The great champion who rose to defend image worship against Leo, the iconoclast, was John of Damascus, the most learned man in the East, and a subject of the Sultan. The ancestors of John, when that city was taken by the Mohammedans, had remained faithful Christians; but, being wealthy and respectable, were employed by the Sultan in high judicial posts. One day, when John's father was a judge, a Christian monk, named Cosmas, was about to be executed, and was weeping and bewailing so much that he was asked why he, a monk, should so earnestly plead for his life. The monk answered that he did not weep so much for losing life as for the treasures of knowledge that would be buried with him, for he knew nearly everything under the sun--rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geometry, music, astronomy, theology. All he wanted was some heir who could inherit this vast patrimony of knowledge, so that he might not go down to the tomb an unprofitable servant. John's father saw at once that this was a remarkable monk, begged his life, and made him tutor to his son; and in due course the son John became, under such tuition, the greatest master of knowledge extant, as the monk took care to assure the grateful father. With these accomplishments John of Damascus entered the lists in due course, and composed three immortal orations in favour of image worship, in which all the learning of the world was brought to bear upon that delicate subject. The Emperor being indignant at John's oration, procured a letter to be forged in a similar handwriting, containing a proposal to betray his native city of Damascus to the Christians, and purporting to be signed by John. This letter was sent by the Emperor to the Sultan with specious friendly comments. The result was that John's right hand was cut off for his wicked treason. John, however, entreated the Virgin to restore his hand; and after kneeling before her image and praying fervently, he fell asleep, and when he woke his hand was restored and was as well as ever. This astonished and convinced the Sultan, who reinstated John at once in all his honours. These orations, while containing some puerile matter, are distinguished for zeal and ingenuity. John of Damascus maintained that pictures were great standing memorials of triumph over the devil; that whoever destroys these memorials is a friend of the devil; that to reprove material images is Manicheism, as betraying the hatred of matter, which is the first tenet of that odious heresy; and that it was a kind of Docetism too, asserting the unreality of the body of the Saviour. In support of his doctrine John concluded by citing a copious list of miracles wrought by certain images. This question of images was so serious a disturbance that a council met, called the Third Council of Constantinople, in 746; and three hundred and forty-eight bishops attended, and all these united in condemning images and excommunicating those who set them up. The Empress