37 Fallmerayer, "Geschichte der Morea," vol. i., p. 136.
39 I think that it will not be uninteresting to my readers to know how the Roman Catholic Church explains this prohibition, and which may be best seen from the following piece of ingenious casuistry, by one of her ablest defenders in this country:--"Canon xxxvi. of the Provincial Council held in 305, at Eliberis, in Spain, immediately refutes the error of Bingham. (Bingham maintained the same opinion on the images which is expressed in the text.) The pastors of the Spanish church beheld the grievous persecution that Diocletian had commenced to wage against the Christian faith, which had for a lengthened period enjoyed comparative repose, under the forbearing reign of Constantius Cæsar, father of Constantine the Great. They assembled to concert precautionary measures, and amongst other things, they determined that, in the provinces under their immediate jurisdiction, there should be no fixed and immovable picture monuments, such as fresco paintings or mosaics, no images of Christ whom they adored, nor of the saints whom they venerated, on the walls of the churches which had been erected and ornamented during the long interval of peace which the Christians had enjoyed. 'Placuit,' says the council, 'picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur, in parietibus depingatur,' (Con. Elib., _apud Labbeum_, tom i. p. 972.) This economy was prudent and adapted to the exigency of the period. The figures of Christ and of his saints were thus protected from the ribaldry and insults of the Pagans. But this well-timed prohibition demonstrates, that the use of pictures and images had already been introduced into the Spanish church."--_Hierurgia, or Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints, Relics, &c., expounded by D. Rock, D.D._, second edition, p. 374, _note_. There can be no doubt that the enactment in question proves that images were used at that time amongst the Spanish Christians, as a law prohibiting some particular crimes or offences shows that they were taking place at the time when it was promulgated; but the opinion that the above-mentioned enactment was not a prohibition of images, but a precautionary measure in their favour, must be supported either by the other canons of the same council, which contain nothing confirmatory of this opinion, or by the authority of some contemporary writer, and is without such evidence quite untenable, and nothing better than a mere sophism, I have given this explanation of the Council of Elvira by a Roman Catholic writer as a fair specimen of the manner in which all other practices of their church, derived from Paganism, are defended.