very much like worshipping their sepulchres, which also he condemns above, as do also African canons, as, for example, Canon II of I Carthage, A. D. 348, and Canon LXXXIII of the African Code, A. D. 419. Some of the abuses at the festivals of the martyrs were really importations from heathenism, as is shown by Canon LX of the African Code. We see how true in such cases Augustine's words are when he speaks of inconsistent Christians. Though with their lips they renounced paganism, nevertheless they brought parts of it into the Church when they entered it.

Thank God that even in the days of Philip of Sida, and not long after the death of Gregory of Nazianzus, the "one, holy, universal and apostolic Church" in its Third Synod, Ephesus, A. D. 431, guided by the Written Word and the Christ-promised aid of the Holy Ghost, condemned all creature worship and idolatry when it condemned even the relative worship of Christ's humanity, the highest of all creatures, and settled all such questions forever, under pain of deposition of all Bishops and clerics guilty of them or any of them and of anathema and excommunication for all laics so guilty.

The sin of worshipping martyrs and all other creatures is condemned by Matthew IV, 10; Isaiah XLII, 8; Colossians II, 18; Revelations XIX, 10 and XXII, 8, 9. And the sin of relic worship, we find in II Kings XVIII, 4-8 inclusive, in the form of incensing the brazen serpent. And the reforming king Hezekiah is especially commended by Almighty God for destroying it, and he was prospered and blessed for it: Read verses 1-8 there.

I would add that there is hardly any of the Post Nicene Fathers who did not hold one or more opinions which were afterward condemned by the Universal Church in one or more of the VI Ecumenical Synods, though not generally themselves. I do not know of any work in English written to tell us exactly what the errors of each and all of the ancient Christian writers were which were so condemned, though, of course, we find works which

in Treat's Catholic Faith, pages 109, 110, 111, 119, 136-139, and the first two on page 120. The third and especially the fourth on page 120, seem to be from some Orthodox men, though they are not given as Augustine's. See other passages there, pages 91-152, and compare topics on page 571 of that work. And see also Tyler's Primitive Christian Worship, and his Worship of the Blessed Virgin.

treat of the errors of some of them. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, though on some points not perfect, were nevertheless the soundest of the Fathers. Some of the alleged opinions of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and others for creature invocation, or on the Eucharist, or for customs leading to idolatry, are condemned expressly or impliedly by Ephesus.

In the struggle against relic worship, saint worship, and the superstitions of his time, Vigilantius, the Presbyter, of Spain, was one of the noblest and best of the Fathers of the fourth century and the fifth, though he may have had a few defects. We hope to speak of him in another work. Judged by the decisions of Ephesus, he was vastly nearer Orthodoxy than the relic worshipper and, so far, heretic, Jerome, who blackguarded him and misrepresented him. Freemantle's account of him in the article Vigilantius in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography compared with the quotations from the original sources in note 6, page 457, volume I of Smith's Gieseler's Church History, show him to have been in the main a wise and holy reformer.

ARTICLE XII.

CREATURE WORSHIP.

The Sins of Idolaters: that is

I. the worship of created persons by invocation and other Acts of worship, and

II. the worship of mere inanimate things, such as pictures graven images, crosses painted and graven, altars, communion tables, the Bible or any part of it, etc., and

III, How they are forbidden IN GOD'S WORD AND BY THE "one, holy, universal and apostolic Church" in its Six Sole Ecumenical Synods.

"Take... the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God," Ephesians VI, 17.

"Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou

hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works," II Timothy III, 13-17 inclusive.

"If he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican," Matthew XVIII, 17.

"The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth," I Timothy III, 15.

We are here to treat of the great sin of worshipping creatures relatively or absolutely, and on the relative worship of mere things, such as pictures, that is painted images, graven images, crosses graven and crosses painted, relics, altars, communion tables, churches, the Bible and any part of it, and, in brief, the great sin of worshipping any thing in the universe but the Triune God, the Father, His Consubstantial and Coeternal Word, and His Consubstantial and Coeternal Spirit, who must always be worshipped directly and absolutely, not relatively through any created or made person or thing, for that was the sin of the Israelites in the Wilderness in worshipping Him through the golden calf, and afterwards through the calf at Dan and through that at Bethel, for which He so punished them, and at the last cursed them with defeat, slaughter and exile. All forms of creature worship are by necessary implication condemned by the Third Ecumenical Council, as is shown above, in Article VI. For it deposed all Nestorian Bishops and clerics, and anathematized all Nestorian laics, even for the relative worship of Christ's perfect and ever sinless humanity, the highest of all mere creatures, and much more all who give even relative service to any lesser creature, be it the Virgin Mary, any other saint, or archangel or angel, or any other creature, or any mere thing, be it an image or any thing else.

As the whole matter was antecedently settled at once and forever by the Third Synod and the Fifth, this Article belongs here. The following is, much of it, the same as the four articles from

my pen on Creature Worship, published in the Church Journal, of New York City, for August 3, August 10, August 17, and August 24, 1870, over the name, "A Friend of the Pure Worship of God." Some defective statements are made more full, and one or two mistakes are corrected. JAMES CHRYSTAL.

Messrs. Editors:-Certain matter in the columns of The Church Journal on subjects connected with this article has interested me. The points at issue seemed to me to include the whole subject of CREATURE-WORSHIP, and its lawfulness or unlawfulness. I write for this reason, and because I would add my mite towards strengthening that noble jealousy for religious worship as the prerogative of God alone, which has been the great glory of the Anglican Communion. This has brought many blessings from that God who, with reference to religious worship, calls Himself 'Jealous.' (303). Disregard of this principle that GOD ALONE SHOULD BE WORSHIPPED has, as the second part of the Homily against the Peril of Idolatry teaches, brought on the Mohammedan Scourge as a direct punishment of the flock. I may add that, for a similar sin, God sent the Assyrian and the Babylonian Scourge on His ancient flock; for be it remembered that for the one sin of creatureworship, and for that alone, God sent the direst curses of captivity, of long subjugation, and slavery upon His former people, as witness the whole teaching of the Old Testament regarding the history of the Israelites and Jews, and as witness the captivity, the long subjugation, and slavery of the Eastern Church in Palestine, in Egypt, in Asia, and in Europe; and the utter extinction of Christianity in Northwest Africa, formerly subject to the Patriarch of Carthage. This is the spirit of those Homilies of the English Church, of which the Thirty-fifth Article expressly declares that they "contain a godly and wholesome doctrine, and necessary for these times." If, therefore, any attempt be made to destroy this jealousy for the principle so often taught us in God's holy Word, that He alone is to be worshipped, it behooves us, as we value our souls and the souls of those who may come after us, that, like the

NOTE 303.-Exodus XX, 5; XXXIV, 14; Deut. IV, 23, 24; V, 6-10; VI, 14, 15; Joshua XXIV, 19; Nahum I, 2.

splendid type of jealous loyalty to God under the old law, the Prophet Elijah, to whom for his rare faithfulness God awarded at last the rare glory of translation that he should not see death, we may every one of us say, "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts" (I Kings XIX, 10, 14).

England was once idolatrous. It was then a little realm. It had produced no great literature. It had at Bloody Mary's death not a foot of land on the globe except England, Wales, and Ireland, which at the time was little elevated above barbarism. The people were, (for the most part), without knowledge of letters. Probably not two out of a hundred of us could read and write. It had but a small navy. The people were poor, and many, or most of them, degraded.

But the Reformation came. Three strong men stood forward—not indeed perfect, for God's servants have never been perfect men, as witness the crimes of David and the apostasy of Peter, and the slaughter of his son by Constantine, but take them for all in all, the greatest Bishops who have lived within the past 1400 years. They and the clergy and the people reformed the Church, as the Jewish and Israelitish Churches had often been reformed before it, and in the case of England as in the case of the Church of the Elder Covenant, blessings spiritual and temporal came in like a flood. Scotland, formerly the deadly foe, became the willing mate of England, and the island, in other ages distracted and torn by the feuds of its own children, was at peace; and the best of it all was, even allowing for some defects, it was the peace of God. He gave within a brief space after the Reformation, to the English race, the greatest of poets, Shakespeare, and an army of writers, and wise statesmen, and success in battle. The spread of her conquering arms since that time has been wonderful. She wrested Canada and other parts of the world from Romish and creatureworshipping France. She subjugated 160 millions of heathen and twenty-five millions of Mohammedans in India to her authority. She has a foothold almost everywhere-in Gibraltar, in Malta, at Aden, in India, at Hong Kong, in Australia, at the Cape of Good Hope, and places too many to be recounted here. And