'Remembrances of the great Mystery of Man’s Redemption': an 18th century Anglican defence of Imagery

We now reach our last extract from The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761). Appendix IX is entitled 'Testimonies from some of our most eminent Divines, in Confirmation of what has been advanced'. A range of divines are quoted - Hammond, Henry More, Wake, Stillingfleet, Butler. I turn, however, to the extract from Thomas Tension's 1678 work, A Discourse of Idolatry. 

Tension privately received episcopal orders in 1659, becoming a significant Latitudinarian voice in the Restoration Church and a staunch Whig critic of James II's Roman Catholicism. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury after Tillotson's early death in 1694, he remained at Canterbury until his death in 1715, despite Queen Anne's well known dislike of his Low Church tendencies. In other words, if we were looking for voice likely to be disapproving of imagery in the Church of England, surely it would be Tenison.

But, no. In A Discourse of Idolatry, Tenison offers the same defence of modest imagery that is routinely found in the works of Church of England divines across the 17th and 18th centuries. Here, then, is a leading Latitudinarian, Low Church figure, who would be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by William III, defending modest imagery in churches, rejecting the iconoclasm of the 1640s, and affirming that imagery of Christ (including the crucifixion) and the Saints was entirely compatible with the Reformation:

The Controversy then is not so much about the making, as about the worshipping the Image of Christ, either as his Image in his State on Earth, or which seemeth very absurd, as his Portrait now in Glory. For though the Signs of his Passion may prepare us for Prayers, yet the Addresses themselves are made to him as he is glorious in the Heavens, where his Estate is unduly typified by a Crucifix which representeth him in Golgotha, and not in triumph at God’s Right-Hand where his Brightness cannot be expressed by a Pencil of Light itself ... 

To say with Men that run into Extremes, that devotional Pictures are no Helps to excite Memory and Passion, is to forget that they are called mute Poems, to speak against common Sense, and to impute less to a Crucifix than to the Tomb of our Friend ... we esteem them as Ornaments, we value them as the Images of Persons more honourable than our Prince or our Friend: We use them as Remembrances of the great Mystery of Man’s Redemption, which he cannot too frequently be reminded of. We condemn the indiscreet Zeal of our late pretended Reformers, who judged him worthy Sequestration who had "kept a Picture of Christ in his Parlour, and confessed it was to put him in Mind of his Saviour" ...

But for the Images or Pictures of the Saints in their former Estate here on Earth, if they be made with Discretion, if they be the Representations of such whole Saintship no wise Man can call into Question, if they be designed as their honourable Memorials, they who are wise to Sobriety do make use of them; and they are permitted in Geneva itself, where remain in the Quire of St. Peter the Pictures of the twelve Prophets on one Side, and on the other those of the twelve Apostles, all in Wood; also the Pictures of the Virgin and St. Peter in one of the Windows. And we give to such Pictures that negative Honour which they are worthy of; we value them beyond any Images besides that of Christ, we help our Memories by them, we forbear any Signs of Contempt towards them. 

That the Low Church Tenison could be so invoked in defence of the modest imagery that was the Church of England's custom from the Elizabethan Settlement is itself a very significant statement. As  ably demonstrated, there was a broad, mainstream theological consensus defending such imagery, continuing into the 18th century, exemplified in the words of Tenison. It was, in other words, a feature of the 'unity and accord' of the 18th century Church of England. 

What is more, the understanding of imagery set forth in The Ornaments of Churches Considered continues to be a characteristic feature of mainstream, conventional Anglican piety and practice today. Even where icons and statuary have been incorporated into Anglican practice, they overwhelmingly function in the same manner as stained glass: imagery, not for veneration, but - in the words of Tenison - "as Remembrances of the great Mystery of Man’s Redemption".