It is to this period that most of the condemnations of art, or rather of its abuse, in the writings of the primitive Fathers must be referred. Toward the close of the fourth century Augustine inveighs against the superstitious reverence for pictures, as well as the growing devotion to the sepulchres, which he says the church condemned and endeavoured to correct.[347] His contemporary, Epiphanius, 221 stigmatizes the employment of painting as contrary to the authority of Scripture.[348] About the same time Paulinus of Nola made use of biblical pictures for the instruction of the rude and illiterate multitude who visited the shrine of Felix. “Perhaps it may be asked,” he says, “for what reason, contrary to the common usage, I have painted this sacred dwelling with personal representations?... Here is a crowd of rustics of imperfect faith, who cannot read, who before they were converted to Christ used profane rites, and obeyed their senses as gods. I have, therefore, thought it expedient to enliven with paintings the whole habitation of the saint. Pictures thus traced with colours will perhaps inspire those rude minds with astonishment. Inscriptions are placed above the paintings in order that the letter may explain what the hand has depicted.”[349] The feeblest intelligence might rise through the material to the conception of spiritual truth.[350] But this ecclesiastical employment 222 of art speedily became the source of religious corruption and the object of superstitious worship. At length it provoked the stern iconoclasm of the Isaurian Leo and his successors, and was formally prohibited by the general Council of Constantinople in the eighth century. Even early in the fourth century the Council of Elvira, as if with a prescience of the dire result that would follow, prohibited the use of pictures in the churches, “lest that which was worshipped and adored should be painted on the walls.”[351] The iconoclastic spirit, however, was principally directed against _graven_ images, which were regarded as the special objects of idolatry. The earliest examples of these have been attributed to the Gnostics, who so strangely blended the doctrines of Christianity with pagan superstition. They claimed to possess contemporary images of Christ from the collection of Pontius Pilate! But doubtless, like 223 the alleged statue of Christ at Cæsarea Philippi, mentioned by Eusebius,[352] even if they had any reference to Our Lord at all, they were of much later date. According to Augustine,[353] the Carpocratian heretics had similar images; and Marcellina, who belonged to that sect, exhibited in the Gnostic church at Rome figures of Christ, Paul, Homer, and Pythagoras. In a similarly eclectic spirit the emperor Alexander Severus placed among his lares the images of Our Lord and Abraham, with those of Orpheus and Apollonius.[354]