(9.) _When the people saw what Paul had done_, _they lifted up their voices_, _saying in the speech of Lycaonia_: _The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men_. _And they called Barnabas Jupiter_; _and Paul Mercurius_, _because he was the chief speaker_. _Then the priest of Jupiter_, _which was before their city_, _brought oxen and garlands unto the gates_, _and would have done sacrifice with the people_. _When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard_, _they rent their clothes_, _and ran in among the people_, _crying out and saying_: _Sirs_, _why do ye these things_? _We also are men of like passions with you_; _and preach unto you_, _that ye should turn away from these vanities unto the living God_. {52c} III. We may now profitably hear the testimony of the early ecclesiastical writers. 1. The Epistle of the Church of Smyrna, relative to the martyrdom of Polycarp, was written about the middle of the second century. Nicetas was urged by the envious and the wicked to intercede with the governor, that the remains of Polycarp should not be delivered for sepulture: lest, leaving him that was crucified, the Christians, it was suggested, should begin to worship this person. These things they said, at the instigation of the Jews: because they were ignorant; that neither can we ever forsake Christ who suffered for the salvation of the saved throughout the whole world, nor that we can ever worship any other. For him, being the Son of God, we adore: but the martyrs, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, we worthily love on account of their special affection to their own King and Master. {53a} 2. Clement of Alexandria flourished in the second century. (1.) Images, wrought by mean artizans, are produced from worthless materials. Therefore they themselves must be worthless and profane. {53b} (2.) An image, truly, is mere dead matter, fashioned by the hand of the artizan. But, with us Christians, there is no sensible representation formed out of sensible matter. God, the alone true God, is our intellectual image. {53c} 3. Minucius Felix lived in the third century. (1.) Why have the Christians no altars, no temples, no known images? {53d} (2.) We neither worship crosses, nor wish for them. {53e} 4. Origen lived in the third century. (1.) Celsus remarks, that we have neither altars nor images nor temples.—We ought not to dedicate images constructed by the ingenuity of artizans. {53f}