A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

The first thing you reflect upon is my censure of that passage in your Fiat, that the sight of Images in the Church is apt to cast the minds of men on that meditation of the Apostle, Heb. 12. You are come to mount Zion, to the City of the living God, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Society of Angels, and Church of the first born written in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant. These, I tell you, upon the sight of an House full of Images may be the thoughts of a man distracted of his wits, not of any that are sober and wise. To which you reply, mad men it seems can tell what figures represent, sober and wise men cannot. But who told you that your images represent the things mentioned by the Apostle? for instance, God the Judge of all, the spirits of just men, Angels, and the Church of the first born; or can any man unless he be greatly distempered in his imagination, fancy any such thing. The house of Micah, Judg. 18. was notably furnished with Images of all sorts. Judg. 17. he had [Greek or Hebrew] an house full of Gods, or a Chapel adorned with Images, for there was in it [Greek or Hebrew] carved image, and [Greek or Hebrew] a sacred ornament for it, and [Greek or Hebrew] lesser portable Image, and [Greek or Hebrew] a molten statue, Judg. 18. would it not think you, notwithstanding the gaiety of all this provision, have be a mad thought in the Danites if upon their entrance into this house, they had apprehended themselves to be come to the Communion of the Catholic Church, and therein to the invisible God, to Angels and Saints departed? The truth is, there is aliquid dementiae, a tincture of madness in all Idolatry, whence the Scripture testifies that men are mad upon their Idols, but yet we do not find that these Danites though resolved upon false worship, ⟨p. 501⟩were so mad as to entertain such vain thoughts as you imagine the Chapel full of images might have suggested unto them. Or do you think Ezekiel had any such thoughts, when God showed him in vision the imagery of the house of Israel with all the Deities portrayed on the wall, and the elders worshipping before them?