During the Evangelical Awakening of the 1740s, a controversy erupted in Scotland over the issue of mental images. The question “Can a mental image of Christ be idolatrous?” was the heart of the issue. Men mightily used of God were divided on this subject. A pamphlet war broke out between James Robe (1688-1753), a man used of God in the Scottish revivals, and Ralph Erskine (1685-1752), one of the most wellknown preachers of his day. This pamphlet war never satisfactorily concluded and simply burned out. Our sympathies in the main lie with Erskine. However, while Mt. Zion does not endorse everything Erskine argues, we believe his arguments in this excerpt represent a proper view from God's Word regarding mental images.

WHEN false worship had prevailed in the church of old unto its ruin, God showed and represented it unto his Prophets under the name and appearance of a chamber of imagery (Eze 8:12). For therein were portrayed all the abominations wherewith the worship of God was defiled and religion corrupted. Most of my work at present is to take a view of some chambers of imagery yet more secret and hidden, namely, retired mental ones in which we may see many abominations wherewith both the spiritual doctrine of faith and the divine worship of the gospel are corrupted and the Christian religion in danger of being ruined. From this secret chamber of mental or internal imagery hath come forth all the external gross imagery that ever was in the world, and especially in the Christian church by which means the church of Rome became antichristian. These imaginary ideas, which are but vain imaginations and about corporeal[1] objects, brought in now by Mr. Robe[2] as belonging to the object of faith, are in my opinion like a new opening of the bottomless pit, out of the smoke whereof came locusts upon the earth (Rev 9:2,3) because in so far as these ideas are brought out of their own natural place and supposed to be helpful in the supernatural subjects of divinity, they are no better than a smoke out of the pit, darkening the sun and the air, corrupting the doctrine, obscuring the light of the truth of God, and tending in themselves to cover the face of the earth with the darkness of gross error and delusion.

[These ideas] lay anew a foundation for the spreading of idolatry and superstition by filling the minds of people with natural, carnal notions of Christ as man and of His doing and dying as human actions and sufferings, as if these notions were helpful to apprehend Christ the God-man in His mediatorial works exhibited in the gospel. Yet the glory of the gospel is spiritual and invisible, not obvious to the senses and imaginations of men. There is nothing in the gospel visible but unto faith, as the light of the sun is nothing to them who have no eyes. A dog and a staff are of more use to a blind man than the sun in the firmament. Such as are spiritually blind and want[3] the eyes of faith—or have lost the use and exercise thereof—can see nothing in the gospel, however great and glorious things are spoken of it. The light shines in darkness, and their darkness comprehends it not. The image of Christ as God in our nature, represented to us in the light of the gospel, which is the only glass wherein we can behold His glory (2Co 3:18), is of such a nature that no image of His human body formed in the brain can stand before it any more than Dagon[4] could stand before the ark of God. As Christ is present in the gospel and present like Himself in His personal, mediatorial,[5] and matchless glory, so He is present there only to our faith and spiritual understanding. The word is nigh unto us, even the word of faith (Rom 10:6-8) insomuch that none need say He is absent. And who shall ascend into heaven to bring Him down from thence or descend into the deep to bring Him up from the dead? Christ by His human body was once here present to natural sense. By His divine Spirit He is sometimes present to spiritual sense and experience. But He is no way present to our faith but in the gospel, which [though] it be a view through a glass darkly, yet in such a way and manner that it is the best view of Him that can be had till we see Him face to face (1Co 13:12).

But Mr. Robe hath told us of another way of Christ's being present, namely to fancy[6] and imagination, as to His human nature now in heaven: [that we should think of it] in the same way and manner we think of any other absent man, and that this is absolutely necessary and greatly helpful to faith. This is the new, strange, and fantastical doctrine published in Mr. Robe's fourth letter to Mr. Fisher;[7] and we have what I may call the sum and substance of it in the following paragraph of that letter, p. 30 and 31:

“. . . I asserted and do assert that we cannot think upon Jesus Christ really as He is—God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever—without an imaginary idea of Him in His human nature, consisting of a true body and a reasonable soul. The grounds and reasons of this are that as we would not have a just conception of the glorious Mediator, if we have not a conception and idea of Him as the very true and eternal God as well as true and real man; so we cannot have a just conception of Him, if we have not a conception and idea of Him as true and real man as well as the true and eternal God . . . the Mediator is as really man as He is God. And as we ought to form no imaginary idea of Him as He is God—a pure conception without any form of representation of Him as God in our minds—so we can no more conceive and have an idea of Him in our understandings as man, but what is called an imaginary idea of Him in our minds by the exercise of our imagination, than we can of Enoch or Elias or any other man, who is now in heaven. For this reason: our Lord 's human nature and particularly His glorified and superexalted[8] body hath all the essential properties of any other body and no other. And therefore, if we can never think of any other human nature or human body, through our natural constitution and the nature of bodies, but by an imaginary idea when absent from us—as indeed we cannot—[then] we can never think upon the Mediator as man and His body now in heaven by any other idea. So then, when we think upon the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever, I must conceive of Him to be true and real man. This is what is called an imaginary idea of Him. I must further, by a mere act of my understanding, conceive of Him as not only man but the very true and eternal God. And, 3rdly, I must conceive the manhood personally united with the Godhead in the second person. If any of these three be wanting, I have not such an idea of the Mediator God-man as should be. [Mr. Fisher], you'll please tell the honest well-meaning people in your next warning, that the plain Scots of what I asserted here was that we cannot think upon Jesus Christ as He really is—God-man—without thinking of Him as man as really as God, and that by the exercise of the same faculties and powers I think and conceive of other men.” Here is a swatch[9] o f Mr. Robe's strange divinity[10] and philosophy.

Mr. Robe says, “To make an image of the second Person or of God, is indeed expressly forbidden. But to forbid making a true image would be to forbid an impossibility; neither is it forbidden as gross idolatry. To worship such an image is the idolatry forbidden. The making [of] the image is forbidden upon another account. We do not charge the Lutherans with gross idolatry because they make such images, though we do the Papists, who worship them.”

Remark: Mr. Robe cannot free himself from the charge of gross idolatry he here mentions because he not only allows the making in his mind an image of Christ's human nature, but he allows divine worship to be given to it. For he makes it a part of the object of faith, which faith is the leading and principal part of divine worship. So that here upon the matter, he proves himself to be an idolater. He condemns not the Lutherans for being imagemakers, but the Papists for being image-worshippers. But in the concern of religion, both the making and worshipping of any graven image are expressly forbidden in the Second Commandment. And yet if a mental image of Christ's human nature by an imaginary idea be allowed as necessary to faith, it would seem that a molten image is preferable to a mental image and the Popish way most eligible. Why? Because according to the Popish argument, “The seeing of things is more moving and affecting than the hearing of them.” Even so likewise, the sight of the eye gives a clearer view and more affecting knowledge of things, than any imaginary notion and mental image thereof. Thus the sight of the sun with the eye is a far better view than when one shuts his eyes and only perceives it in his fancy and imagination; or when the sun is absent, and at midnight he forms an image of it in his mind.

In like manner, suppose two men come into a house, the one with a mask upon his face and the other without any mask. The sensitive[11] idea we have of the unmasked face is much more plain and clear than the imaginative idea we have of the face behind the mask, which we can only imagine to be a face like that of some other man. But [we] can have no such clear notion of it as of the other. All which proves that mere corporeity[1 2] or a human body can be better represented to the mind by an outward corporeal image set before the bodily eye, than it can be by any inward mental image formed by the help of an imaginary idea. And consequently [it] may be supposed to be much more helpful than Mr. Robe's internal imagery, which ought to be the more abominate, as it is the mother, the spring, and source of the former.

Yea, it is the root on which all the gross idolatry in the world did grow, as I have hinted already. Hence Charnock,[1 3] speaking of Romans 1:21, 23 says, “They set up vain images of God in their fancy, before they set up idolatrous representations of Him in their temples.” And a few lines above he says, “We set that active power of imagination on work, and there comes out a god, (a calf) whom we own for a notion of God . . . there are as many carved images of God as there are minds of men, and as many monstrous shapes as these corruptions into which they would transform Him.” Then he shows how these vain imaginations relating to God are worse than idolatry and Atheism.[14] Gross idolatry in the Heathen world is not more owing to vain pictures of God in the imagination, than in the Christian world it is owing to vain images of Christ's human body in the brain. [These] so abuse the understanding and darken the mind as to mar all rational and intellectual views, and consequently all spiritual and believing contemplations of Christ's glorious person.

Mr. Robe owns again, “It is impossible to have any true imaginary idea of God.” But he says, “That to assert that we cannot receive Christ, as offered in the gospel, without an imaginary conception of Him as man, hath a tendency to lead people off from the true Christ in the Word to a false Christ upon the imagination—this is what you, [Mr. Fisher], have not made the least essay[15] to prove, and what you shall never be able to do.”

Remark: One would think it is very easy to prove what Mr. Robe so boldly thinks can never be done. This I do by the following argument in common form: to assert that a man cannot believe in Christ without that which necessarily presents a false Christ to his imagination hath a native tendency to lead people off from the true Christ in the Word to a false Christ in the imagination. But to assert that a man cannot believe in Christ, without an imaginary conception or idea of Him as man, is to assert that we cannot believe without that which necessarily presents a false Christ to the imagination. Therefore, it follows that to assert [that] we cannot believe in Christ as offered in the Gospel without an imaginary idea of him as man hath a native tendency to lead people off from the true Christ in the Word to a false Christ in the imagination. I know nothing Mr. Robe can deny here, but that . . . his imaginary idea of Christ as man necessarily presents a false Christ to the imagination and consequently hath a tendency to lead people off from the t rue Christ in the Word to a false Christ in the imagination. Therefore I prove this by the following arguments:

(1.) The true Christ in the Word is some other thing than a corporeal object: But an imaginary conception of Christ as man hath no other thing but a corporeal object. Therefore, an imaginary conception of Christ as man hath a native tendency to lead people off from the true Christ in the Word to a false Christ in the imagination.

(2.) The true Christ in the Word is the God-man. But Christ represented in the imaginary conception as man is not the God-man. Therefore, it follows as above that it leads to a false Christ in the imagination.

(3.) The true Christ held forth in the Word is exhibited there as a Prophet, Priest, and King. But no imaginary conception can have any offices or relations whatsoever for its object. Therefore it leads to a false Christ in the imagination.

(4.) The true Christ can be seen by faith nowhere but in the Word. But an imaginary idea or conception cannot see Him in the Word, which is spirit and truth, the object only of rational knowledge and faith. Therefore, that idea leads to a false Christ in the imagination.

(5.) The true Christ in the Word is a whole Christ. The imaginary conception of him as man is not a conceiving of a whole Christ, but of a mere human body. Therefore, it leads to a false Christ in the imagination.

(6.) The true humanity of Christ in the Word is a divine humanity as Augustine expresses it because the Word was made flesh and is God in our nature. But the imaginary conception of Christ as man can include nothing divine. Therefore an imaginary conception of Christ as man hath a tendency to lead people off from the true Christ and the true humanity of Christ in the Word to a false Christ and a false humanity in the imagination.

Arguments to this purpose might be multiplied. But any one of these is sufficient to prove what Mr. Robe says is impossible.

Again, there follows a master-piece of dreadful doctrine: “It is possible,” says he, “to have an imaginary idea of Christ in His human nature, and it is not possible that we can think of the human nature of the true Christ in the Word without a conception of Him or an idea of Him in the mind by the help and assistance of that faculty called the imagination; which is what is all along called an 'imaginary idea.' And this is as true a Christ as Christ in the Word, if it be an idea of Him as held forth in the Word. For instance: the true Christ is held forth to us in that Word, 'For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus'” (1Ti 2:5).

[To] what is said above I answer: here is very strange language and two very absurd and abominable suppositions.

The first is that we may have an imaginary idea of Christ as held forth in the Word. [This] is impossible according to Mr. Robe's own [explanation] of that idea unless Christ held forth in the Word were nothing else but a corporeal object. If the words of Christ are spirit and life (Joh 6:65), then His word is a spiritual object [that] cannot be apprehended by corporeal, but spiritual powers. The Word is the object of that knowledge and faith that can perceive truths, which are all spiritual things, but cannot be the object of that fancy that can perceive nothing but the images of things which are all corporeal.

2ndly, he supposes, yea, plainly asserts, that the Christ perceived by an imaginary idea is as true a Christ as Christ in the Word, if it be an idea of Him as held forth in the Word. I have showed that an imaginary idea of Christ as held forth in the Word is absurd and impossible. And now I am to show that the other expression is vile and abominable. And I have scarce patience to read such horrible doctrine, importing that a representation of Christ by an image of Him in the brain of a man is as true a Christ as the Christ represented in the Word of God. How strangely must the man be attached to his imaginary notions, which makes the representation of Christ therein as true as the representation of Him in the divine Word? He makes his imaginary idea to give us as true a picture of Christ in the fancy as the infallible truth of God gives us in the Word. If so, then a corporeal Christ in the imagination is as truly the object of faith as the true Christ, Immanuel God with us, is in the Word. And so a Christ within us is as good as a Christ without us. Here is a wide door opened to dreadful Enthusiasm[16] and damnable Quakerism.[17] For if the Christ we may see in the fancy be as true a Christ as the Christ we read of in the Word, then He is reckoned no other but a fantastical[18] Christ according to the dream of the old heretics Marcion[19] and Valentinus.[20]

We are sure, that Christ is the very same thing the Word of faith declares Him to be. But if Christ, as re p resented in whatever nature by any idea and in His human nature by an imaginary idea be as true a Christ, then . . . (1.) Christ and the imaginary idea of Him are one and the same; or Christ is an imaginary idea, which is dreadful; (2.) According to the number of imaginary ideas, such the number of Christs; that is, consequently there is no Christ at all; (3.) The imaginary idea or image of Christ in the head is the object of faith and worship and is to be deified and adored, which is the grossest idolatry; (4.) Every one can make a Christ to himself out of his own head, whenever he pleases.

Christ dwells in the heart by faith (Eph 3:17), that is, by faith in His Word, where alone by that faith the believer sees the true Christ. But he cannot see Him in his heart or affections, far less in his head or imaginations. Indeed a true believer may sometimes feel Christ joyfully in his heart after he hath believed (Eph 1:13), but he can never see Him believingly there. For faith can see His perfect picture nowhere but in His Word. Nowhere else is the true Christ to be seen as the object of faith: “The righteousness which is of faith speaks on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven; that is, to bring Christ down from above? Or, who shall descend into the deeps; that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead? But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: That is the word of faith which we preach” (Rom 10:6-8). On which words the author of the sermon entitled How Is the Practical Love of Truth the Best Preservative against Popery[21] hath these words following: “The inquiry is, How we may be made partakers of Christ and righteousness by Him? Or how we may have Him present with us? This, says the Apostle, is done by the word of the gospel, which is preached, which is nigh unto us, in our mouths, and in our hearts. 'No', say these men; 'we cannot understand how it should be so; we do not find that it is so, that Christ is made nigh unto us, present to us by this Word: Wherefore we will ascend into heaven, to bring Christ down from above; for we will make images of Him in His glorious state in heaven, and thereby He will be present to us or nigh unto us; and we will descend into the deep, to bring Christ up again from the dead: And we will do it, by making first crucifixes, and then images of His glorious resurrection, bringing Him again unto us from the dead. This shall be in the place and room of that word of the gospel, which you pretend to be alone useful and effectual unto these ends.' ” And a little above are these words: “Their minds being dark, carnal, and prone to superstition, as are the minds of all men by nature, they would see nothing in the spiritual representation of Him (namely, Christ) in the gospel, that had any power on them, or did in any measure affect them. In these images, by the means of sight and imagination, they found that which did really work upon their affections, and, as they thought, did excite them unto the love of Christ.”

Here is the spring and root of all image-worship in the world, whether mental or external; none of which can give the representation of the true Christ of whom we have only the true and spiritual representation in the word of the gospel.

May this generation be delivered from an imaginary faith, religion and conversion, which will neither unite them to the true Christ, nor bring them to the true heaven, nor keep them out of the true hell. And may the Lord deliver all His people from the influence of gross delusion, instead of gospel-doctrine; from carnal trash, instead of spiritual truth; and from the truth as it is in men 's fancy and imagination, instead of the truth as it is in Jesus and in His blessed Word, the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God.

1 corporeal – of a material nature.
2 James Robe (1688-1753) – Presbyterian preacher in evangelical Church of Scotland minister in Kilsyth, Scotland. Used of the Lord during the times of revival in that period, but believed that an imaginary idea of Christ's manhood was necessary to faith.
3 want – lack.
4 Dagon – 1Sa 5:1-12.
5 Mediatorial – referring to Christ's role as Mediator, or go-between, as Prophet, Priest, and King.
6 fancy – the mental faculty which forms images, visions, and fantasies. While often used as a synonym for imagination, imagination is rather the power of combining and modifying our conceptions.
7 James Fisher (1697-1775) – one of the founders of the Secession Church in Scotland. He did not view the revivals of Cambuslang as authentic works of God. Publicly criticized James Robe's doctrine as did Erskine.
8 superexalted – to elevate and magnify in praise to a superior degree.
9 swatch – a piece cut from material and used as a sample.
10 divinity – the science of divine things; theology.
11 sensitive – pertaining to the sense; having the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects.
12 corporeity – the state of being material or corporeal; having physical existence.
13 Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) – Puritan author of the well-known The Existence and Attributes of God, reprinted 1979 by Baker Book House Company. This quote is from Vol 1, pp. 155, 156.
14 Ibid., pp. 157, 158.
15 essay – try; attempt.
16 Enthusiasm – the Gk. from which this word derives means “possession by a divine spirit.” Came to mean the belief that someone receives direct, personal revelation from God.
17 Quakerism –founded by George Fox in 1668. Their primary feature is a belief in Inner Light, direct illumination from God, which they elevate to a place of spiritual authority, superior even to Scripture.
18 fantastical, fantastic – imaginary; not real; produced only in the imagination.
19 Marcion (d. c. 160) – 2nd century heretic and founder of churches that rivaled orthodox Christianity. According to Marcion, Christ was not born but simply appeared; did not have a real body; only seemed to suffer; and raised Himself from the dead.
20 Valentinus (c. 100-c. 175) – 2nd century Gnostic leader in Alexandria, Egypt, and author of the most influential Gnostic system. His Christ only had an apparent body.
21 Puritan Sermons 1659-1689, Being the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate, “How Is the Practical Love of Truth the Best Preservative against Popery?” by John Owen, Vol. 3, p. 217.

From Faith No Fancy: or, A Treatise of Mental Images, W. & T. Ruddimans, Edinburgh

Ralph Erskine (1685-1752): one of the most popular preachers in the Church of Scotland in his day. A participant with Thomas Boston in the Marrow Controversy, his sermons were full of the love of God and the calls of Christ in the gospel. His most extensive publication was Faith No Fancy: or, A Treatise of Mental Images. Born in Monilaws, Scotland.