From the book of the Wisdom of Solomon (a Deuterocanonical book) Chapter 14: 12-21
14:12 The idea of making idols was the origin of fornication, their discovery corrupted life.
14:13 They did not exist at the beginning, they will not exist for ever;
14:14 human vanity brought them into the world, and a quick end is therefore reserved for them.
14:15 A father afflicted by untimely mourning has an image made of his child so soon carried off, and now pays divine honours to what yesterday was only a corpse, handing on mysteries and ceremonies to his people;
14:16 time passes, the custom hardens and is observed as law.
14:17 Rulers were the ones who ordered that statues should be worshipped: people who could not honour them in person, because they lived too far away, would have a portrait made of their distant countenance, to have an image that they could see of the king whom they honoured; meaning, by such zeal, to flatter the absent as if he were present.
14:18 Even people who did not know him were stimulated into spreading his cult by the artist’s enthusiasm;
14:19 for the latter, doubtless wishing to please his ruler, exerted all his skill to surpass the reality,
14:20 and the crowd, attracted by the beauty of the work, mistook for a god someone whom recently they had honoured as a man.
14:21 And this became a snare for life: that people, whether enslaved by misfortune or by tyranny, should have conferred the ineffable Name on sticks and stones.
Culled from the Good News Bible with Deuterocanonical Books