But have they mouth, and yet speak not? have they eyes, and see not? Do we pray unto them, because through them we pray unto God? This is the chief cause of this insane profanity, that the figure resembling the living person, which induces men to worship it, hath more influence in the minds of these miserable persons, than the evident fact that it is not living, so that it ought to be despised by the living.54 As we will see, the notion of transmission through the image to the prototype is the entire foundation of the theology of Nicaea II; yet Augustine finds not merely the pagan exercise of
...more
