05. The
council of Laodicea, held about 363, declared, in its seventy-fifth canon,
"_That Christians ought not to abandon the church, and retire elsewhere in
order to invoke angels, and form private assemblies, because it is
prohibited. If, therefore, any one is attached to this secret idolatry,
let him be anathema, because he has left our Lord Jesus Christ, and has
become an idolater._" It is therefore evident that this superstition,
expressly prohibited by St Paul, Col. ii. 18, was then secretly practised
in some private assemblies, though it was afterwards introduced into the
Western as well as the Eastern church. The council of Carthage, held
towards the end of the fourth century, condemned the abuse of the honours
which were paid to the memory of the martyrs by the Christians of Africa,
and ordered the bishops to repress them, _if the thing might be done, but
if it could not be done on account of the popular emotions_, to warn at
least the people. This proves how weak the bishops felt their authority to
be against the prevailing superstitions amongst their flocks, and that
they preferred suffering the latter to risking the former.

There were, however, Christians who opposed, in a bold and uncompromising
manner, the pagan errors and abuses which had infected the church. St
Epiphanius, archbishop of Salamis, in the fourth century, celebrated for
his learning, and whose virtues St Jerome extols in the most glowing
terms, explicitly condemned the worship of created beings, "because," he
observed, "the devil was creeping into men's minds under the pretence of
devotion and justice, and, consecrating human nature by divine honours,
presented to their eyes various fine images, in order to separate the mind
from the one God by an infamous adultery. Therefore, though those who are
worshipped are dead, people adore their images, which never had any life
in them." He further remarked, "that there was not a prophet who would
have suffered a man or a woman to be worshipped; that neither the prophet
Elias, nor St John the beloved disciple of the Lord, nor St Thecla (who
had received the most extravagant praises from the fathers), were ever
worshipped; and that, consequently, the virgin was neither to be invoked
nor worshipped." "_The old superstition_," says he, "_shall not have such
power over us as to oblige us to abandon the living God, and worship his
creature._"(51)

The same St Epiphanius relates, in a letter addressed to