοῦ γεγενῆσθαι, ἀλλ ̓ οὐ παντεξουσίους. Ὁ περὶ τοῦ αὐτεξουσίου λόγος, τουτέστι τοῦ ἐφ' ἡμῖν, πρώτην μὲν ἔχει ζήτησιν, εἰ ἔστι τὶ ἐφ' ἡμῖν· πολλοὶ γὰρ οἱ ἀντιβαίνοντες· δευτέραν δὲ, τίνα ἐστὶ τὰ ἐφ' ἡμῖν, καὶ τίνων ἐξουσίαν ἔχομεν. Nemesius Emessenus Episcop. de Natura Hominis, cap. 39. Orig. Dial. III. contra Marcion.

6 Potentiam proximam et activam intelligo; non remotam, quæ mere passiva

est.

7 Quis autem nostrum dicat, quod primi hominis peccato perierit liberum

arbitrium de humano genere? Libertas
quidem perit per peccatum ; sed illa quæ
in paradiso fuit, habendi plenam cum
immortalitate justitiam, propter quod
natura humana divina indiget gratia,
dicente Domino, Si vos Filius libera-
verit, tunc vere liberi eritis; utique liberi
ad bene justeque vivendum. Nam libe-
rum arbitrium usque adeo in peccatore
non periit, ut per illud peccent, maxime
omnes qui cum delectatione peccant et
amore peccati, hoc eis placet quod eis
libet. August. contra duas Epist. Pela-
gian. lib. i. cap. 2.
8 Rom. vi. 11.

9 Ibid. ver. 13.

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