Nor is the matter mended if we contemplate the worship of the Host, and homage paid to images and pictures. Like many other of the antics of popery, these are novelties, and were not known till 1216. Pope Adrian the Sixth, it is said, had so much doubt of their value, that in his own practice he used the precautionary form, ‘I adore thee if thou art Christ;’ and judged the people should say the same. His suspicions were well founded. As no power whatever can work a self-contradiction, so no being can make that which is already made; but Christ was many years before the Eucharist; therefore no power could make the eucharistic bread to be the man Christ Jesus. Of course it ever remained a creature, and adoration offered to it is idolatry. So of images. Referring to these, an old writer remarks, ‘Now would anyone be pleased to consider the pains taken in the formation of images, he would be ashamed to stand in such fear of a thing that the hand of the artist had been so long playing upon, to make a god. For this wooden god, taken perhaps out of some old faggot or pile, or a piece of some forlorn stump, is hung 224up, hewn, planed, and chiselled into shape; or if it be a deity of brass or silver, it is ten to one but the pedigree is derived from a dirty kettle, or worse than that. But if it happen to be a god of stone, then the mallets are set to work upon him; but as he is not sensible of any hardships endured in the preparation, it is to him of inferior moment. Well, the image is cast, fashioned, and filed; but, pray, when does it become divine?’ It may be soldered, put together, and set upon its legs; but after all the article is of no value. Then comes the Catholic priest, with his consecrating potentialities; and now, behold your God! ye deluded worshippers. The truly enlightened Christian sees through the folly of such practices. He knows that all divine or religious worship is wholly due to Jehovah. If not wholly, not at all; for any reason that would take away a part, must take away the whole. If, therefore, wholly due to Him, then can no part thereof, however small, be given away from Him, without injustice and impiety.