Lactantius, for example, who followed earlier Christians in asserting that cultic images are lifeless and yet presided over by demons, and that to worship the true God, we must lift our eyes up from the things of this earth. He concluded: Wherefore it is undoubted that there is no religion wherever there is an image. For if religion consists of divine things, and there is nothing divine except in heavenly things; it follows that images are without religion, because there can be nothing heavenly in that which is made from the earth. . . . There is no religion in images, but a mimicry of
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