and on this head the Protestants are so notoriously in the right,
that they can venture to be impartial. See the perplexity of poor
Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p. 42.]

The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance
with the original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of
the genuine features of the Son of God, his mother, and his
apostles: the statue of Christ at Paneas in Palestine ^7 was more
probably that of some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their
profane monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian
artists could only be guided by the clandestine imitation of some
heathen model. In this distress, a bold and dexterous invention
assured at once the likeness of the image and the innocence of
the worship. A new super structure of fable was raised on the
popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ
and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly
deserted by our modern advocates. The bishop of Caesarea ^8
records the epistle, ^9 but he most strangely forgets the picture
of Christ; ^10 the perfect impression of his face on a linen,
with which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had
invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa
to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of
the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the
image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of
five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and
seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and
most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the
arms of Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge
of the divine promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a
foreign enemy. It is true, indeed, that the text of Procopius