'Indisputably the Church of England's Practice since the Reformation': an 18th century Anglican defence of Imagery

Today we come to our penultimate extract The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761). As the work draws to a close, the immediate presenting issue - the (thankfully) unsuccessful campaign unsuccessful campaign to remove from St. Margaret's Westminster the stained glass depiction of the Lord's Crucifixion (pictured below) - is again addressed:

Should the Attempts which are now carried on against the Eastern Window of St. Margaret’s be attended with Success, and a Decision of the Court be obtained in their Favour, a Foundation would then be laid on which other Prosecutions might be commenced, and the Law then finish what puritannical Faction began. Our Cathedrals, parochial Churches, and our Chappels, particularly those of the Universities, would then be stripped of the Ornaments which have been so cautiously preserved, and which render them so strikingly venerable.

A footnote draws attention to an Appendix X, entitled 'An Account of some of the most remarkable Stained Glass Windows still remaining in English Churches or Chapels'. This provides a detailed account of significant stained glass in cathedrals and college chapels, particularly emphasising how much that was retained by the Elizabethan Settlement was destroyed by Parliamentarian iconoclasm in the 1640s: "the irreparable Destruction of Ornaments of this Nature by the Fanatic Rebels". Examples are also given of attempts to protect imagery from the iconoclasts, including the altar screen in Winchester Cathedral:

In the great Rebellion, the Altar-screen was artfully protected from the Violence of Enthusiasm, by means of an extemporaneous Wall, or Partition, erected in a parallel Line just before it, so as entirely to conceal its Beauties from the Observation of the sacrilegious Intruders. Other Parts of the Church did not however escape the mistaken Zeal of these Enemies to all that was graceful or majestic.

A recurring theme throughout the work, as we have seen, was the retention of modest imagery by the Elizabethan Settlement: without this, after all, there would have been no reason for the iconoclasm of the 1640s. It is this moderation to which The Ornaments of Churches returns in its closing pages:

What this Beauty of Holiness is with Respect to the Edifices set apart for public Worship, we have endeavoured to point out in the preceding Essay. Alike averse from the superstitious Excesses of the Papist, or the rigid Opinions of the Puritan, we have endeavoured to find that Medium to which Man is adapted by Nature, or rather we have aligned some Reasons in Defence of what appears to have been the Opinion of the Church of England, and has been indisputably her Practice since the Reformation. 

The use of the Laudian phrase 'the beauty of holiness' would not have been accidental.  The entire work witnesses to the continuation of a Laudian understanding of ornaments in the 18th century Church of England.