Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 5 | Page 6

in the churches where they might be visible
to the eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it
was impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse
impulse of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred
images still edified their votaries, and reproached the tyrant. He was
himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party
accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his
imitation the example of the Jewish king, who had broken without
scruple the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he
proscribed the existence as well as the use of religious pictures; the
churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from
idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, were
demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of
the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and
despotism of six emperors, and the East and West were involved in a
noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of
Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images as an article
of faith, and by the authority of a general council: but the convocation
of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine; ^19 and
though it is stigmatized by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and
atheists, their own partial and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of
reason and piety. The debates and decrees of many provincial synods
introduced the summons of the general council which met in the
suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed of the respectable
number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and
Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves
of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of
Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This Byzantine
synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general council; yet
even this title was a recognition of the six preceding assemblies, which
had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic faith. After a serious
deliberation of six months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops

pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree, that all visible
symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or
heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of Christianity and a
renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be
broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the
objects of their private superstition, were guilty of disobedience to the
authority of the church and of the emperor. In their loud and loyal
acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their temporal redeemer;
and to his zeal and justice they intrusted the execution of their spiritual
censures. At Constantinople, as in the former councils, the will of the
prince was the rule of episcopal faith; but on this occasion, I am
inclined to suspect that a large majority of the prelates sacrificed their
secret conscience to the temptations of hope and fear. In the long night
of superstition, the Christians had wandered far away from the
simplicity of the gospel: nor was it easy for them to discern the clew,
and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth. The worship of images was
inseparably blended, at least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the
Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a
cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and
scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief.
Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to doubt, or
deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics, ^20 but they were deeply
inscribed in the public and private creed of his bishops; and the boldest
Iconoclast might assault with a secret horror the monuments of popular
devotion, which were consecrated to the honor of his celestial patrons.
In the reformation of the sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had
expanded all the faculties of man: the thirst of innovation superseded
the reverence of antiquity; and the vigor of Europe could disdain those
phantoms which terrified the sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks.
[Footnote 18: Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the
Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom. viii. and
ix. Collect. Labbe, edit. Venet. and the historical writings of
Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonoras, &c. Of the
modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Eccles.
Seculum viii. and ix.,) and Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclasts,) have
treated the subject with learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant

labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James
Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339 - 1385)
are cast into the Iconoclast