For by now the human mind had leapt away from God. As human beings descended in their ideas and reasonings, they first assigned the honor due to God to heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, thinking that these were not only gods but also causes of the other gods that came after them. Then, descending still farther in their dark reasonings, they called the aether, the air, and the things in the air gods. Advancing in evil, they went on to praise as gods even the elements and the principles from which bodies are composed: the hot, the cold, the dry, and the wet.
Just as those who have completely fallen crawl along the ground like land snails, so the most impious of human beings, after falling and sinking away from the conception of God, went on to set up as gods human beings and human forms, some still alive and others after death.
Thinking and devising still worse things, they transferred the divine and transcendent name of God even to stones and wood, to reptiles and creatures of water and land, and to wild irrational animals. They gave them every honor belonging to God and turned away from the true God who truly is, the Father of Christ.
Would that the audacity of these fools had stopped even there and that, by going farther, they had not mixed themselves up in still greater impieties. Some have fallen so far in their understanding and become so darkened in mind that they devised and made gods even of things that do not exist anywhere at all and do not appear among created things. Mixing rational things with irrational and interweaving things unlike in nature, they worship the result as gods: among the Egyptians, dog-headed, snake-headed, and donkey-headed gods, and among the Libyans, ram-headed Ammon. Others divided the parts of bodies—the head, shoulder, hand, and foot—each apart, set each one up as a god, and deified it, as though worshiping the whole body intact were not enough for them.
Others, pressing impiety still further, deified and worshiped pleasure and desire, the motive for these inventions and for their own wickedness. Such are their Eros and Aphrodite at Paphos.
Others among them, as though competing to do worse, dared to set up their rulers, or even their rulers’ children, as gods, either to honor those rulers or out of fear of their tyranny. Thus they have the famous Zeus in Crete and Hermes in Arcadia; Dionysus among the Indians; Isis, Osiris, and Horus among the Egyptians; and, in our own time, Antinous, the beloved youth of Hadrian, emperor of the Romans. Though they know that he was a human being—and not an honorable one, but full of licentiousness—they revere him because they fear the one who commanded it.
For when Hadrian visited Egypt, Antinous, the servant of his pleasure, died, and Hadrian commanded that he be worshiped. He himself remained in love with the youth even after the youth’s death, but in doing this he also supplied evidence against himself and a proof against all idolatry: it was invented among human beings for no other reason than the desire of those who fashioned it. As the wisdom of God testifies beforehand, “The devising of idols is the beginning of sexual immorality.”
Do not be surprised or think what I am saying hard to believe. Not long ago—or perhaps even to this day—the Roman Senate decrees that the emperors who have ruled them from the beginning, either all of them or those whom they themselves choose and judge, are to be among the gods, and it orders that they be worshiped as gods. Those they hate, they treat as enemies, acknowledge what they are by nature, and call them human beings. But those they favor, they order to be worshiped because of their merit, as though they had the authority to make gods, although they themselves are human beings and do not deny that they are mortal.
Those who make gods ought rather to be gods themselves. For what makes something must be superior to what it makes; the one who judges necessarily rules over the one judged; and the one who gives necessarily gives what he has. Just so, every king gives as a favor what he has and is superior and greater than those who receive. If, then, they decree as gods whomever they wish, they themselves ought first to be gods. But the astonishing thing is that, by dying as human beings, they themselves expose as false their own decree concerning those whom they deified.
For by now the human mind had leapt away from God. As human beings descended in their ideas and reasonings, they first assigned the honor due to God to heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, thinking that these were not only gods but also causes of the other gods that came after them. Then, descending still farther in their dark reasonings, they called the aether, the air, and the things in the air gods. Advancing in evil, they went on to praise as gods even the elements and the principles from which bodies are composed: the hot, the cold, the dry, and the wet.
Just as those who have completely fallen crawl along the ground like land snails, so the most impious of human beings, after falling and sinking away from the conception of God, went on to set up as gods human beings and human forms, some still alive and others after death.
Thinking and devising still worse things, they transferred the divine and transcendent name of God even to stones and wood, to reptiles and creatures of water and land, and to wild irrational animals. They gave them every honor belonging to God and turned away from the true God who truly is, the Father of Christ.
Would that the audacity of these fools had stopped even there and that, by going farther, they had not mixed themselves up in still greater impieties. Some have fallen so far in their understanding and become so darkened in mind that they devised and made gods even of things that do not exist anywhere at all and do not appear among created things. Mixing rational things with irrational and interweaving things unlike in nature, they worship the result as gods: among the Egyptians, dog-headed, snake-headed, and donkey-headed gods, and among the Libyans, ram-headed Ammon. Others divided the parts of bodies—the head, shoulder, hand, and foot—each apart, set each one up as a god, and deified it, as though worshiping the whole body intact were not enough for them.
Others, pressing impiety still further, deified and worshiped pleasure and desire, the motive for these inventions and for their own wickedness. Such are their Eros and Aphrodite at Paphos.
Others among them, as though competing to do worse, dared to set up their rulers, or even their rulers’ children, as gods, either to honor those rulers or out of fear of their tyranny. Thus they have the famous Zeus in Crete and Hermes in Arcadia; Dionysus among the Indians; Isis, Osiris, and Horus among the Egyptians; and, in our own time, Antinous, the beloved youth of Hadrian, emperor of the Romans. Though they know that he was a human being—and not an honorable one, but full of licentiousness—they revere him because they fear the one who commanded it.
For when Hadrian visited Egypt, Antinous, the servant of his pleasure, died, and Hadrian commanded that he be worshiped. He himself remained in love with the youth even after the youth’s death, but in doing this he also supplied evidence against himself and a proof against all idolatry: it was invented among human beings for no other reason than the desire of those who fashioned it. As the wisdom of God testifies beforehand, “The devising of idols is the beginning of sexual immorality.”
Do not be surprised or think what I am saying hard to believe. Not long ago—or perhaps even to this day—the Roman Senate decrees that the emperors who have ruled them from the beginning, either all of them or those whom they themselves choose and judge, are to be among the gods, and it orders that they be worshiped as gods. Those they hate, they treat as enemies, acknowledge what they are by nature, and call them human beings. But those they favor, they order to be worshiped because of their merit, as though they had the authority to make gods, although they themselves are human beings and do not deny that they are mortal.
Those who make gods ought rather to be gods themselves. For what makes something must be superior to what it makes; the one who judges necessarily rules over the one judged; and the one who gives necessarily gives what he has. Just so, every king gives as a favor what he has and is superior and greater than those who receive. If, then, they decree as gods whomever they wish, they themselves ought first to be gods. But the astonishing thing is that, by dying as human beings, they themselves expose as false their own decree concerning those whom they deified.