(1.) Images, wrought by mean artizans, are produced from worthless materials. Therefore they themselves must be worthless and profane. [53b]
(2.) An image, truly, is mere dead matter, fashioned by the hand of the artizan. But, with us Christians, there is no sensible representation formed out of sensible matter. God, the alone true God, is our intellectual image. [53c]
3. Minucius Felix lived in the third century.
(1.) Why have the Christians no altars, no temples, no known images? [53d]
(2.) We neither worship crosses, nor wish for them. [53e]
4. Origen lived in the third century.
(1.) Celsus remarks, that we have neither altars nor images nor temples.—We ought not to dedicate images constructed by the ingenuity of artizans. [53f]
(2) We deem those the most ignorant: who are not ashamed, to address lifeless things, to petition the weak for health, to ask life from the dead, to pray for health from the needy. And, though some may allege, that these images are not gods but only their symbols and representations: yet even such persons, fancying that imitations of the Deity can be made by the hands of some mean artizan, are not a whit less ignorant and slavish and uninstructed. From this sottish stupidity, the very lowest and least informed of us Christians are exempt. [53g]
5. The Council of Elvira sat at the beginning of the fourth century.
It hath seemed good to us, that pictures ought not to be admitted into a church: lest that should be painted upon walls which is worshipped and adored. [54a]