Idolatry

In ancient times it was darkened by the gloom of idol-madness, barbarous in the extreme and given over to lawless practices.

But in his soul he was pressed by the utmost poverty and choked by many evils, for he belonged to the Greek party and was greatly excited about the superstitious error of the idols.

Now when he had departed, the king, more angered, plotted a fiercer persecution against the monastic order, and counted the worshippers and temple-keepers of the idols worthy of still greater honour.

indeed, they built up the rudeness of the custom out of stones and timber — that is, out of statues and painted images;

So this wicked tyrant and serpent, having bound whomever he can master from birth to stones and timber and statues and such like idols by the wretched chain of superstition, has, as the saying goes, carried the living off and buried them with the dead, until they too perish together.

birds do not commit idolatry;

Well, then, does Philemon the comic poet also cut down idolatry, by these words:

And the same poet, in what he leaves unsaid, censuring the idolatry of the many, adds:

Indeed, when the Spirit cries out through Isaiah, "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

From this it is proved that they were always marked out as guilty of the crime of idolatry, by the testimony of the divine Scriptures.

and he brought me to the threshold of the gate of the house of the Lord that looks to the north, and behold, there women sitting and weeping for Tammuz;

For the East had Magi too as something like kings, and Damascus was once reckoned to Arabia, before it was transcribed into Syrophoenicia by the division of the Syrias, whose power Christ then received in receiving its insignia — namely gold and perfumes — but the spoils of Samaria are the very Magi, who, when they had recognized him and honoured him with gifts and adored him on bended knee as Lor …

Ask whether he commits idolatry who catechizes about idols.

The Holy Spirit reproaches the Jews with their festal days.

Their images are idols, the consecration of the images is idolatry.

But the "spoils of Samaria" are the Magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him and honoured him with gifts and adored him on bended knee as god and king, under the testimony of the star their guide and leader, were made the spoils of Samaria, that is, of idolatry, believing, namely, in Christ.

just as a Christian may not therefore commit idolatry with impunity, because the creation of God is both incense and wine and the fire that feeds, and the animals that become victims, since the very material that is adored is God's.

For idolatry too, often upbraided to the people under the name of adultery and fornication, will be joined with it by lot, as also by sequence;

For in vain has the law been built up over them, condemning the very origins of offences — that is, lusts and wishes — no less than deeds, if for that reason pardon is to be granted to adultery today, because it was once granted.

Nay, the highest offence with him is idolatry.

Accordingly the apparatus too must of necessity be common, by reason of the general charge of idolatry, their foundress.

But since every species of idolatry has been condemned by God, surely that too is condemned which is profaned by the elements of the world.

and you shall dig up their altars, overturn and break to pieces their little standing images, and cut down their groves, and burn with fire the graven images of those gods, and destroy their name out of that place.

" And thus, through almost all the annals of the Judges, and thereafter of the Kings, the strength of the surrounding nations being reserved, by war and captivity and the yoke of the foreigners did Israel dispense the wrath of God, as often as it strayed away from him most of all into idolatry.

But we, contending about God elsewhere, and about the rest of the body of every heretical doctrine, now, in this one species of engagement, draw certain lines beforehand, defending — as the will of no other God than the God of Israel — that will which made room for martyrdoms, as much from the precepts forbidding idolatry always, as from the judgments punishing it.

The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased Kings, and the Christian World hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones.

And when a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of Kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty ever jealous of his honor, should disapprove of a form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of Heaven.