But better testimony about these things comes from divine Scripture, which taught beforehand long ago and says: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, works of human hands. They have eyes and will not see; they have a mouth and will not speak; they have ears and will not hear; they have noses and will not smell; they have hands and will not touch; they have feet and will not walk; they will make no sound in their throat. May all who make them become like them.”
Nor is prophetic censure of them absent. Here too there is a refutation of them, when the Spirit says: “Those who fashion a god will be ashamed, and all who carve useless things. All those from whom they came have withered away. Let all the deaf among human beings be gathered together and stand together; let them be confounded and ashamed together.
“For a craftsman sharpened iron, worked it with an adze, shaped it with a drill, and set it up by the strength of his arm. He will grow hungry and weak and will certainly not drink water.
“A carpenter chose wood, set it by measure, shaped it with glue, and made it like the form of a man and like human beauty. He set it in a house—a piece of wood he cut from the forest, which the Lord planted and the rain made grow, so that it might be fuel for human beings, and taking some of it he might warm himself. After burning some, they baked bread on it; the rest they made into gods and worshiped them. Half of it they burned with fire. On half of it he roasted meat, ate, and was filled; and when he had warmed himself he said, ‘It is pleasant for me, because I have become warm and have seen the fire.’
“But the rest he worshiped, saying, ‘Deliver me, for You are my God.’ They did not know how to reason, because their eyes were darkened so that they could not see, and their heart so that they could not understand. He did not consider in his heart, reflect in his soul, or understand with his mind that he had burned half of it in the fire and baked bread over its coals; that he had roasted meat and eaten it; and that he made the rest of it into an abomination, and they worship it.
“Know that their heart is ashes, and they are deceived, and no one can deliver their soul. Look—and will you not say, ‘There is a lie in my right hand’?”
How, then, could those whom divine Scripture itself accuses of impiety not be judged godless by everyone? How could they not be wretched, when they are so openly exposed as worshiping lifeless things instead of the truth? What hope do they have, or what forgiveness could there be for them, when they trust in irrational and motionless things and revere them instead of the true God?