Note 107 — Chapter V
Reading edition
An anecdote referred to by Gibbon, in the part of his history relative to the sect of the iconoclast, confirms all that is advanced in the text on the powerful influence of worship to images, as it regards the character of devotion. When the soldiers of Leo broke in pieces the image of a saint before whom daily prayers were wont to be offered up, a pious individual gave vent to this bitter lamentation, “Now I can no longer address my prayers to heaven; now I have no one to hear them!”