Note 200 — Chapter I · THE SECESSION OF THE PAINTERS
Reading edition
St. Ephrun, Deacon of Edessa, in his Sermo I. de Pœnitentia XV., uses glass mosaic as an illustration of the sacrament of penance. "Penance is a great furnace: it receives glass and changes it into gold. It takes lead and makes it silver.... Have you seen glass, how it is made of the colour of beryl, emerald, and sapphire? You cannot doubt, too, that penance makes silver of lead and gold of glass. If human art knows how to mix nature with nature, and change what was before, how much more would the grace of God be able to effect? Man has added gold-leaf to glass, and in appearance that seems gold which was before glass. If man had chosen to mix in gold, the glass would have been made golden; but avoiding the cost, he invented the fitting together and inserting the thinnest leaf."