It is certainly entitled to the greatest respect at my hands, and must be considered as an important precedent with reference to the case before me, from which it is only distinguishable by the facts:
(1) that the images appear to have been painted and not sculptured;
(2) and to have been single detached figures, and not, as in the case before me, part of an historical scene, or, as the Homily terms it, “the process of a story.”
Lastly, I come to Mr. Phillpotts’ final argument as to the discretion which ought to be exercised. I agree with him, that as to questions of this kind the Ecclesiastical Court has a discretion to exercise. Ornaments and structures which it may be proper, all the circumstances considered, to allow in some cases, it may be improper to allow in others. Much of the decoration of a cathedral may be unsuitable in a parish church. I am urged to exercise this judicial discretion adversely to the erection of the reredos in this case, on the ground of the tendency to adopt the usages of Rome, said to be now prevalent, and on the ground that this structure is an approach to such uses. If there be such a tendency I deeply lament it, but I doubt whether the tendency is to be counteracted in the way proposed. I think there is a great danger of doing unintentionally the work of the Church of Rome by denying the Church of England the innocent aid which the arts of painting and sculpture, within due limits, minister to religion. If the use of all things abused by Rome were taken from our Church, she would be very bare. “It must be confessed,” say our 30th Canon, “that in the process of time the sign of the Cross was greatly abused in the Church of Rome, especially after that corruption of Popery had once possessed it; but the abuse of a thing does not take away the use of it.”
“But concerning those our ceremonies,” says Hooker, “which they reckon for most Popish, they are not able to avouch that any of them was otherwise instituted than unto good, yea, so used at the first. It followeth, then, that they all are such as having served to good purpose, were afterwards converted into the contrary. And sith it is not so much as objected against us, that we retain together with them the evil wherewith they have been infected in the Church of Rome, I would demand who they are whom we scandalize, by using harmless thing unto that good end to which they were first instituted.”
The very learned and pious Dr. Donne says: “God, we see, was the first that made images, and he was the first that forbade them. He made them for imitation; He forbade in danger of adoration. For – qualis dementiae est id colere, quod melius est – what a drowsiness, what a laziness, what a cowardliness of the soul is it, to worship that which does but represent a better thing than itself. Worship belongs to the best. Know thou thy distance and thy period, how far to go and where to stop. Dishonor not God by an image in worshipping it, and yet benefit thyself in following it. There is no more danger out of a picture than out of a history, if thou intend no more in either than example.” (Works, vol. v. p. 250, ed. 1839, Sermon cx.)
