Come, then: cleanse yourself of all the thoughts that have preoccupied your mind, put away the habit that deceives you, and become, as it were, a new person from the beginning, since, as you yourself acknowledged, you are to be a hearer of a new teaching. Look not only with your eyes but also with your understanding at the substance and form of those things that you call and regard as gods.
Is not one of them stone, like what is trampled underfoot; another bronze, no better than the vessels forged for our use; another wood, already rotting; another silver, needing someone to guard it so that it is not stolen; another iron, ruined by rust; and another earthenware, no more attractive than a vessel made for the most dishonorable service?
Are not all these made of perishable material? Were they not fashioned with iron and fire? Did not a stonecutter shape one, a metalworker another, a silversmith another, and a potter another? Before these materials were stamped by such crafts into their present forms, could not each of them have been transformed into something else—and could they not still be transformed now? Could not vessels now made from the same materials, if they came into the hands of the same craftsmen, be made like these?
Could not these things that you now worship be made again by human hands into vessels like the rest? Are they not all deaf? Are they not blind? Lifeless? Insensible? Motionless? Do they not all rot? Do they not all decay?
These things you call gods; to these you are enslaved; these you worship—and in the end you become altogether like them.
Is this why you hate the Christians, because they do not regard these things as gods?
For you yourselves, who think you are honoring them, do you not despise them far more? Do you not mock and insult them all the more, worshiping the stone and earthen ones without guards, while locking up the silver and gold ones at night and setting guards beside them by day so that they are not stolen?
As for the honors you think you offer them: if they can perceive them, you are really punishing them; but if they are insensible, you expose them by worshiping them with blood and sacrificial fumes.
Let one of you endure this; let someone consent to have these things done to himself. Yet not a single human being would willingly endure such punishment, because a person has sensation and reason. A stone endures it because it has no sensation. Are you not, then, disproving its capacity for sensation?
Concerning the fact that Christians are not enslaved to gods such as these, I could say much more. But if someone does not consider even these arguments sufficient, I think it is needless to say more.