In the book “Against the Heavenly Prophets” Luther, in the same sense, writes: “Images used as a memorial or for a symbol, like the image of the Emperor” on the coins, were not objectionable; even in conversation images were employed by way of illustration; “memorial pictures or those which bear testimony to the faith, such as crucifixes and the images of the Saints,” are honest and praiseworthy, but the images venerated at places of pilgrimage are “utterly idolatrous and mere shelters of the devil.”[754] And in the “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis” (1528) he says: “Images, bells, mass vestments, church ornaments, altars, lights and such like I leave optional; whoever wishes may discard them, although pictures from Scripture and representations of sacred subjects I consider very useful, though I leave each one free to do as he pleases; for with the iconoclasts I do not hold.”[755] In one passage of his Church-postils he entirely approves the use of the crucifix; we ought to contemplate the cross as the Israelites looked upon the serpent raised on high by Moses; we should “see Christ in such an image and believe in Him.”[756] “If it be no sin,” he says elsewhere, “to have Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it [His image] before my eyes?”[757] But Catholics were saying much the same thing in defence of the veneration of images, though to this Luther paid no attention: If it be no sin to have in our hearts the saints who are Christ’s own friends or Mary who is His Mother, how then should it be sinful to have their images before our eyes and to honour them? As years went by Luther became more and more liberal in recommending the use of historical and, in particular, biblical representations. In 1545, when he published his Passional with his little manual of prayers, he said in the preface, alluding to the woodcuts contained in the book: Such pictures ought to be in the hands of Christians, more particularly of children and of the simple, who can “better be moved by pictures and figures”; there was no harm “in painting such stories in rooms and apartments, together with the texts”; he was in favour of the “principal stories of the whole Bible” being pictorially shown, though he was opposed to all “abuse of and false confidence in” images.[758]