- Description
- A liuely picture describing the weight and substaunce of Gods most blessed word agaynst the doctrines and vanities of mans traditions. The image of Justice reaching judgement with a pair of scales was an ancient formula that was readily adapted to Reformation issues. The woodcut depicting Justice demonstrating the weight of 'Verbum Dei' over the book of papal Decretals made its first appearance in the Acts and Monuments in 1576, when it was placed as the closing image of the first half of the work. It had first appeared three years earlier on the last page of Foxe's edition of The Whole Works of Tyndale, Frith and Barnes, printed by Day in 1573. The illustration appears to have been inspired by Foxe himself, who described in 1570 an image of a balance, weighing on one side 'books condemned'; and on the other 'books allowed'. The scales of justice were applied to the contrasting worlds of evangelists whose lived by the word alone, untramelled and themselves not weighted down by the opposing popish apparatus of rosaries and pardons and agnus dei and crosses and croziers. Those who stand thus liberated at Justice's right hand occupy a light and spacious world, thanks to the spiritual freedom they have found. They and their church on the distant hill prove their liberation at the hand of Justice, blindfold, impartial, and impervious to devilish antics: 'Gods holy truth...against manifest idolatry', as Foxe himself put it.
- Source file
- The weight of Gods word against mans traditions.gif
- Creator
- John Foxe (publisher)
- Credit
- The Acts and Monuments Online
- Date
- 1576
