ABSTRACT
The Roman Church reckons what we call the Second Commandment as part of the First, and divides our Tenth Commandment into two, to make up the number ten. But while image-worship is plainly forbidden by that Commandment, in some respects the Commandment is ambiguous. The words of the Second Commandment say, of course, nothing about living creatures in distinction from other objects of sky and land and sea, nor do they qualify, unless it is by the following clause which prohibits the worship of an image, the general prohibition to make an image of anything at all. The Greek world which surrounded the Jews from the days of Alexander did worship images in a sense gave justification to the Jewish mockery. Those who objects to lions in the synagogues, or any decoration in which animals were represented now based their objection, not on the Second Commandment, but upon the liability of representations to distract the minds of worshippers.
