a fancy is a sin; but when it is drawn, to hold it for a representation of God, is against the second commandment; and can be of no use but to worship. And the same may be said of the images of angels, and of men dead; unless as monuments of friends, or of men worthy remembrance. For such use of an image is not worship of the image; but a civil honouring of the person, not that is, but that was. But when it is done to the image which we make of a saint, for no other reason but that we think he heareth our prayers, and is pleased with the honour we do him, when dead, and without sense, we attribute to him more than human power; and therefore it is idolatry.
Seeing therefore there is no authority, neither in the law of Moses nor in the Gospel, for the religious worship of images, or other representations of God, which men set up to themselves; or for the worship of the image of any creature in heaven or earth, or under the earth: and whereas Christian kings, who are living representants of God, are not to be worshipped by their subjects, by any act that signifieth a greater esteem of his power than the nature of mortal man is capable of; it cannot be imagined that the religious worship now in use was brought into the Church by misunderstanding of the Scripture. It resteth therefore, that it was left in it, by not destroying the images themselves, in the conversion of the Gentiles that worshipped them.