You holy gluttons should mark well that God alone gives aid and no one else with him or beside him. So it must indeed be true (if the truth is to be the truth) that nothing created next to God can help us. Now tell me, you worshipper or venerator of idols, if the saints could not help you, how could deceitful images help you? You want to venerate the saints in images and offer [them] that very veneration which in their lives they shunned and forbade. They, when they were alive, did not allow you to make offerings to them or invoke them, as Peter says: There is only one name among men whereby you may be saved (Acts 4[:12]). If there is only one name, why do you (blockhead) make many names among humankind in which you promise salvation?
Do you not know that they looked at Peter and were amazed and Peter said: You men, what amazes you? And why do you look at us, as though we had made the lame man walk through our own power and force? We have made him whole through faith in the Lord Jesus who the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent (Acts 3[:12ff.]). Observe, you fat and rotund image-maker, that in his life Peter forbade you to represent him after his death. Do you imagine that he would now give us another doctrine, and one contrary to that which he gave us when alive? You acknowledge that everything he said and taught [when he was alive] came from the Holy Spirit. Where else would his teaching come from in death? Peter said: You ought not look on us. But you respond to this now by saying: We should not look on images as if they did anything by virtue of their own power.
But listen! If only you spoke the truth. And if only you did not have a personal idol with a greater power over you. But what do you want to say about the revellers’ verse: O Saint Christopher, your powers are so great that whoever looks upon you early in the morning shall laugh or live in the evening? Tell me how many thousands of people have paused to gaze for a time upon the image of St Christopher in order that they might be protected from sudden death? And that they might live happily until the night. Have these people not put much hope and trust and sought consolation in looking at depictions of St Christopher?*
Because of this scandalous state of affairs you should counsel [everyone] to believe that all images should be dragged down to the Devil. For behold now whether these people do not look up to the image of Christopher as a god.
You must also admit to me that many of the laity take great comfort and put much hope in other images.
Is not this kind of an entreaty called worship? Dear lord come, come, come to my aid. Is that not to say: Dear image free me, save me, preserve me from sudden death?
Look! You have permitted the laity to light candles before images of Sts Paul, Peter, and Barnabas, and bring them offerings, something which the saints themselves, in their lifetimes, shunned like the plague. Nevertheless, if you are the super-clever philosopher, if you are such an erudite fellow, I beg you, in a friendly way, to tell me whether Paul, Peter, and Barnabas would themselves have permitted us to place them [their images] on altars? You must say no and no again. Why do you set their forbidden images on altars, images which they would not have accepted? Note also, my dear friend, that to bow and kneel are forms of veneration which you give to images against the will of God, as was demonstrated in the passage from Isaiah 44 cited above.
Mark also how mad, foolish, and nonsensical are those who give such veneration to images. For Isaiah says [Isaiah 44:17ff.]: They bow before their gods and prostrate themselves and have forgotten and do not understand that their images do not see or hear. They do not understand that they have carved splinters and wood from a log (which they believe to be a saint) with which they have cooked their meat and warmed their rooms. That they do not want to see. Therefore they shall be confounded, shall be afraid and tremble, and shall be destroyed. O how evil it will be for those who, caught in the throes of death, cleave unto idols and bow and kneel before them. It will be no excuse that they have done this to the saints. God knows their hearts better than they themselves and will accuse them with his Word because they have venerated images. For he said: Thou shalt not venerate them (Exodus 20[:5]).
* An allusion to the popular belief that gazing upon an image of St Christopher assured one of not dying in mortal sin during that day [ . . . ].
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