Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 2 of 3) Papyras Classics

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Chapter 170

Jervas and Dr. Arbuthnot

Jervas, who affected to be a Free-thinker, was one day talking very irreverently of the Bible. Dr. Arbuthnot maintained to him that he was not only a speculative, but a practical believer. Jervas denied it. Arbuthnot said that he would prove it: "You strictly observe the second commandment;" said the Doctor, "for in your pictures you 'make not the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth'"!