st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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ON NATURAL SCIENCE.
would be blasphemously to assign to them the same
power as to Christ.
The reader may be disposed to think that in thus
arguing, with reasons of whatever soundness, against
the popular superstitions of his country, John of
Damascus appears in a character somewhat at variance
with that under which we have viewed him elsewhere,
as the defender of image-worship. But, as Neander
points out, there is no real inconsistency. We see
no good reason/ he says, why a defender of imageworship
might not at the same time set himself to
oppose that species of superstition. His conduct, in
both cases alike, proceeded from religious motives.
Image-worship . . . appears to him a practice alto
gether correspondent with the spirit of Christianity,
and conformable to reason; but these stories he
regarded as alike repugnant
to Christian truth and
reason. He ascribes the spread of the latter super
stition
among the people to the fact that they were
kept in such total ignorance of the Scriptures. He
insists that laymen of all classes, even soldiers and
peasants, ought
biblical tendency," he adds,
to read the sacred word." "This
might seem to collide
with the traditional one of a zealous image-worshipper;
but neither are these contrarieties of such a nature
that they might not exist
together in the same indi
vidual."
One other fragment may be noticed. 1
It appears
to have formed part of a letter, and in its present
form is headed Quid est homo ? What is man ? It
occupies but a single column, and breaks off in the
1
Migne s ed., vol. ii., p. 243.