§19. The inconsistency of image worship. Arguments in palliation. (1) The divine nature must be expressed in a visible sign. (2) The image a means of supernatural communications to men through angels.
For what other form do they give them by
sculpture but that of men and women and of creatures lower yet and of
irrational nature, all manner of birds, beasts both tame and wild, and
creeping things, whatsoever land and sea and the whole realm of the
waters produce? For men having fallen into the unreasonableness of
their passions and pleasures, and unable to see anything beyond
pleasures and lusts of the flesh, inasmuch as they keep their mind in
the midst of these irrational things, they imagined the divine
principle to be in irrational things, and carved a number of gods to
match the variety of their passions. 2. For there are with them images
of beasts and creeping things and birds, as the interpreter of the
divine and true religion says, “They became vain in their
reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the
incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and
of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, wherefore God gave
them up unto vile passions.” For having previously infected their
soul, as I said above, with the irrationalities of pleasures, they then
came down to this making of gods; and, once fallen, thenceforward as
though abandoned in their rejection of God, thus they wallow in them, and portray God, the Father of the Word, in irrational shapes. 3. As to which those who pass for philosophers and men of knowledge among the Greeks, while driven to admit that their visible gods are the forms and figures of men and of irrational objects, say in defence that they have such things to the end that by their means the deity may answer them and be made manifest; because otherwise they could not know the invisible God, save by such statues and rites. 4. While those who profess to give still deeper and more philosophical reasons than these say, that the reason of idols being prepared and fashioned is for the invocation and manifestation of divine angels and powers, that appearing by these means they may teach men concerning the knowledge of God; and that they serve as letters for men, by referring to which they may learn to apprehend God, from the manifestation of the divine angels effected by their means. Such then is their mythology,—for far be it from us to call it a theology. But if one examine the argument with care, he will find that the opinion of these persons also, not less than that of those previously spoken of, is false.