Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There was a time, some while back, when idols did not exist. Before the craftsmen of this monstrosity had sprung up, there were only temples and empty shrines, just as in some places even today traces of that antiquity remain. Yet idolatry was practiced then, not under that name, but in that very act. For even now it can go on where no shrine stands and no image is present. But once the devil introduced into the world artisans of statues and portraits and likenesses of every sort, that grim enterprise of human misfortune took both its title and its momentum from idols. From then on, whatever craft produces an image by any method at all became the very fountainhead of image-worship. It matters nothing whether a sculptor molds it, an engraver cuts it, or a weaver stitches it into cloth, since the substance is likewise irrelevant—be the image cast in plaster, laid in paint, cut from rock, poured in bronze, hammered from silver, or woven from thread. Given that image-worship can arise even where no image stands, then surely, once an image does stand, its kind, its substance, its shape carry no weight—lest anyone suppose that only what has been consecrated in human form should count as an idol. For this an interpretation of the word is needed. Eidos in Greek means 'form'; from it, by diminutive, eidolon is derived; likewise among us, 'form' has produced 'little form.' Therefore every form or little form claims the name idol for itself. Hence idolatry is every act of homage and servitude paid around any idol whatsoever. Hence too every craftsman of an idol shares in one and the same crime—unless perhaps a people bears less guilt of image-worship because what it consecrated to itself was the likeness of a calf rather than that of a human being.
IV.