174. In the pure language of Ionia and Athens, ****** and
******* were ancient and familiar words. The former
expressed a likeness, an apparition (Homer. Odys. xi. 602),
a representation, an 'image', created either by fancy or
art. The latter denoted any sort of service or slavery. The
Jews of Egypt, who translated the Hebrew Scriptures,
restrained the use of these words (Exod. xx. 4, 5) to the
religious worship of an image. The peculiar idiom of the
Hellenists, or Grecian Jews, has been adopted by the sacred
and ecclesiastical writers; and the reproach of idolatry
(************) has stigmatised that visible and abject mode
of superstition which some sects of Christianity should not
hastily impute to the polytheists of Greece and Rome.