“And in this manner we are not to pray to or praise any creature. Therefore, they who make their prayers and their praises before images, and say their _Paternoster_ and their _Ave Maria_ and other prayers and praises commonly used by holy Church, or any such, if they do it to the image, and speak to the image, they do open idolatry. Also they are not excused even if they understand not what they say, for their lights, and their other wits, and their inner wit also, showeth them well that there ought that no such prayer, praise, or worship be offered to such images, for they can neither hear them, nor see them, nor help them in their needs.”
Equally definite and explicit is another writer, just on the eve of the Reformation. William Bond, the brother of Sion, in 1531 published his large volume of instructions called _The Pilgrymage of Perfeccyon_, to which his contemporary, Richard Whitford, refers his readers for the fullest teaching on sundry points of faith and practice. In setting forth the distinction between an _image_ and an _idol_ this authority says, “Many nowadays take the Scripture wrongly, and thereby fall into heresy as Wycliffe did with his followers, and now this abominable heretic, Luther, with his adherents.… And (as I suppose) the cause of their error is some of these following:--First, that they put no difference between an idol and an image; secondly, that they put no difference between the service or high adoration due to God, called in the Greek tongue _latria_, and the lower veneration or worship exhibited and done to the saints of God, called in Greek _dulia_.… The veneration or worship that is done to the images (as Damascene, Basil, and St. Thomas say) rest not in them, but redound unto the thing that is represented by such images: as for example, the great ambassador or messenger of a king shall have the same reverence that the king’s own person should have if he were present. This honour is not done to this man for himself, or for his own person, but for the king’s person in whose name he cometh, and all such honour and reverence so done redoundeth to the king and resteth in him.… So it is in the veneration or worshipping of the images of Christ and His saints. The honour rests not in the image, nor in the stock, nor in the stone, but in the thing that is represented thereby.” According to St. Thomas, he says the images in churches are intended to “be as books to the rude and unlearned people,” and to “stir simple souls to devotion.”[302]