6.
This representation of the consistency of the Catholic system will be found to be true, even in respect of those peculiarities of it, which have been considered by Protestants most open to the charge of corruption and innovation. It is maintained, for instance, that the veneration paid to Images in the Catholic Church directly contradicts the command of Scripture, and the usage of the primitive ages. As to primitive usage, that part of the subject has been incidentally observed upon already; here I will make one remark on the argument from Scripture.
It may be reasonably questioned, then, whether the Commandment which stands second in the Protestant Decalogue, on which the prohibition of Images is grounded, was intended in its letter for more than temporary observance. So far is certain, that, though none could surpass the later Jews in its literal observance, nevertheless this did not save them from the punishments attached to the violation of it. If this be so, the literal observance is not its true and evangelical import.
7.
"When the generation to come of your children shall rise up after you," says their inspired lawgiver, "and the stranger that shall come from a far land shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and its sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it; and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, . . . even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenants of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt; for they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom He had not given them." Now the Jews of our Lord's day did not keep this covenant, for they incurred the penalty; yet they kept the letter of the Commandment rigidly, and were known among the heathen far and wide for their devotion to the "Lord God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt," and for their abhorrence of the "gods whom He had not given them." If then adherence to the letter was no protection to the Jews, departure from the letter may be no guilt in Christians.
It should be observed, moreover, that there certainly is a difference between the two covenants in their respective view of symbols of the Almighty. In the Old, it was blasphemy to represent Him under "the similitude of a calf that eateth hay;" in the New, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity has signified His Presence by the appearance of a Dove, and the Second Person has presented His sacred Humanity for worship under the name of the Lamb.
8.
It follows that, if the letter of the Decalogue is but partially binding on Christians, it is as justifiable, in setting it before persons under instruction, to omit such parts as do not apply to them, as, when we quote passages from the Pentateuch in Sermons or Lectures generally, to pass over verses which refer simply to the temporal promises or the ceremonial law, a practice which we allow without any intention or appearance of dealing irreverently with the sacred text.