image-worship

Updated: July 1, 2025

Of this second Nicene council the acts are still extant; a curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. I shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a truce with the dæmon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

Superstition always results in destroying the rightful belief of which it is the exaggeration and distortion. This is the common story of superstition, from the totemism of savage tribes and the image-worship of semi-civilized peoples on to the heathenism of the Mass.

R. Heber Newton - The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible

And again: "We cannot join a Church, did we wish it ever so much, which does not acknowledge our orders, refuses us the Cup, demands our acquiescence in image-worship, and excommunicates us, if we do not receive it and all the decisions of the Tridentine Council." His opponent answers these objections by referring to the doctrine of "developments of gospel truth."

John Henry Newman - Apologia pro Vita Sua

They not only practised image-worship, but believed in the actual power of the idols to give protection or work mischief; nor could they rise to the conception of a purely spiritual and immaterial deity. Their ordinary worship was less one of prayer than one by means of sacrifices and offerings.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.