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

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CONCLUSION. 207
this disposition would tend to make possible the very
results at which we marvel. 1
Akin to the credulity which, after all allowance is
made, we can hardly avoid imputing to John of
Damascus, is a tendency to superstition, or what
some will call by that name. In the effort to give an
impartial summary "of his merits, one in which his
defects are noted as well as his excellencies, it would
be plainly unfair to omit all allusion to this side of
his character, for the simple reason that it was as a
champion of image-worship that much of his reputa
tion was won. In this, as in the previous instance,
it is not without taking some trouble to enter into the
"
real circumstances of the case, that we can possibly
arrive at a just conclusion. The popular expression,
image-worship," involves two equivocal terms. The
great difference of meaning with which the word
"worship" may be used, is familiar to all, and has
already been remarked upon in the chapter on the
iconoclastic controversy. And by the term
images,"
in like manner, we are not to understand what the
word would commonly suggest to the mind at the
present time, but the icons^ or sacred pictures of the
Eastern Church. Nor is this a mere distinction
without a difference. The use of the one was allowed
1
This frame of mind was found equally among the followers
of Islam. Though Mahomet himself generally evaded the
appeal to miraculous powers, professing that the Koran was it
self a standing miracle, yet his adherents were not so scrupu
lous. According to Ockley, one Arabic writer states that "the
miracles recorded of Mohammed almost exceed enumeration."
"Hist, of the Saracens," 1847, p. 66. n.