V.

(Symbols, cap. vi. p. 453, note 3.)

Clement regards the symbols of the divine law as symbols merely, and not images in the sense of the Decalogue. Whatever we may think of this distinction, his argument destroys the fallacy of the Trent Catechism, which pleads the Levitical symbols in favour of images in "the likeness of holy things," and which virtually abrogates the second commandment. Images of God the Father (crowned with the Papal tiara) are everywhere to be seen in the Latin churches, and countless images of all heavenly things are everywhere worshipped under the fallacy which Clement rejects. Pascal exposes the distinctions without a difference, by which God's laws are evacuated of all force in Jesuit theology; but the hairsplitting distinctions, about "bowing down to images and worshipping them," which infect the Trent theology, are equal to the worst of Pascal's instances. [^3188] It is with profound regret that I insert this testimony; but it seems necessary, because garblings of patristic authorities, which begin to appear in America, make an accurate and intelligent study of the Ante-Nicene Fathers a necessity for the American theologian.