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From How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., pgs 116-117:

"Between the 720s and 740s he [John of Damascus, a saint in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches] wrote his Three Treatises on the Divine Images in response to iconoclasm. Naturally, much of his argument was based on biblical and patristic citations, as well as the testimony of tradition as a whole, with regard to the specific question of whether God really opposed the veneration of images, as the iconoclasts claimed. But he also offered important theological defense of religious art. John detected with the iconoclast position a tendency towards Manichaeism, a heresy that had divided the world into a realm of wickedness, that of matter, and one of goodness, that of the spirit.... 'You abuse matter and call it worthless,' John scolded the iconoclasts. 'So do the Manichees, but the divine Scripture proclaims that it is good. For it says, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was exceedingly good."'

Mr. Woods then gives a larger quote from St. John on pgs. 117-188:

I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter [through the Incarnation] for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked.... Therefore I reverence the rest of matter and hold in respect that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace. Is not the thrice-precious and thrice-blessed wood of the cross matter? Is not the holy and august mountain, the place of the skull, matter? Is not the life-giving and life-bearing rock, the holy tomb, the source of the resurrection, matter? Is not the ink and the all-holy book of the Gospels matter? Is not the life-bearing table, which offers to us the bread of life, matter? Is not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and tables and bowls are fashioned? And before all these things, is not the body and blood of my Lord matter? Either do away with reverence and veneration for all these or submit to the tradition of the Church and follow the veneration of images of God and friends of God, sanctified by name and therefore overshadowed by the grace of the divine Spirt [from the Three Treatises].