Just as the man who shows contempt for the royal image is held to show it for the King himself, so is he convicted of sin who shows contempt for man made after an image.
St Athanasius, from the Hundred Chapters addressed to Antiochus, the Prefect, according to Question and Answer.—Chap. xxxviii.
Answer.—We, who are of the faithful, do not worship images as gods, as the heathens did, God forbid, but we mark our loving desire alone to see the face of the person represented in image. Hence, when it is obliterated, we are wont to throw the image as so much wood into the fire. Jacob, when he was about to die, worshipped on the point of Joseph’s staff, not honouring the staff but its owner. Just in the same way do we greet images as we should embrace our children and parents to signify our affection. Thus the Jew, too, worshipped the tablets of the law, and the two golden cherubim in carved work, not [pg 121] because he honoured gold or stone for itself, but the Lord who had ordered them to be made.
St John Chrysostom, on the ‘Third Psalm, on David, and Absalom.’
Kings put victorious trophies before their conquering generals; rulers erect proud monuments to their charioteers, and brave men, and with the epitaph as a crown, use matter for their triumph. Others, again, write the praises of conquerors in books, wishing to show that their own gift in praising is greater than those praised. And orators and painters, sculpturers and people, rulers, and cities, and places acclaim the victorious. No one ever made images of the deserter or the coward.
St Cyril of Alexandria, from his ‘Address to the Emperor Theodosius.’
If images represent the originals, they should call forth the same reverence.
The same, from his ‘Treasures.’
Images are ever the likenesses of their originals.
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