Steele, speaking, in one of his papers in the ‘Guardian,’ of Raphael’s picture of our Saviour appearing to His disciples after His resurrection, makes some remarks upon religion and sacred art.  ’Such endeavours,’ he says, ’as this of Raphael, and of all men not called to the altar, are collateral helps not to be despised by the ministers of the Gospel....  All the arts and sciences ought to be employed in one confederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice and impiety; and it will be no small step in the progress of religion, if it is as evident as it ought to be, that he wants the best sense a man can have, who is cold to the “Beauty of Holiness."’[925] Tillotson, and other favourite writers of Steele’s generation, had dwelt forcibly, and with much charm of language, upon the moral beauty of a virtuous and holy life.  But there had never been a time when the English Church in general, as distinguished from any party in it, had cared less to invest religious worship with outward circumstances of attractiveness and beauty.  As to the particular point which gave occasion to Steele’s remarks, whatever might be said for or against the propriety of painting in churches, there was in his time little disposition to open the question at all.[926] One of the very few instances where a painting of the kind is spoken of, was connected with a very discreditable scandal.  At a time when party feeling ran very high, White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, the well-known author of ‘Parochial Antiquities,’ had made himself exceedingly obnoxious to some of the more extreme members of the High Church section, by his answer to Sacheverell’s sermon upon ’false brethren.’[927] Dr. Welton, Rector of Whitechapel, put up at this juncture in his church a painted altar-piece in representation of the Last Supper, with Bishop Kennet conspicuous in it as Judas Iscariot.  ’To make it the more sure, he had the doctor’s great black patch put under his wig upon the forehead.’[928] It need hardly be added that the Bishop of London ordered the picture to be taken down.[929]

Sir Christopher Wren had intended to adorn the dome of St. Paul’s with figures from sacred history, worked in mosaic by Italian artists.  He was overruled.  It was thought unusual, and likely also to be tedious and expensive.[930] But there were some who cherished a hope that some such embellishment was postponed only, not abandoned.  Walter Harte, for example, the Nonjuror, in his poem upon painting, trusted that ’the cold north’ would not always remain insensible to the claims of religious art.  The time would yet come when we should see in our churches,

    Above, around, the pictured saints appear,

and when especially the metropolitan cathedral would be radiant with the pictorial glory which befitted it.

    Thy dome, O Paul, which heavenly views adorn,
    Shall guide the hands of painters yet unborn;
    Each melting stroke shall foreign eyes engage,
    And shine unrivalled through a future age.[931]