CHAPTER V.

An useful digression concerning the time when Simeon Metaphrastes lived, and the occasion of his writing. That his living within the time of the great opposition against Saint-worship moved him to devise such stories as made for the credit and advantage of that cause then in danger. A brief historical account (even out of the records left by the adversaries) of the great opposition in the Greek and Eastern Churches against worshipping of Images and of Saints: when it began, how long it lasted, and under what Emperors. Of the great council held at Constantinople under Constantinus Copronymus against Idolatry. An attempt to foist in two canons in favour of Saintworship frustrated. Several slanders and calumnies fastened upon the Council and the Emperor by the idolatrous faction. The original of these slanders: that they were notorious lies, proved from the decrees of the Council.

BUT for the better understanding of this mystery of iniquity, and what necessity there was of such desperate shifts when time was; ye shall know that this superstitious Simeon lived towards the end of that time of great and long opposition against idolatry in the Greek and Eastern Churches, by divers Emperors with the greatest part of their Bishops, Peers, and People, lasting from about the year of our Lord 720 till after 840, that is 120 years; which was not against images only, though they bare the name; but the worship of saints and their relics; the state whereof it will not be amiss to represent out of

such records of antiquity as our adversaries themselves have been pleased to leave us; if it be but for their sake who so often ask us whether there were ever any of our religion before Luther. Let us therefore hear what writers of their own sect, such as then lived and were eye-witnesses, will tell us.

Leo Isaurus (saith Theophanes, Miscell. lib. 21, cap. 23.)"erred not only about the respective adoration of venerable images," but about "the intercession of the most chaste Mother of God, and all the Saints, whose relics also this most wicked man abominated like unto his masters the Mahumetans."

This was the first of those Emperors; the next was Constantinus, whom they surnamed Copronymus, of whom the same author speaks as followeth : "This pernicious, inhuman, and barbarous Emperor, abusing his authority tyrannically, and not using it lawfully, at the very beginning made an Apostasy from God and his undefiled Mother and all his Saints."

Again, lib. 22, cap. 42, upon the twenty-sixth year of his reign :

"He shewed himself wicked, beyond the frenzy of the Mahumetans, to all that were Orthodox "-so he calls idolaters,-" under his Empire, Bishops, Monks, Laymen and other his subjects; everywhere, as well by writing as by speech, banishing, as unprofitable, the intercessions of the holy Virgin and Mother of God and of all the Saints, through which all succour is conveyed unto us, and causing their holy Relics

to be rejected and despised: and if the Relics of any notable Saint, sovereign both to body and soul, were known to lie anywhere, and were, as the manner is, honoured by those which were religious; presently he threatened such as these with death, as wicked doers, or else with proscriptions, banishment, and torture. As for the Relics acceptable to God, and esteemed by the possessors as a treasure, they were taken from them from thenceforward to be made hateful things."

Again, cap. 48, of the next year:

"If any one getting a fall, or being in pain, chanced to utter the usual language of Christians, saying, O Mother of God, help me; or were found keeping vigils, &c., he was adjudged as the Emperor's enemy, and styled immemorabilis, unworthy of memory: This was a title of infamy."

Again, cap. 54, Anno regni 31:

"If one were found to have a Relic but to keep, (that is, though he worshipped it not,) yet nevertheless did Lichanodraco, the Emperor's President, burn it, and punish him that had it as a wicked doer." Thus far Theophanes.

Hear now what the Author of the Acts of Monk Stephen, whom the same Emperor made one of their Martyrs for patronising idols, can tell us hear what he saith of the great Council of Constantinople, held in this Emperor's reign against Images.

"O Christ, how should I not admire thy lenity!To that height did those most impudent

tongues yet further break out, that they were not afraid to utter that monstrous and impious speech, viz. That the very Virgin-Mother of God herself was now after her death unavailable, and no use to be made of her, nor could she help or protect any one."

The same Author thus deplores the state of those times, abusing the words of Psalm 79.

“O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones: the dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the air, and the flesh of thy Saints unto the beasts of the earth; that is,' saith he, "the venerable and sacred Relics of the Martyrs, which they cast partly into the fire, partly into the water, and (O villainous act whereby the whole world is damnified!) partly threw down into precipices."

*

There is nothing yet in these relations will do any man hurt by engendering a misconceit ; especially if he remember the tale is told by malicious adversaries, that counterfeit Relics were plentiful in those days as well as now, and that Hezekiah brake in pieces the brazen serpent made by God's own commandment, a holy monument and a type of Christ, when it was once abused to idolatry.

After the death of this Emperor Constantine

* Quas partim igni, partim mari, partim denique (ô facinus orbi universo damnum serens!) præcipitiis tradiderunt;

and his son, who reigned not long after him, the idolatrous faction, under Constantine his nephew and the queen-mother Irene, again for some years prevailed; and that so far as to pack a Council, called the Second of Nice, the Bishop of Rome having a main stroke therein; whereby the former Council of Constantinople was condemned, and the worship of Images again established. But Leo Armenius coming to the Empire, the Orthodox part again prevailed, as before they had done, during the reign of three Emperors more.

The last Emperor of the opposers of Idols was Theophilus, the last Patriarch John. And that to the very end the idolatry of Saint-worship was opposed more or less, as well as that of images, may be gathered out of that "Song of Triumph," which the Greeks used to sing every first Sunday in Lent, for a memorial of their last and final conquest of the opposers of Images, ever since that time; where, in the hymn of Theodorus, Ode 8, I find this verse, "The sacred Relics of the Saints, and their Images, were not at all to be worshipped, said most wickedly the renouncers of piety, the barbarous Lezich and John." This John is that Patriarch of Constantinople which I said was the last of the opposers of idols, and is often mentioned in this song, as is also Lezich, but what he was is uncertain.

But this whole story being delivered unto us only by professed enemies, if they should fasten no worse calumnies upon the opposite side than yet you have heard, you would think perhaps that