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bear witnefs. For travellers fay, that, in going from Barcelona to Granada, to the name of the virgin Mary, is always added Sin, peccado concebida, conceived without fin*. At length Alexander the 5th, unable to fettle the controversy in any other manner, in 1667, ordered that there should be no more preaching on the subject †.

The devotion paid to the virgin is very little, if at all, leffened fince the reformation. At Einfilden, or Notre Dame des Eremites, in Switzerland, fays Mr. Coxet; crowds of pilgrims from all quarters refort to adore the virgin, and to prefent their offerings; and it is computed that upon a moderate calculation, their number amounts yearly to a hundred thousand.

The laft circumftance that I fhall relate, concerning the virgin Mary, is, that in 1566, fome Flemings began to wear medals in their hats in her honour, reprefenting what was fuppofed to be a miraculous image of her at Hale in Hainault, and which they wore, to diftinguifh them from

*Mr. Swinburne fays (Travels p. 190) I believe there is scarcely a house in Granada that has not over its door in large red characters, Ave Maria purissima fin peccado concebida. A military order in that country fwear to defend by word and deed the doctrine of the mmaculate conception. The peasants near Alicant, instead of faluting ftrangers in any other way, baul out, Ave Maria purissima, to which they expect to be answered fin peccade concebido, or deo gratias.

+ Hiftoire des Papes, vol. v. p 342.

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Travels, p. 57. the

the proteftants of that country, The pope blessed and confecrated these medals, granting a remisfion of the punishment of fin to those that wore them. And this gave a beginning to the confecration of medals*.

SECTION II. PART III.

Of the Worship of Images in this Period,

We have feen how, in the preceding

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period, a fondness for pictures and images had made fome progress among christians, in confequence of an undue veneration for the perfons whom they represented. In the natural progress of things, images were treated with more and more respect, till it was imagined that the homage paid to the faint required the fame to be paid to his image. It was even imagined, that he was so far present to the image, as to communicate to it the powers of which he himself was poffeffed; the image being a kind of body to the foul of the faint.

Histoire des Papes, vol. v. p. 10.

This was the very ftate of things among the heathens. For they imagined that, after the forms of confecration, the invisible power of the god, to whom any image was dedicated, was brought to refide in it, and to entitle it to the fame refpect as if it had been the god himself in perfon. At length, therefore, chriftians came to be idolaters in the fame grofs fenfe, in which the heathens had ever been fo; being equally worfhippers both of dead men and of their images. But no great progress had been made in this bufinefs at the close of the last period.

At that time pictures and images in churches. were chiefly used for the purpose of ornament, for the commemoration of the faints to which they were dedicated, and the instruction of the ignorant. Gregory the great, encouraged the ufe of them, fo that the honour paid to them was much increased towards the end of the fixth century, and more in the following. And when Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, feeing the bad confequence of introducing these images, not only ordered that no perfon fhould fall down before them, or pay them any homage, but that they should be removed from the churches of his diocefe, Gregory disapproved of his conduct, praifing his zeal; but blaming him for breaking the images. He, therefore, only defired that they might not be worshipped, but would have them preserved in the churches, on the principle, that

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those who could not read might be instructed by them*. But in little more than a century, the fee of Rome changed its doctrine on the fubject, Gregory the second being ftrenuous for the worship of images.

The first who openly efpoufed the doctrine of images in the Weft was pope Conftantine, the predeceffor of Gregory the fecond; and there feems to have been as much of policy, as of religion, in the measures which he took with refpect to it. The emperor Philippicus had taken an active part in oppofition to images, and had ordered them to be removed from churches, in order to put a stop to the idolatrous veneration that was beginning to be paid to them. This, the pope, who wished for an occasion of quarrelling with the emperor, in order to make himself independent of him, refented fo highly, that, in a fynod, held on the occasion, he not only condemned his conduct in that refpect, but excommunicated him, as a heretic, and pronounced him unworthy of the empire, authorifing and exhorting his fubjects to revolt from him. This new herefy was called that of the Iconoclasts, or the breakers of images. By picking this quarrel with the emperor, this pope and his fucceffors afferted not only their independence of the emperors of Conftantinople, but their fuperiority to them.

Sueur, A. D. 599.

Gregory

Gregory the fecond, who fucceeded Conftantine, and the emperor Leo Ifauricus, were at continual variance on this fubject of images; the latter pulling them down from the churches, and the former excommunicating him for it, and alfo pronouncing his fubjects abfolved of their allegiance to him, and forbidding them to pay him tribute.

Something farther was done in favour of images by Stephen the third, or rather the fourth, in oppofition of Conftantine the second, whom he had depofed, and who had called a fynod in which the worship of images had been condemned. This Stephen called another fynod, in which, another innovation in christian worship was made, or at least authorized, viz. the worshipping of God himself by an image. For they condemn the execrable and pernicious decree of the former fynod, by which the condition of the immortal God was made worse than that of men. "It is lawful," say they, "to fet up ftatues of "mortal men, both that we may not be un"grateful, and that we may be excited to imitate "their virtuous actions; and fhall it not then be "lawful to fet up the image of God, whom we "ought always, if it were poffible, to have before our eyes *?”

* Platina de vita Stephani III.

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