Wesley Corpus

The Origin of Image-Worship Among Christians Source: The Works of John Wesley, Volume 10 (Zondervan) Author: John Wesley --- WHEN Christianity was first preached in the world, it was supported by such miraculous assistance of the divine power, that there was need of little or no human aid to the propagation of it. Not only the Apostles, who first preached it, but even the lay-believers were sufficiently instructed in all the articles of faith, and were inspired with the power of working miracles, and the gift of speaking in languages unknown to them before. But when the gospel was spread, and had taken root through the world; when Kings and Princes became Christians, and when temples were built and magnificently adorned for Chris tian worship; then the zeal of some well-disposed Christians brought pictures into the churches, not only as ornaments, but as instructors of the ignorant; and from thence they were called libri laicorum,-“the books of the people.” Thus the walls of the churches were beset with pictures, representing all the particular transactions mentioned. And they who did not understand a letter of a book knew how to give a very good account of the gospel, being taught to understand the particular passages of it in the pictures of the church. Thus, as hieroglyphics were the first means of propagating know ledge, before writing by letters and words was invented; so the more ignorant people were taught compendiously by pictures, what, by the scarcity of teachers, they had not an opportunity of being otherwise fully instructed in. But these things, which were at first intended for good, became, by the devil’s subtlety, a snare for the souls of Chris tians. For when Christian Princes, and the rich and great, vied with one another, who should embellish the temples with greatest magnificence, the pictures upon the walls were turned into gaudy images upon the altars; and the people being deceived by the outward appearance of the Priests’ bowing and kneeling, (before those images,) as the different parts of their devotion led them, they imagined that those gestures were designed to do honour to the images, before which they were performed; (which they certainly were not;) and so, from admiring, the people came to adore them. Thus, what were at first designed as monuments of edification, became the instru ments of superstition.