Section 76

“But now tell us about your own religious beliefs. What can you say about irrational creatures except things belonging to irrationality and savagery?

“Perhaps, as I hear, you wish to say that these stories are myths spoken allegorically: that the abduction of Persephone represents the earth, the lameness of Hephaestus represents fire, Hera represents the air, Apollo the sun, Artemis the moon, and Poseidon the sea.

“Even then, you are not worshiping God himself. You are serving the creation rather than God who created all things.

“If the beauty of creation led you to compose such stories, you should at least have stopped at admiration and not made gods out of created things. Otherwise you give the honor belonging to the Creator to what he created. By the same reasoning, you might transfer the honor of a master builder to the house he built, or the honor of a general to one of his soldiers.

“What answer can you give to these things, so that we may know whether there is truly anything about the cross that deserves ridicule?”