“We entreat you, as brethren in Christ, enter again into the truth, which you have left. Cast aside pride, destroy your self-assurance, write to all and everywhere, raise up again those whom you have scandalised and blinded, though, insensible as you are, you hold this for nothing. The charity of Christ knows that, when we enter the church of the holy Prince of the Apostles, and behold his portrait, compunction comes on us, and, like rain from heaven, a flood of tears comes down. Christ made the blind to see; you have blinded those who saw well, and have made them stumble, little as you think of it. You have reduced men to ignorance, stopped their fair running, deprived them of their prayers. Instead of vigils, prayerfulness, and zeal to God, you have dissolved the poor population in sleepiness, slumbering, and carelessness. They have lost their head. And you say that we worship stones, and walls, and boards. Not so, O emperor. But to rouse memory and feeling, to raise up the dull, rude, and untaught mind, by their names, their invocation, their features. Not as gods, as you assert: far from it: for we do not place our hopes in these things. If it be a picture of our Lord, we say, ‘O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, help us and save us’. If it be of His holy Mother, we say, ‘Holy bearer of God, Mother of the Lord, intercede with thy Son, our true God, to save our souls’. If it be of a martyr, ‘Saint Stephen, who didst shed thy blood for Christ, by thy confidence as proto-martyr, intercede for us’. So we say, in the case of every martyr who suffered martyrdom. Suchlike are the prayers which we address through them. It is not, as you assert, O emperor, that we call the martyrs gods. Put away those evil thoughts of yours. I charge you, save your own soul from the scandals and the imprecations which you receive from all the world: for even the little children make a mock of you. Go to the children’s schools, and say, ‘I am he who pull down and drive away pictures’. They will answer by throwing their slates at your head: and what you have failed to learn from the wise, you will be taught by the simple.