Protestant and Catholic Commandment Arguments by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 15, 1874

Protestant and Catholic Commandment Arguments

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THE PROTESTANT ARGUMENT AGAINST THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT, COMPARED WITH THE CATHOLIC ARGUMENT AGAINST THE SECOND COMMANDMENT.

It is a well-known fact that Roman Catholics, the world over, do make images and likenesses of God, of Christ, and of the saints; that they put these in all of their places of devotion, and that they do bow down before them, make prayers to them, and regard them with great veneration. To us Protestants it seems astonishing that they can do this with the Bible before them, which they profess to believe. Does not the Bible everywhere condemn images and image worship? Does not the second commandment of the decalogue especially prohibit these?

How, then, do the Catholics get over this? Very easily indeed. This is their answer: The second commandment was an old Jewish law which belonged only to that age of bondage. It was abolished on the cross, and hence is not binding upon us Christians! The liberty of the gospel now allows us to use images, provided we do not do it superstitiously! Those who go back to the old law and condemn this pious custom are Judaizers and have denied Christ, and they ought to be circumcised and offer sacrifices! Mr. Bower, in his “History of the Popes,” vol. ii. pp. 157–8, thus states the Catholic argument on this point. Of the council held at Nice, in A. D. 787, the historian says:—

“They closed the session with a peal of anathemas against all in general who did not salute, honor, worship, and adore, the holy and venerable images, and against the Emperor Leo in particular, his son Copronymus, and the impious assembly of Judaizing bishops, convened by the latter for the destruction of images, and the exaltation of the kingdom of Satan. The fifth session, held on the 4th of October, was opened by Tarasius with a declamation, or rather invective, wherein the Iconoclasts were compared to the Jews, Samaritans, Pagans, Mahometans, Manichees, etc. When he had done they were declared by the whole assembly worse than Jews, Samaritans, or Mahometans, because they destroyed images ignorantly, being strangers to Christianity.”

“When the second commandment was alleged, and other passages out of the Scripture, forbidding the worship of images, they were angry that words spoken long ago to the Jews should be applied to the Christians, as if the precepts of the decalogue were not binding with respect to the Christians, and our Saviour had come to destroy the law, and not to fulfill it.”

Again, in a note on page 195, Mr. Bower says: “But by God himself,” replied the Emperor, “we are expressly forbidden to make any graven images, to bow down to them, or to worship them. The Jews were forbidden,” answered Theodore; “but the law given to them is not binding with respect to us Christians, else why should we not be circumcised as well as the Jews?” where he ignorantly confounds the ceremonial law with the decalogue. But he had, it seems, perused the acts of the second council of Nice, and read there of a learned bishop wondering at the ignorance of the Iconoclast heretics, in alleging against the Christians words spoken so long ago to the Jews. (See p. 158.) The Emperor maintained that the law given to Moses was binding with respect to the Christians as well as the Jews, our Saviour having declared that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law; and, consequently, if it was idolatry in a Jew to bow down to images and worship them, it was likewise idolatry in a Christian. In answer to this was urged by Theodore the example of our Saviour himself, who had sent his picture to Abgarus, king of Edessa (see p. 29); the example of St. Luke (see p. 30); and many others who had painted him in the earliest times, and whose pictures were still to be seen, and still were worshiped by the faithful; the many advantages attending the use as well as the worship of images, and the uninterrupted use of the church from the times of Christ and his apostles to the present.”

This language is so like that which we Sabbath-keepers daily hear from our opponents, in their arguments against the fourth commandment that it sounds very familiar. Because we obey the fourth commandment of God's holy law, which says that the seventh day is the Sabbath, we are stigmatized as Judaizers, as being strangers to Christianity, as going back to the old law which was given only to the Jews. And it is urged that to be consistent we ought to offer sacrifices, etc. Now, if these arguments are valid against the seventh-day Sabbath, then the Catholic argument against the second commandment is equally sound. But the truth is, that these arguments, both Catholic and Protestant, are a bold perversion of the word of God, subverting his holy law. Alex. Campbell, in his celebrated debate with Bishop Purcell, pp. 214, 215, says:—

“The single fact that the four archbishops of Ireland and the Roman Catholic college of Maynooth should have impiously dared to strike one commandment from the ten, which God wrote on two tables with his own finger, and should have changed and divided the tenth into two, speaks volumes in proof of my allegation against the Romanist rule of faith.”

“It is a poor apology for this expurgation of the decalogue, that it is not so done in the Douay Bible; for when these catechisms were introduced, and even yet in most Catholic countries, not one layman in a thousand ever read that Bible; the catechism, intended for universal consumption, contained all this knowledge of God's law. What myriads, then, through this fraud, must have lived and died in the belief that the second commandment was no part of God's law!”

“It is clearly proved that the pastors of the church have struck out one of God's ten words, which not only in the Old Testament, but in all revelation, are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion and morality. They have also made a ninth commandment out of the tenth, and their ninth, in that independent position, becomes identical with the seventh commandment, and makes God use tautology in the only instrument in the universe that he wrote with his own hand! But why this annulling of the second commandment? Because it is a positive prohibition of the practice of bowing down to images, and doing them homage; a custom dearer to the Romish Church than both the second and seventh commandments! It is, however, gross idolatry.”

This language is none too severe. Mr. Campbell strikes at the root of the matter, when he declares that the reason why Catholics have set aside the second commandment is because they held a custom forbidden by that commandment, a custom dearer to them than the law of Jehovah. The same is true of Sunday-keepers. The fourth commandment requiring the observance of the seventh day is plain enough. Its obligation upon the Christian is clear enough from the New Testament Scriptures. But Sunday-keepers find themselves observing the first day of the week and violating God's Sabbath. This practice has become so dear to them that, rather than give this up and yield to the authority of Jehovah, they will invent every argument to stigmatize that law and set it aside as Jewish.

It is astonishing to see what shifts and turns the Catholics have taken to evade the force of the second commandment. Mr. Bower thus states another of their arguments:—

“I know that the popish writers, to clear their church from that imputation, distinguish here between supreme and inferior worship, absolute and relative, direct and reductive, worship by itself and worship by accident, worship of Latria and worship of Dulia, Hyperdulia, etc. ‘The heretics,’ says Arriaga, ‘allege many passages from the Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils, where it is said that God only is to be worshiped. But to all the passages that have been, or can be, alleged, we answer, in one word, that they are to be understood of the worship of Latria or supreme worship, which must be given to God alone; and would become idolaters if given to any but to God.’ Vol. ii., p. 36.”

What a bold heresy this is! What a manifest evasion of the direct command of God! The Lord says that we shall not worship an image. Oh, yes, reply the Catholics, we are not to worship them with supreme worship, but a secondary worship, the worship of Dulia, Hyperdulia, etc. Then here is another evasion, as stated by the historian, page 34.

“The popish writers, to evade the testimony of the fathers thus condemning the worship, the use, and even the making of images, would have us to understand them as speaking only of the images of the heathens, or of the worship of images as practised by the heathens, who, they say, either worshiped the images themselves as gods, or worshiped false gods through them; and were, on that account, condemned by the fathers, and deservedly condemned, as guilty of idolatry; but that, they say, does not at all affect the worship which they give to images, since they neither worship them as gods, nor worship false gods through them, but the true God, or his saints and holy angels; for on them the worship terminates that is given to their images.”

To a Protestant, all these arguments are worse than none. They are simply an evasion—a perversion of the word of God. But these forcibly remind us of the shifts which are resorted to by Sunday-keepers to evade the plain requirement of the fourth commandment. They argue that the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh to the first day; next, that the fourth commandment was an old Jewish law and never applied to Christians; next, that any one-seventh part of time is all that the commandment requires; then, that you cannot tell when the seventh day does come any way; then, again, that all days are alike. And thus they go on turning, and shifting, and twisting, in every shape to evade the fourth commandment, the same as the old mother of harlots has to get around the second commandment.—D. M. CANRIGHT, in Signs of Times.