A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

756 A Source Book for Ancient Church Historybut the sacrifice of the just was acceptable to God. For Noahsacrificed, and God smelled a sweet savor of a good purpose,receiving, also, the fragrance of a good-will toward Him. And sothe graven images of the Greeks, since they were the images ofdemon deities, were rejected and forbidden.But besides this, who can make an imitation of the invisible,incorporeal, uncircumscribed, and formless God? Therefore togive form to the Deity is the height of folly and impiety. Andtherefore in the Old Testament the use of images was repressed.But after God, in the bowels of His mercy, became for oursalvation in truth man, not as He was seen by Abraham in thesemblance of a man, or by the prophets, but He became in truthman, according to substance, and after He lived upon earth anddwelt among men, worked miracles, suffered, and was crucified,He rose again, and was received up into heaven; since all thesethings actually took place and were seen by men, they werewritten for the remembrance and instruction of us who were notpresent at that time, in order that, though we saw not, we maystill, hearing and believing, obtain the blessing of the Lord. Butsince all have not a knowledge of letters nor time for reading,it appeared good to the Fathers that those events, as acts ofheroism, should be depicted on images 329 to be a brief memorialof them. Often, doubtless, when we have not the Lord's passionin mind and see the image of Christ's crucifixion, we rememberthe passion and we fall down and show reverence not to thematerial but to that which is imaged; just as we do not showreverence to the material of the Gospel, nor to the material ofthe cross, but that which these typify. 330 For wherein does thecross that typifies the Lord differ from a cross that does not doso? It is the same also as to the case of the Mother of God. 331329 I.e., in pictures.330 John had a strong argument here as the Iconoclasts reverenced the truecross.331 θεομήτως, not θεοτόκος.