derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with the
original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and
prolific virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a
fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the
veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his
agony and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to a
holy matron. The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to
the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In the church of
Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God ^13
were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have
been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who
was perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the
occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the
primitive Christians. The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of
Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind
with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly
and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy
of taste and genius. ^14

[Footnote 7: After removing some rubbish of miracle and
inconsistency, it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300,
Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze statue,
representing a grave personage wrapped in a cloak, with a
grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an
inscription was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal. By the
Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder
and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb.
vii. 18, Philostorg. vii. 3, &c.) M. de Beausobre more reasonably
conjectures the philosopher Apollonius, or the emperor Vespasian:
in the latter supposition, the female is a city, a province, or