Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/161

 picture and gave it to Lycomedes, who rejoiced. He took it, put it in his bedchamber, and crowned it. And John, who perceived this afterward, said to him, "My beloved child, what art thou doing, when upon leaving the bath thou goest alone into thy bed-chamber? Do I not pray with thee and the other brethren? Or dost thou hide something from us?" Thus speaking, he entered into the room with him. And he saw the crowned picture of an old man, and beside it candlesticks and an altar before it. And he said to him, "Lycomedes, what does this picture mean to thee? Is the painted one of thy gods? I see that thou art still living like a heathen!" Lycomedes replied, "Only he is my God who has revived me and my wife from the dead. But if one is permitted next to God to call those gods, who are our benefactors, then it is thou, father, who art painted in the picture, whom I crown, love, and worship is him who has become my good guide."

28. And John who had never yet seen his own face, said to him, "Thou mockest me, child. Do I look thus . . . ? How wilt thou convince me that the picture is like me?" And Lycomedes brought a mirror. And when he (John) saw himself in the mirror, he said, " As the Lord Jesus Christ lives, the picture is like me, It was this part of the Acts (ch. 27, 28, as far as like me), to which the iconoclasts had referred at the synod of Constantinople in the year 754. This induced the fathers of the second Nicene council in 787 to examine the origin of that supposed apostolic testimony and to show that it was rather taken from the pseudepigraphical journeys of the holy apostles. The heretical character of the apocryphon