Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 5 | Page 3

is drawn from the xxiid
book of the Hist. des Eglises Reformees of Basnage, tom. ii. p. 1310 -
1337. He was a Protestant, but of a manly spirit; and on this head the
Protestants are so notoriously in the right, that they can venture to be
impartial. See the perplexity of poor Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p. 42.]
The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the
original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine
features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue of
Christ at Paneas in Palestine ^7 was more probably that of some
temporal savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were
reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided
by the clandestine imitation of some heathen model. In this distress, a
bold and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of the image
and the innocence of the worship. A new super structure of fable was
raised on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of
Christ and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly
deserted by our modern advocates. The bishop of Caesarea ^8 records
the epistle, ^9 but he most strangely forgets the picture of Christ; ^10
the perfect impression of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the
faith of the royal stranger who had invoked his healing power, and
offered the strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of
the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the
long imprisonment of the image in a niche of the wall, from whence,
after an oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent
bishop, and seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first
and most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms
of Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the

divine promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy.
It is true, indeed, that the text of Procopius ascribes the double
deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who
purchased the absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian monarch.
He was ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is
compelled to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the
Palladium was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had
been sprinkled on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel
to the flames of the besieged. After this important service, the image of
Edessa was preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians
rejected the legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude,
which was not the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate
creation of the divine original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine
hymn will declare how far their worship was removed from the grossest
idolatry. "How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose
celestial splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who
dwells in heaven, condescends this day to visit us by his venerable
image; He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture,
which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he
has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it
with fear and love." Before the end of the sixth century, these images,
made without hands, (in Greek it is a single word, ^11) were
propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern empire: ^12 they were
the objects of worship, and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour
of danger or tumult, their venerable presence could revive the hope,
rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of
these pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil,
could only pretend to a secondary likeness and improper title: but there
were some of higher descent, who derived their resemblance from an
immediate contact with the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a
miraculous and prolific virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial
to a fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the
veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony
and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to a holy matron.
The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and
the saints and martyrs. In the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the
features of the Mother of God ^13 were deeply inscribed in a marble

column; the East and West have been decorated by the pencil of St.
Luke; and the Evangelist, who was perhaps a physician, has been
forced to exercise the