Quotable

[Idolatry] is a pestilence that walks in the Church of Christ...that sin which God has especially denounced in His Word...to which the Jews seem to have been most inclined before the destruction of Solomon’s temple....It brought on Israel the armies of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon...scattered the ten tribes, burned up Jerusalem, and carried Judah and Benjamin into captivity. It brought on the Eastern Churches...the living death in which...Asia Minor and Syria are buried....

The cause of all idolatry is the natural corruption of man’s heart...that great family disease...a craving...after something he can see, and feel, and touch [to] bring his God down to his own crawling level...a thing of sense and sight. He has no idea of the religion of heart, and faith, and spirit....There is a natural...tendency in us all to give God a sensual, carnal worship...to devise visible helps...in our approaches to Him, and ultimately to give these inventions of our own the honour due to Him....

[Already] in the fourth century, Jerome complains, “images have come in...passed to the Christians from the Gentiles.” Eusebius says, “We do see that images of Peter and Paul, and of our Saviour Himself be made...Pontius Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in the fifth century, caused the walls of the temples to be painted with stories taken out of the Old Testament; that the people beholding and considering these pictures might the better abstain from too much surfeiting and riot. But from learning by painted stories, it came by little and little to idolatry.

St. Paul dwells on this subject....If any Corinthian called a brother was an idolater, with such an one “not to eat” (1 Cor:5:11But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
See All...). “Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of our fathers” (10:7). He says again... “My dearly beloved, flee from idolatry” (10:14)....John closes his first epistle with the solemn injunction, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 Jn:5:21Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.
See All...).

J.C. Ryle, Warnings to the Churches, 1877