horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the faculties of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of antiquity; and the vigor of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks. 18 (return) [ Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom. viii. and ix. Collect. Labbe, edit. Venet. and the historical writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonoras, &c. Of the modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Eccles. Seculum viii. and ix.,) and Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclasts,) have treated the subject with learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of research and impartiality—M.] 19 (return) [ Some flowers of rhetoric. By Damascenus is styled (Opera, tom. i. p. 623.) Spanheim’s Apology for the Synod of Constantinople (p. 171, &c.) is worked up with truth and ingenuity, from such materials as he could find in the Nicene Acts, (p. 1046, &c.) The witty John of Damascus converts it into slaves of their belly, &c. Opera, tom. i. p. 806] 20 (return) [ He is accused of proscribing the title of saint; styling the Virgin, Mother of Christ; comparing her after her delivery to an empty purse of Arianism, Nestorianism, &c. In his defence, Spanheim (c. iv. p. 207) is somewhat embarrassed between the interest of a Protestant and the duty of an orthodox divine.]