Later on, in the same tract, rejecting the notion that people did not fully understand that the image was intended merely to recall the memory of the person whose image it was, and was not itself in any sense the thing or person, More says: “The flock of Christ is not so foolish as those heretics would make them to be. For whereas there is no dog so mad that he does not know a real coney (_i.e._ rabbit) from a coney carved and painted, (yet they would have it supposed that) Christian people that have reason in their heads, and therefore the light of faith in their souls, would think that the image of our Lady were our Lady herself. Nay, they be not so mad, I trust, but that they do reverence to the image for the honour of the person whom it represents, as every man delights in the image and remembrance of his friend. And although every good Christian man has a remembrance of Christ’s passion in his mind, and conceives by devout meditation a form and fashion thereof in his heart, yet there is no man I ween so good nor so learned, nor so well accustomed to meditation, but that he finds himself more moved to pity and compassion by beholding the holy crucifix than when he lacks it.”[295]
In his work against Tyndale, More again takes up this subject in reference to the way in which the former in his new translation of the Bible had substituted the word _idol_ for _image_, as if they were practically identical in meaning. “Good folk who worship images of Christ and His saints, thereby worship Christ and His saints, whom these images represent.” Just as pagan worshippers of idols did evil in worshipping them, “because in them they worshipped devils (whom they called gods and whom those idols represented), so Christian men do well in worshipping images, because in them they worship Christ and His holy saints.”[296]
Roger Edgworth, the preacher, describes at Bristol in Queen Mary’s reign how the Reforming party endeavoured to confuse the minds of the common people as to the meaning of the word idol. “I would,” he says, “that you should not ignorantly confound and abuse those terms ‘idol’ and ‘image,’ taking an image for an idol and an idol for an image, as I have heard many do in this city, as well fathers and mothers (who should be wise) as their babies and children who have learned foolishness from their parents. Now, at the dissolution of the monasteries and friars’ houses many images have been carried abroad and given to children to play with, and when the children have them in their hands, dancing them in their childish manner, the father or mother comes and says, ‘What nase, what have you there?’ The child answers (as she is taught), ‘I have here my idol.’ Then the father laughs and makes a gay game at it. So says the mother to another, ‘Jugge or Tommy, where did you get that pretty idol?’ ‘John, our parish clerk gave it to me,’ says the child, and for that the clerk must have thanks and shall not lack good cheer. But if the folly were only in the insolent youth, and in the fond unlearned fathers and mothers, it might soon be redressed.” The fact is, he proceeds to explain, that the new preachers have been doing all in their power to obscure the hitherto well-recognised difference in meaning between an image and an idol. He begs his hearers to try and keep the difference in meaning between an image and an idol clearly before their minds. “An image is a similitude of a natural thing that has been, is, or may be,” he tells them. “An idol is a similitude of what never was or may be. Therefore the image of the crucifix is no idol, for it represents and signifies Christ crucified as He was in very deed, and the image of St. Paul with a sword in his hand as the sign of his martyrdom is no idol, for the thing signified by it was a thing indeed, for he was beheaded with a sword.”[297]