Therefore then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Deity is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Cherubim, with extended wings, were ordered by God to be made, and placed over the propitiatory; (Exodus xxxvii. 7.) the brazen serpent is declared by Jesus Christ himself to have been a figure of him; therefore to blame the universally received practice of the Catholic Church, with regard to pictures and images, betrays either great prevention, or great ignorance. St. Gregory says: "What writing does for readers, that a picture does for the ignorant; for in it they see what they ought to follow, and in it they read, who know no letters. "And he sharply rebukes Serenus's indiscreet zeal for removing pictures, instead of teaching the people what use may be made of them. (lib. ix. ep. 9.)
they should again say, You bring certain strange things to our ears, he produces the poet. He does not say, You ought not to think the Godhead like to gold or silver, ye accursed and execrable: but in more lowly sort he says, We ought not. For what (says he)? God is above this? No, he does not say this either: but for the present this— We ought not to think the Godhead like such, for nothing is so opposite to men. But we do not affirm the Godhead to be like this, for who would say that? Mark how he has introduced the incorporeal (nature of God) when he said, In Him, etc., for the mind, when it surmises body, at the same time implies the notion of distance. (Speaking) to the many he says, We ought not to think the Godhead like gold, or silver, or stone, the shaping of art, for if we are not like to those as regards the soul, much more God (is not like to such). So far, he withdraws them from the notion. But neither is the Godhead, he would say, subjected to any other human conception. F...
And yet for this reason we ought. By no means: for surely we are not like (to such), nor are these souls of ours. And imagination of man. How so? * * But some person might say, We do not think this. But it was to the many that he was addressing himself, not now to Philosophy. How then did they think so unworthily of Him? Again, putting it upon their ignorance, he says, Now the times of ignorance God overlooked. Having agitated their minds by the fear, he then adds this: and yet he says, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent.
