User:PioGal/sandbox

Pagans "hate the Christians, because they do not deem these [images] to be gods" (2). "[N]o man has either seen Him, or made Him known, but He has revealed Himself. And He has manifested Himself through faith, to which alone it is given to behold God" (8). God the Father "sent the Word, that He might be manifested to the world [...] This is He who was from the beginning, who appeared as if new, and was found old, and yet who is ever born afresh in the hearts of the saints. This is He who, being from everlasting, is today called the Son" (11).

"Moses, when he commanded, You shall not have any graven or molten [image] for your God, did so that he might reveal a type of Jesus. Moses then makes a brazen serpent" (12). "[A]lmost after the manner of the Gentiles they [Israelites] worshipped Him in the temple. But learn how the Lord speaks, when abolishing it: [...] Heaven is My throne, and the earth My footstool: what kind of house will you build to Me, or what is the place of My rest? [...] Let us inquire, then, if there still is a temple of God. There is — where He himself declared He would make and finish it. [...] [I]n our habitation God truly dwells in us. [...] He himself dwelling in us; opening to us who were enslaved by death the doors of the temple, that is, the mouth; and by giving us repentance introduced us into the incorruptible temple. He then, who wishes to be saved, looks not to man, but to Him who dwells in him, and speaks in him, amazed at never having either heard him utter such words with his mouth, nor himself having ever desired to hear them. This is the spiritual temple built for the Lord." (16)

Images, which are said to imitate the form of a deity, are "insulting to God, who, having ineffable glory and form, thus gets His name attached to things that are corruptible" (9). Christians are "called atheists" by their enemies (6) as they refuse to "honour with many sacrifies and garlands of flowers" (9) "and libations and incense" (13) "such deities as men have formed" (9). Neither do they worship their own God in such ways, because "God does not need the material offerings which men can give" (10).

Heretics are "confessors of Jesus in name only, instead of worshippers of Him. Yet they style themselves Christians, just as certain among the Gentiles inscribe the name of God upon the works of their own hands" (35). "[I]t was Jesus who appeared to and conversed with Moses, and Abraham, and all the other patriarchs without exception" (113; 56; 58-61; 75; 86; 126-128). "[Y]our teachers suppose" that "the unbegotten God, has hands and feet, and fingers, and [...] that it was the Father Himself who appeared to Abraham and to Jacob" (114). We should "refer the standard [of the bronze serpent of Moses] to the resemblance of the crucified Jesus", because "in this way we shall cease to be at a loss about the things which the lawgiver did, when he, without forsaking God, persuaded the people to hope in a beast through which transgression and disobedience had their origin" (112; 94)

Christians are accused (by Romans) of atheism, because, among other things, they do not offer any kind of sacrifice (13) and they do not give glory or honour to any material image (4; 15). Rejecting a pagan excuse that images are not gods, but are made in honour of gods, and that prayers and offerings "presented to the images are to be referred to the gods" (18).

Carpocratians (gnostics) "possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles." (1.25.6) Followers of Basilides, a heretic, "use images, incantations, invocations, and every other kind of curious art" (1.24.5). Simonians "practise magical arts" and "have an image of Simon", their founder, which they worship (1.23.4) with Caesar's approval (1.23.1). "The prophets, therefore, did not openly behold the actual face of God, but [they saw] the dispensations and the mysteries through which man should afterwards see God. [...] This, too, was made still clearer by Ezekiel, that the prophets saw the dispensations of God in part, but not actually God Himself. For when this man had seen the vision [...] and upon the throne a likeness as of the figure of a man, and the things which were upon his loins as the figure of amber, and what was below like the sight of fire, and when he set forth all the rest of the vision of the thrones, lest any one might happen to think that in those [visions] he had actually seen God, he added: `This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God`." (4.20.10) "If, then, neither Moses, nor Elias, nor Ezekiel, who had all many celestial visions, saw God; but if what they did see were similitudes of the splendour of the Lord, and prophecies of things to come; it is manifest that the Father is indeed invisible, of whom also the Lord said, No man has seen God at any time. But His Word, as He Himself willed it, and for the benefit of those who beheld, did show the Father's brightness, and explained His purposes (as also the Lord said: The only-begotten God, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared [Him]; and He does Himself also interpret the Word of the Father as being rich and great); not in one figure, nor in one character, did He appear to those seeing Him, but according to the reasons and effects aimed at in His dispensations, as it is written in Daniel." (4.20.11) "Therefore have the Jews departed from God, in not receiving His Word, but imagining that they could know the Father [apart] by Himself, without the Word, that is, without the Son; they being ignorant of that God who spoke in human shape to Abraham, and again to Moses, saying, I have surely seen the affliction of My people in Egypt, and I have come down to deliver them." (4.7.4)

Autolycus (a pagan) boasting of his gods (idols) (1.1) may challenge Theophilus (a Christian): "Show me your God". But "God is seen by those who are enabled to see Him when they have the eyes of their soul opened" (1.2). "The appearance of God is ineffable and indescribable, and cannot be seen by eyes of flesh." (1.3; 1.5). Only after a man's ressurection, "having become immortal, you shall see the Immortal" (1.7). Pagans worship dead men represented by their idols (1.9-10). Christians even refuse to worship the king (Caesar), but only reverence him "with lawful honour" (1.11).

"For, in truth, the image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman's hand. But we [Christians] have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone - God, who alone is truly God. [...] we are they who bear about with us, in this living and moving image of our human nature, the likeness of God — a likeness which dwells with us" (4).

Images set by Romans to honour their dead and their gods look much the same (13). In the Jewish temple there was no image, no visible object of worship (16). Though Christians worship Christ, they do not "differ from the Jews concerning God" (21). Christians refuse their homage to statues and images (12). The object of Christian "worship is the One God" whom "eye cannot see" (17).

"Moses commanded men to make not an image to represent God by art" (2). Images depicted on Christian seals must be neither "the faces of idols" nor weapons, "nor drinking-cups", nor lovers - the suggested alternatives are: "either a dove, or a fish, or a ship scudding before the wind, or a musical lyre, [...] or a ship's anchor" (11).

"There are also testamentary exhibitions, in which funeral honours are rendered to the memories of private persons; [...] But in the matter of idolatry, it makes no difference with us under what name or title it is practised [...]. If it is lawful to offer homage to the dead, it will be just as lawful to offer it to their gods: you have the same origin in both cases; there is the same idolatry; there is on our part the same solemn renunciation of all idolatry." (6) "We know that the names of the dead are nothing, as are their images" (10). "[I]dolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed; the one as well as the other is a service to dead men. Moreover, demons have abode in the images of the dead" (12).

Moses prohibited that any "likeness should be made; so that we may not cleave to things of sense, but pass to intellectual objects: for familiarity with the sight disparages the reverence of what is divine; and to worship that which is immaterial by matter, is to dishonour it by sense" (5.5). "Now the images and temples constructed by mechanics are made of inert matter; [...] Works of art cannot then be sacred and divine" (7.5).

Christians are reprimanded (by Tertullian) for adopting idolatrous pagan customs and the business of idol-making: "You will now-a-days find more doors of heathens without lamps and laurel-wreaths than of Christians" (15). "Idol-artificers are chosen even into the ecclesiastical order. Oh wickedness!" (7). "The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world [...] is idolatry" (1). "[T]he devil introduced into the world artificers of statues and of images, and of every kind of likenesses" (3). The bronze serpent of Moses is not a valid excuse for making similitudes (5).

In the Old Testament statues depicting creatures, like a serpent or cherubim, were made at God's explicit command for purely ornamental or instrumental purposes, on condition that people "shall not bow down to them, nor serve them" (2.22). Old Testament saints, like Moses and Elias, could not be depicted: "People could not have had their images, or statues, or likenesses; for that the law forbade." (4:22)

"We declare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself (as the Son), is invisible, in that He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God; but that He was visible before the days of His flesh [...] Well, then, was the Son visible? (Certainly not, ) although He was the face of God, except only in vision and dream, and in a glass and enigma, because the Word and Spirit (of God) cannot be seen except in an imaginary form" (14). "He is one, who anciently was visible only in mystery and enigma, and became more clearly visible by His incarnation" and "it is evident that He was always seen from the beginning, who became visible in the end" (15; 16).

Carpocratians (heretics) made images of Christ that allegedly presented his real-life appearance: "they make counterfeit images of Christ, alleging that these were in existence at the time (during which our Lord was on earth, and that they were fashioned) by Pilate" (7.20/32).

"[T]he Son of God [...] is the invisible image of the invisible God" (1.2.6.; 2.6.3.) and "as He [i.e. God the Father] is Himself invisible by nature, He also begot an image [i.e. His Son] that was invisible. For the Son is the Word, and therefore we are not to understand that anything in Him [i.e. Christ] is cognisable by the senses" (1.2.6.). Also quoted by Athanasius in De Decretis 6.27.

Christians were accused (by Romans) of worshipping something shameful or criminal, because they had "no altars, no temples, no known images" (10, 32), and could not show (images of) their God: "certainly the God whom we worship we neither show nor see." "And yet what image of God shall I make, since [...] man himself is the image of God" (32). "Crosses, moreover, we [Christians] neither worship nor wish for. You [pagans], indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods" (29).

First "images were sculptured to retain the countenances of the deceased [kings] by the likeness" and they became "gods whom the common people worship" (1). Cyprian agrees with Hostanes "that the form of the true God cannot be seen" (6). Christian God "cannot be seen — He is too bright for vision" (9); "being the holy Spirit, He is endued with flesh; God is mingled with man. This is our God, this is Christ" (11).

Christians are accused (by pagans) of being "a secret and forbidden society", because they "shrink from raising altars, statues, and temples" (7.62; 8.17-20). Christians teach "contempt for idols, and images of all kinds" (3.15): "different tribes erected temples and statues [...], whereas we have refrained from offering to the Divinity honour by any such means [...], and are lost in reverential wonder at Jesus" (3.34). "And although some may say that these objects are not gods, but only imitations and symbols of real divinities, nevertheless these very individuals, in imagining that the hands of low mechanics can frame imitations of divinity, are `uninstructed, and servile, and ignorant;`" (6.14). "For what reasonable man can refrain from smiling when he sees that one [...] turns straightway to images and offers to them his prayers, or imagines that by gazing upon these material things he can ascend from the visible symbol to that which is spiritual and immaterial. But a Christian [...] rises above the universe, `shutting the eyes of sense, and raising upwards the eyes of the soul.` And [...] passing in thought [...] beyond the visible universe, he offers prayers to God." (7.44) "[A]ll those indeed sit in darkness, and are rooted in it, who fix their gaze upon the evil handiwork of painters, and moulders and sculptors, and who will not look upwards, and ascend in thought from all visible and sensible things, to the Creator of all things, who is light; [...]. No Christian, then, would give Celsus [...] the answer, "How shall I know God?" for each one of them knows God according to his capacity. And no one asks, "How shall I learn the way which leads to Him?" [...] And not a single Christian would say to Celsus, "How will you show me God?" (6.66) "[F]or he does not display his brilliancy on account of the still existing weakness in the eyes of the recipient" (6.67). God the Word "had become as flesh, that He might be received by those who could not behold Him [...] And discoursing in human form, and announcing Himself as flesh, He calls to Himself those who are flesh, that He [...] may lead them upwards to behold Him as He was before He became flesh; so that they, receiving the benefit, and ascending from their great introduction to Him, which was according to the flesh, say, "Even if we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no more." Therefore He became flesh, and [...] after tabernacling and dwelling within us, He did not continue in the form in which He first presented Himself, but caused us to ascend to the lofty mountain of His word, and showed us His own glorious form" (6.68). "God, moreover, is in our judgment invisible, because He is not a body, while He can be seen by those who see with the heart, that is, the understanding; [...] His Only-begotten also is `difficult to see.` For God the Word is `difficult to see,` and so also is His wisdom [...]. It was not, then, because God was `difficult to see` that He sent God His Son to be an object `easy to be seen.` [...] [T]he Son also is `difficult to see,` because He is God the Word" (6.69).

Christians are charged (by Romans) with the crime of impiety, because they "do not rear temples for the ceremonies of worship, do not set up statues and images of any god, do not build altars," etc. (6.1). Images of dieties made by artists "are wide of the mark", because no one can comprehend their divine form (7.35). Pagans claim they worship gods "by means of images", to which the reply is: "Without these, do the gods not know that they are worshipped [...]?" (6.9).

"There shall be no pictures in the church, lest what is worshipped and adored should be depicted on the walls." (Canon 36).

"For the plan of making likenesses was invented by men for this reason, that it might be possible to retain the memory of those who had either been removed by death or separated by absence. [...] [I]mages are superfluous, since the gods are present everywhere, and it is sufficient to invoke with prayer the names of those who hear us. [...] But after that the deity has begun to be near, there is no longer need of his statue" (2.2). "[I]t is undoubted that there is no religion wherever there is an image. [...] there is no religion in images, but a mimicry of religion" (2.19).

"[PORPHYRY:] 'The thoughts of a wise theology, wherein men indicated God and God's powers by images akin to sense, and sketched invisible things in visible forms, I will show to those who have learned to read from the statues as from books the things there written concerning the gods. Nor is it any wonder that the utterly unlearned regard the statues as wood and stone, just as also those who do not understand the written letters look upon the monuments as mere stones [...] As the deity is of the nature of light, and dwells in an atmosphere of ethereal fire, and is invisible to sense that is busy about mortal life, He through translucent matter, as crystal or Parian marble or even ivory, led men on to the conception of his light, and through material gold to the discernment of the fire, and to his undefiled purity, because gold cannot be defiled. On the other hand, black marble was used by many to show his invisibility; and they moulded their gods in human form because the deity is rational, and made these beautiful, because in those is pure and perfect beauty; [...]' [Eusebius:] These are the statements of this wonderful philosopher: and what could be more unseemly than talking, as they do, in solemn phrase about shameful things?" (3.7)

"How can one paint an image of so wondrous and unattainable a form" of Christ now, "when He changed the form of the servant into the glory of the Lord God...?" Creating icons of Christ in His form "of the mortal flesh before its transformation" is against God's law. "Have you ever heard anything of the kind either yourself in church or from another person? Are not such things banished and excluded from churches all over the world, and is it not common knowledge that such practices are not permitted to us alone?" Pictures of Christ or His apostles are not to be made, "lest we appear, like idol worshippers, to carry our God around in an image." Even "though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." Manicheans carry around an image of their founder, but to Christians "such things are forbidden".

At Caesarea Philippi (Paneas) there were two bronze statues showing a woman being healed by a man, supposedly Jesus. (7.17; 7.18) "Nor is it strange that those of the Gentiles who, of old, were benefited by our Saviour, should have done such things, since we have learned also that the likenesses of his apostles Paul and Peter, and of Christ himself, are preserved in paintings, the ancients being accustomed, as it is likely, according to a habit of the Gentiles, to pay this kind of honor indiscriminately to those regarded by them as deliverers." (7.18)

Images for instruction, not for veneration: Constantine "determined to purge the city which was to be distinguished by his own name from idolatry of every kind, that henceforth no statues might be worshipped there in the temples of those falsely reputed to be gods [...] On the other hand one might see the fountains in the midst of the market place graced with figures representing the good Shepherd, well known to those who study the sacred oracles, and that of Daniel also with the lions" (3.48-49). Constantine's "portrait also at full length was placed over the entrance gates of the palaces in some cities, the eyes upraised to heaven, and the hands outspread as if in prayer. [...] At the same time he forbade, by an express enactment, the setting up of any resemblance of himself in any idol temple" (4.15-16). "[T]he venerable statues of brass, of which the superstition of antiquity had boasted for a long series of years, were exposed to view in all the public places of the imperial city [...] In short, the city [of Constantinopole] which bore his name was everywhere filled with brazen statues of the most exquisite workmanship" (3.54).

In the Old Testament times "God was only seen, not born, as Man [...] it was true God, the Son of God, Who appeared to the Patriarchs in human form" (5:17), "presented Himself in the form of various created beings" (12:47; 12:45), "an Angel", "a man" (12:46). "Isaiah did see God" (5:33), "He Who was seen is true God; but none venture to say that God the Father was seen." (5:34) In His incarnation "as He had appeared [prior to his birth], so was He born [...] God remained unchanged, whether He were seen in the appearance, or born in the reality, of manhood" (5:17). And yet, though He was seen in a human-like form, "Invisible is begotten of Invisible" (2.11), "the invisible Image of God" (2.24), the "Invisible and Incomprehensible, Whom sight and feeling and touch cannot gauge" (2.25). Now the time has come "when God should be worshipped neither on mountain nor in temple. [...] He, the Invisible and Incomprehensible must be worshipped by invisible and incomprehensible means" (2.31). "I ask whether He [Christ] is the visible likeness of the invisible God, and whether the infinite God can also be presented to view under the likeness of a finite form? For a likeness must needs repeat the form of that of which it is the likeness. Let those, however, who will have a nature of a different sort in the Son determine what sort of likeness of the invisible God they wish the Son to be. Is it a bodily likeness exposed to the gaze, and moving from place to place with human gait and motion? Nay, but let them remember that according to the Gospels and the Prophets both Christ is a Spirit and God is a Spirit. If they confine this Christ the Spirit within the bounds of shape and body, such a corporeal Christ will not be the likeness of the invisible God, nor will a finite limitation represent that which is infinite." (8.48)

To Manichaeans: "Do not summon against me professors of the Christian name, who neither know nor give evidence of the power of their profession. Do not hunt up the numbers of ignorant people, who even in the true religion are superstitious, or are so given up to evil passions as to forget what they have promised to God. I know that there are many worshippers of tombs and pictures. I know that there are many who drink to great excess over the dead, and who, in the feasts which they make for corpses, bury themselves over the buried, and give to their gluttony and drunkenness the name of religion" (34.75).

"[S]how me plainly and actually who is that God whom you Christians claim as belonging specially to you, and pretend to see present among you in secret places. For it is in open day, before the eyes and ears of all men, that we worship our gods with pious supplications, and propitiate them by acceptable sacrifices; and we take pains that these things be seen and approved by all." (3)

"I have heard that certain persons have this grievance against me: When I accompanied you to the holy place called Bethel [...] I came to a villa called Anablatha and, as I was passing, saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray, and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was. Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person. They, however, murmured, and said that if I made up my mind to tear it, it was only fair that I should give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I promised that I would give one [...]. I beg that you will order the presbyter of the place to take the curtain which I have sent from the hands of the Reader, and that you will afterwards give directions that curtains of the other sort — opposed as they are to our religion — shall not be hung up in any church of Christ. A man of your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offense unworthy alike of the Church of Christ and of those Christians who are committed to your charge." (9)

Certain heretics claimed that Jesus commended some books on magic to Peter and Paul "just because in many places they chanced to see these two apostles represented in pictures as both in company with Him. For Rome, in a specially honourable and solemn manner, commends the merits of Peter and of Paul [...]. Thus to fall most completely into error was the due desert of men who sought for Christ and His apostles not in the holy writings, but on painted walls. Neither is it to be wondered at, that these fiction-limners were misled by the painters" (1.10.16).

Pagans ask about Christians: "'Where is their God?' because they can shew their gods to the eyes" while Christians "worship an invisible God" and admit "we cannot display our God to your carnal eyes" (113.II.1). But "the sign of the Son of man shall appear in heaven" and then pagans will stop asking "'Where is their God?' when He is no longer preached unto them to be believed in, but displayed before them to be trembled at" (113.I.13). Some pagans claim: "I worship not this visible thing, but the divinity which doth invisibly dwell therein" (113.II.3) or even: "I neither worship an idol, nor a devil; but in the bodily image I behold an emblem of that which I am bound to worship" so that "they presume to reply, that they worship not the bodies themselves, but the deities which preside over the government of them" (113.II.4).

"There are those who think that the Christian religion is what we should smile at rather than hold fast, for this reason, that, in it, not what may be seen, is shown, but men are commanded faith of things which are not seen. We therefore, that we may refute these, who seem to themselves through prudence to be unwilling to believe what they cannot see, although we are not able to show unto human sight those divine things which we believe, yet do show unto human minds that even those things which are not seen are to be believed." (1.1)

"And be not deceived, brethren, by any of those who assert that the Father is invisible, and the Son visible. This assertion is made by those who think that the latter is a creature, and whose understanding runs not in harmony with the words, `I and my Father one.` Accordingly, as respects the form of God wherein He is equal with the Father, the Son also is invisible: but, in order to be seen of men, He assumed the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men, became visible to man. He showed Himself, therefore, even before His incarnation, to the eyes of men, as it pleased Him, in the creature-form at His command, but not as He is. Let us be purifying our hearts by faith, that we may be prepared for that ineffable and, so to speak, invisible vision. For `blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God`" (53.12). "He was plainly visible to the carnal eyes of the world, while manifest in the flesh; but it [the world] saw not the Word that lay hid in the flesh: it saw the man, but it saw not God: it saw the covering, but not the Being within." (75.2) "He therefore addressed the words, A little while, and you shall no more see me, to those who saw Him at the time in bodily form; because He was about to go to the Father, and never thereafter to be seen in that mortal state wherein they now beheld Him when so addressing them." (101.6) "As the pagans may say, `Behold our gods, where is your God?` They indeed show us what is seen; we worship what is not seen. And to whom can we show? To a man who has not sight with which to see? For anyhow, if they see their gods with their eyes, we too have other eyes with which to see our God: for `blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.`" (20.11)

"[T]he substance, or [...] the essence of God, [...] the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [...] can in no way in its proper self be visible" (3.11.21). "[T]hose words and bodily appearances which were given to these ancient fathers of ours before the incarnation of the Saviour, when God was said to appear, were wrought by angels" [...] "wherein God might be shown in a figure to men" (3.11.27; 3.11.22; 4.21.31). "And what is it to know God except to behold Him and steadfastly perceive Him with the mind? For He is not a body to be searched out by carnal eyes." (8.4.6) "[W]ho is there that reads or hears what the Apostle Paul has written, or what has been written of him, that does not imagine to himself the countenance both of the apostle himself, and of all those whose names are there mentioned? And whereas, among such a multitude of men to whom these books are known, each imagines in a different way those bodily features and forms, it is assuredly uncertain which it is that imagines them more nearly and more like the reality. Nor, indeed, is our faith busied therein with the bodily countenance of those men; but only that by the grace of God they so lived and so acted as that Scripture witnesses: this it is which it is both useful to believe, and which must not be despaired of, and must be sought. For even the countenance of our Lord Himself in the flesh is variously fancied by the diversity of countless imaginations, which yet was one, whatever it was. Nor in our faith which we have of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that wholesome which the mind imagines for itself, perhaps far other than the reality, but that which we think of man according to his kind: for we have a notion of human nature implanted in us, as it were by rule, according to which we know immediately, that whatever such thing we see is a man or the form of a man." (8.4.7) "For neither do we know the countenance of the Virgin Mary; [...] whoever of us have not seen these things, know not whether they are as we conceive them to be, nay judge them more probably not to be so. [...] And whether that was the countenance of Mary which occurred to the mind in speaking of those things or recollecting them, we neither know at all, nor believe. It is allowable, then, in this case to say without violation of the faith, perhaps she had such or such a countenance, perhaps she had not: but no one could say without violation of the Christian faith, that perhaps Christ was born of a virgin." (8.5.7) "[H]ow then can we love, by believing, that Trinity which we do not know? Is it according to the special or general notion, according to which we love the Apostle Paul? In whose case, even if he was not of that countenance which occurs to us when we think of him (and this we do not know at all), yet we know what a man is." (8.5.8)

"Neither need we be surprised that God, invisible as He is, should often have appeared visibly to the patriarchs. For as the sound which communicates the thought conceived in the silence of the mind is not the thought itself, so the form by which God, invisible in His own nature, became visible, was not God Himself. Nevertheless it is He Himself who was seen under that form, as that thought itself is heard in the sound of the voice; and the patriarchs recognized that, though the bodily form was not God, they saw the invisible God." (10.13) "And so it has pleased Divine Providence, as I have said, and as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, that the law enjoining the worship of one God should be given by the disposition of angels. But among them the person of God Himself visibly appeared, not, indeed, in His proper substance, which ever remains invisible to mortal eyes, but by the infallible signs furnished by creation in obedience to its Creator. He made use, too, of the words of human speech, uttering them syllable by syllable successively, though in His own nature He speaks not in a bodily but in a spiritual way; not to sense, but to the mind; not in words that occupy time, but, if I may so say, eternally, neither beginning to speak nor coming to an end. And what He says is accurately heard, not by the bodily but by the mental ear of His ministers and messengers, who are immortally blessed in the enjoyment of His unchangeable truth; and the directions which they in some ineffable way receive, they execute without delay or difficulty in the sensible and visible world." (10.15)