The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to a holy matron.

The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs.

In the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God [13] were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have been decorated by the pencil of St.Luke; and the Evangelist, who was perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians.
The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius.

[14] [Footnote 7: After removing some rubbish of miracle and inconsistency, it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300, Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze statue, representing a grave personage wrapped in a cloak, with a grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an inscription was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal.

By the Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb.vii.