It is not our business to-night to shew the utter fallacy of all such blind reliance, or to point out how widely it differs from the faith with which it is confounded; how infinitely more difficult it is to discover what the Church teaches than what the Bible does; or how such persons receive without investigation a monstrous dogma opposed to every evidence, viz., the pretended infallibility of the Church on which they lean. My one desire has been to show that such a system is a natural accommodation of the doctrine of revelation to the wants and waverings of the natural man.
It is plain to any man that without worship there can be no true religion, and the Gospel is a grand scheme whereby God enables men to pray. Christ came that we might have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him. His blood removes every barrier, and his Spirit gives the needful power. But unless that Gospel be embraced with an appropriating faith, true prayer remains an impossibility; men may repeat their prayers, but, like St. Paul, they will never really pray. Hence, if a man remain in an unconverted state, he must do one of two things; he must either give up prayer altogether, which cannot satisfy an anxious mind; or he must have some modification of true worship. If he cannot rise in heart to heaven, he must have a shadow of the throne provided for him on earth. Now mark the effect of this necessity.
The first great difficulty in the way of earnest prayer is realization. The natural man cannot realize unseen spirits. There is a height and glory in them beyond his reach. But yet there is no peace unless he does realize. So what must he do? Me must invent some representation, whereby to lead on his mind; some image, figure, or effigy, which may stand before him, in order to bring the object of his worship to his view, and which may stand as a hallowed emblem, through which he pays God his honour; he invents for himself just such a system as is described in the decree of the Council of Trent, when it says, Sess. xxv., “The honour which is given to the images is given to the prototypes which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head and make prostration, we adore Christ, and venerate those saints of whom they are the likeness.” Through the image they adore the Saviour, and the image is employed as an accommodated help to assist the process of realization in the worship of an unseen God.