Where This Error Comes From

We need not be surprised that a truly simple man, who had never been taught anything about the substance and nature of the Godhead, could still be entangled and deceived by an error of simplicity and by the habit of a long-standing mistake. To speak more truly, he goes on in the original error. It is brought about not, as you suppose, by some new deception of the demons, but by the ignorance of the ancient pagan world. Following the custom of that mistaken idea, by which they used to worship demons formed in the shape of men, they still think even now that the incomprehensible and indescribable glory of the true Deity should be worshiped within the limits of some figure. They believe they can grasp and hold nothing unless they have some image set before them, which they can keep addressing at their devotions, carry about in their mind, and have always fixed before their eyes. Against this mistake of theirs this text may be used: “And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man.” Jeremiah also says, “My people have changed their glory for an idol.” [a]

Though this error, from the source we have described, is ingrained in the ideas of some, it is no less contracted in the hearts of those who have never been stained with the superstition of the pagan world, under cover of this passage where it is said, “Let us make man after our image and our likeness.” Ignorance and simplicity are its authors. So from this hateful interpretation there has actually arisen a heresy, called that of the Anthropomorphites, which holds with stubborn perverseness that the infinite and simple substance of the Godhead is shaped with our features and human form. Anyone who has been taught the catholic teaching, however, will abhor this as pagan blasphemy. And so he will come to that perfectly pure condition in prayer which not only will not join to its prayers any figure of the Godhead or any bodily features, which it is a sin even to speak of, but will not even allow within itself the memory of a name, or the appearance of an action, or the outline of any form.