Thursday, August 4, 2022

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet on Images and their Veneration During the Early English Reformation

  

Concerning Images and Saints.

 

Images were retained, with full liberty of incensing them, kneeling before them, bringing offerings, and shewing respect to them, in consideration that these homages were a relative honour, directed to God, and not to the Image. This was not only approving the honour of Images in general, but those things, in particular, wherein it is carried to its greatest height.

 

The people were to be taught that it was good to pray to the saints, that they would pray for, and with us, yet so as not to think to obtain those things at their hands which were only to be obtained of God. (Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, The History and the Variations of the Protestant Churches, 2 vols. [2d ed.; Maynooth: Richard Coyne, 1836], 1:269-70)

 

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