But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
Ver. 13. Break their images.] The Popish historians have blurred and blasted those zealous emperors, Zeno and others, that were Iconomachi and Iconoclastai, as sacrilegious. Berne was the first town that, after the Reformation, was purged of images; which Augustine saith cannot be placed in churches, Sine praesentissimo idololatrioe periculo, a without extreme danger of idolatry. Epiphanius saith, It is utterly unlawful and abominable to set up images in the churches of Christians. Irenaeus reproveth the Gnostics, for that they carried about the picture of Christ in Pilate's time, after his own proportion: using also, for declaration of their affection toward it, to set garlands upon the head of it.
a Aug., in Psalm cxiv.