walls of the temples to be painted with stories taken out of the Old
The last passage I will call attention to, is the conclusion of the ninth chapter of Revelation. We read there, in the twentieth verse: "The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk." Now, I am not going to offer any comment on the chapter in which this verse occurs. I know well there is a difference of opinion as to the true interpretation of the plagues predicted in it. I only venture to assert, that it is the highest probability these plagues are to fall upon the visible Church of Jesus Christ; and the highest improbability, that John was here prophesying about the heathen, who never heard the Gospel. And this once conceded, the fact that idolatry is a predicted sin of the visible Church, does seem most conclusively and forever established.
And now, if we turn from the Bible to facts, what do we see? I reply, without a second thought, that there is unmistakable proof that Scripture warnings and predictions were not spoken without cause, and that idolatry has actually arisen in the visible Church of Christ, and does still exist.
The rise and progress of the evil in former days, we shall find well summed up in the sermon "Peril of Idolatry." To that I beg to refer all Christians, reminding them once for all, how, even in the fourth century, Jerome complains, "that the false doctrine of images have come in, and passed to the Christians from the Gentiles;" and Eusebius says, "We do see, that images of Peter and Paul, and of our Savior Himself are made, which I think to have been derived and kept indifferently by an heathenish custom." There we may also read,
1. How Pontius Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in the fifth century, caused the walls of the temples to be painted with stories taken out of the Old Testament; that the people looking at and considering these pictures might the better abstain from too much excess in their lives. But from learning by painted stories, it came little by little to become idolatry.
2. How Gregory the first, Bishop of Rome, in the beginning of the seventh century, allowed images in the churches.