Tertullian:
And if we speak of Paradise, the place
of heavenly bliss appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, severed from
the knowledge of this world by that fiery zone as by a sort of enclosure, the
Elysian plains have taken possession of their faith. (Apology 47 [ANF 3:52])
Lactantius:
What madness is it, then, either to
form those objects which they themselves may afterwards fear, or to fear the
things which they have formed? But, they say, we do not fear the images
themselves, but those being after those likeness they were formed, and to whose
names they are dedicated. You fear them doubtless on this account, because you
think that they are in heaven; for if they are gods, the case cannot be
otherwise. Why, then, do you not raise your eyes to heaven, and, invoking their
names, offer sacrifices in the open air? Why do you look to walls, and to wood,
and stone, rather than to the place where you believe them to be? What is the
meaning of temples and altars? What, in short, of the images themselves, which
are memorials either of the dead or absent? 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.
In which of these classes, then, shall we reckon the gods? If among the dead,
who is so foolish as to worship them? If among the absent, then they are not to
be worshipped, if they neither see our actions nor hear our prayers. But if the
gods cannot be absent,--for, since they are divine, they see and hear all
things, in whatever part of the universe they are,--if follows that images are
superfluous, since he gods are present everywhere, and it is sufficient to
invoke with prayer the names of those who hear us. But if they are present,
they cannot fail to be at hand at their own images. It is entirely so, as the
people imagine, that the spirits of the dead wander about the tombs and relics
of their bodies. But after that the deity has begun to be near, there is no
longer need of his statue. (The Divine Institutes [ANF 7:41-42])
Lactantius argues that those who are
absent neither see nor hear our actions and prayers, and that to hear us, they
must be omnipresent, an attribute he gives to gods alone, and he states that if
it be that idols ensure the presence of a god, that it must be similar to how
human should rest at their tombs or relics. But if Lactantius believed that
saints cold hear us, then he would have no need to make qualifications about
the necessity that gods be omnipresent to hear us or make qualifications about
souls at tombs and relics, for if saints residing in heaven could hear us from
any location on earth, why mention that they rest at the location of their
tombs or relics in this context? It would be superfluous. (Seth Kasten, Against
the Invocation of Saints: An Apology for the Protestant Doctrine of Prayer Over
and Against the Doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church [Royal Oak, Mich.:
Scholastic Lutherans, 2023], 63-64)
