For instance, the rod of Moses, the tablets of the law, the burning bush, the rock giving forth water, the ark containing the manna, the altar set on fire from above (purenqeon), the lamina bearing the divine name, the ephod, the tabernacle overshadowed by God. If you had prepared all these things by day and by night, saying, “Glory be to Thee, O Almighty God, who hast done wonders in Israel through all these things”; if through all these ordinances of the law, carried out of old, you had fallen on your knees to adore God, you would see that worship is given to Him by images.
And further on :-
He who truly loves a friend or the king, and especially his benefactor, if he sees that benefactor’s son, or his staff, or his chair, or his crown, or his house, or his servant, he holds them fast in his embrace, and if he honours his benefactor, the king, how much more God.
Again I repeat it, would that you had made images according to the law of Moses and the prophets, and that day by day you had worshipped the God of images. Whenever, then, you see Christians adoring the Cross, know that they are adoring the Crucified Christ, not the mere wood. If, indeed, they honoured wood as wood, they would be bound to worship trees of whatever kind, as you, O Israel, worshipped them of old, saying to the tree and to the stone, “Thou art my God and didst bring me forth.” (Jer. 2.27) We do not speak either to the Cross or to the representations of the saints in this way.
They are not our gods, but books which lie open and are venerated in churches in order to remind us of God and to lead us to worship Him. He who honours the martyr honours God, to whom the martyr bore testimony. He who worships the apostle of Christ worships Him who sent the apostle. He who falls at the feet of Christ’s mother most certainly shows honour to her Son. There is no God but one, He who is known and adored in the Trinity.
Commentary. – Who is the faithful interpreter of blessed Epiphanius–Leontius, whose teaching adorned the island of Cyprus, or those who spoke according to their own conceits? Listen to the testimony of Severianus, Bishop of the Gabali.
Severianus, Bishop of the Gabali, on the Dedication of the Cross.
How was it that the image of the enemy gave life to our progenitors? . . .
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