Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Taking occasion from the Egyptians and Canaanites, whom God destroyed for their crimes, especially idolatry, he begins to treat of idolatry: for this is most diametrically opposed to the first truth and the principle of wisdom, which is to acknowledge, fear, and worship the true God. He assigns a threefold species of idolatry: the first, by which they worshipped living animals as gods; the second, by which they worshipped the elements and celestial bodies; the third, by which they worshipped images and idols — and he treats all of these together through four chapters. Therefore in this chapter he attacks those who from creatures did not recognize the Creator, but worshipped the creature as if it were the Creator, from verse 1 to verse 10; then to the end of the chapter he more severely rebukes those who adore idols of wood, stone, and clay fashioned by an artisan as gods, invoke them, consult them about the future, and implore their help.
Vulgate Text: Wisdom 13:1-19
1. For all men are vain in whom there is not the knowledge of God, and from the good things that are seen they could not understand Him who is, nor by attending to the works did they recognize who was the Artisan. 2. But either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circuit of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, they supposed to be the gods that rule the world. 3. If delighted by their beauty, they took them for gods: let them know how much the Lord of these is more beautiful than they, for the Author of beauty created all these things. 4. Or if they admired their power and effects, let them understand from these that He who made them is mightier than they. 5. For from the greatness of the beauty and of the creature, the Creator of them may be seen so as to be known thereby. 6. But yet for these there is less blame. For they perhaps err, seeking God and desiring to find Him. 7. For being conversant in His works, they search, and are persuaded that the things which are seen are good. 8. But again, neither are these to be pardoned. 9. For if they were able to know so much as to be able to estimate the world: how did they not more easily find the Lord thereof? 10. But unhappy are they, and their hope is among the dead, who called the works of men's hands gods — gold and silver, the invention of art, and the likenesses of animals, or a useless stone, the work of an ancient hand. 11. Or if some artisan, a carpenter, has cut down a straight tree from the forest, and skillfully stripped off all its bark, and employing his art, diligently fashioned a useful vessel for the service of life, 12. and used the remnants of his work to prepare food: 13. and of the remainder of these, a piece of wood that is good for nothing, being crooked and full of knots, has carved it diligently in his leisure time, and by the knowledge of his art has shaped it and made it like the image of a man, 14. or compared it to some vile animal, coating it with red lead, and making its surface red with paint, and covering over every blemish that is in it: 15. and has made for it a worthy dwelling, and setting it in the wall and fastening it with iron, 16. lest perhaps it fall, taking care for it, knowing that it cannot help itself — for it is an image, and has need of help. 17. And making vows, he inquires about his substance, his children, and his marriage. He is not ashamed to speak to that which has no soul. 18. And for health he makes supplication to the weak, and for life he prays to the dead, and for aid he calls upon the useless. 19. And for a journey he asks one who cannot walk, and for gaining, and for working, and for the success of all things, he asks one who is useless in all things.
ARTISAN. — This is the theme of the entire chapter and the three following, namely to demonstrate both the vanity of idolaters, philosophers, and other men who enjoy creatures, and the opposite—
1. FOR ALL MEN ARE VAIN IN WHOM THERE IS NOT THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD: AND FROM THE GOOD THINGS THAT ARE SEEN, THEY COULD NOT UNDERSTAND HIM WHO IS, NOR BY ATTENDING TO THE WORKS DID THEY RECOGNIZE WHO WAS THE ARTI—
the truth of faithful worshippers of God, who strive to know, worship, and love God: for this is true wisdom, while the former is vain, indeed mere vanity and foolishness. In Greek: for vain, or foolish (for μάταιος signifies both, whence the Italian matti, that is, fools) are all men by nature, in whom there was ignorance of God. By nature, in Greek φύσει, that is, by nature, by inclination, by propensity, by corruption; also of themselves, of their own accord. For just as every created thing, insofar as it was created from nothing by God, is vain and tends and inclines toward its own nothingness, so too man, especially after the fall of Adam, by which human nature was corrupted and made subject to death. For from this fall there arose in man concupiscence, by which he inclines toward vain, harmful, and deadly things, and ignorance of God and divine things that lead to salvation and happiness. From this ignorance has sprung the multitude of idols, heresies, errors, and crimes. The Syriac reads: vain are men who do not acknowledge God. The Arabic: since all men in whom there is a deficiency of knowledge are truly vain. The word "since," or as it is in Greek, ὅτι γὰρ, that is, "inasmuch as" or "for," gives the reason why the Canaanites fell into so many and such great crimes and were so severely punished by God — namely because they did not acknowledge the true God nor reverence Him.
Understand "knowledge of God" not merely as speculative knowledge, but also as practical knowledge joined with the worship, fear, obedience, and love of God. Therefore vain and foolish were the idolaters, who, not knowing God, worshipped and worship idols. More vain and more foolish were the philosophers, who, although they knew God through natural knowledge, nevertheless did not worship and glorify Him as God with the piety and purity that was fitting — whom therefore the Apostle sharply rebukes in Romans 1. Most vain and most foolish of all are the faithful, who, although they know God through faith and have from it a certain hope of eternal happiness, nevertheless spurn Him and His law in order to enjoy their illicit pleasures. For these confess God in words but deny Him in deeds, and therefore the greater knowledge of God they have, the greater their malice, and consequently the greater punishment they bring upon themselves. For "the servant who knew his master's will and did not act accordingly will be beaten with many stripes" (Luke 12:47). See what was said on Ecclesiastes 1:1, regarding the words: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone." This is what Isaiah laments in chapter 5:13: "Therefore my people are led into captivity, because they had no knowledge"; and Hosea 4:6: "My people are silent because they had no knowledge: because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you from serving Me as priest"; and Baruch 3:28: "And because they had no wisdom, they perished through their foolishness." To this point belongs what I have cited elsewhere, but which is proper to this passage and therefore worth repeating:
He who knows Christ knows enough, even if he knows nothing else; He who knows not Christ knows nothing, even if he knows all else.
Such was St. Paul, who in 1 Corinthians 2:2 says: "For I judged not myself to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." And St. Gregory Nazianzen, who in his Poem on the Beatitudes sings thus:
Happy is he who, withdrawn from the world, lives in the harsh Desert, and lifts his mind to the stars. Happy is he who, joined to many, not busied with many things, Is not distracted, but has given his whole heart to God.
Therefore, just as a wineskin or bellows empty of wine but swollen with wind is vain because it contains nothing solid, so a philosopher, orator, or theologian destitute of the practical knowledge, grace, and love of God, and puffed up with the empty wind and pride of knowledge, is vain and foolish. He is a bubble swollen with wind, which will soon be blown away by the breeze; he is thistledown whose fibers the wind will soon scatter; he is a vapor, he is smoke that will soon vanish into thin air.
O eternal truth, and true charity, and dear eternity! You are my God, to You I sigh day and night, says St. Augustine in Book 7 of the Confessions. And St. Bernard, appearing at his death to William of Montpellier, said that he was ascending to Mount Lebanon (to heaven), and added: "Here below there is no knowledge, no cognition of truth; above is the fullness of knowledge, above is the true knowledge of truth." So his Life records. Moreover Philo, in his book On Drunkenness, says: Just as the sun at its rising hides the stars with so great a splendor from our small eyes, so whenever the eyes of the soul are irradiated by the sincere, pure, and most brilliant light-bearing sensible splendor of God, they can see nothing else: for the shining knowledge of Him who is illuminates everything, so that even things that are in themselves most brilliant are obscured by this comparison. Finally St. Justin at the beginning of his Dialogue against Trypho teaches that true philosophy and wisdom consist in the knowledge and worship of God, and that he had sought it in vain among the Platonists, Stoics, Epicureans, and other philosophers, and at last, at the admonition of a certain holy man, found it in the Sacred Scriptures, namely in the books of the apostles and prophets.
AND FROM THE GOOD THINGS THAT ARE SEEN (wrongly in the Royal editions it reads contrarily, "which are not seen") THEY COULD NOT UNDERSTAND HIM WHO IS. — In Greek: and from the visible good things they could not know τὸν ὄντα, that is, the Existing One. For God in Greek is called τὸ ὂν, that is, Being itself, in the neuter gender; or ὁ ὢν, that is, He who is, in the masculine gender, because God is the first, supreme, uncreated, eternal, immense Being, who exists of Himself and has His being from Himself, in whom is the fullness and perfection of all beings and things, either formally or eminently, and from whom all things and each individual thing receive their entire being. Therefore He is the ocean of being and the infinite sea of essence. Moreover he says: "From the things that are seen to be good," that is, from visible beings, which were created good by God: "for God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good" (Genesis 1).
For good and being are convertible, since goodness is an attribute and property of being. Therefore as much as something is a being, so much is it also good; hence God, who is the supreme being, is likewise the supreme good. The meaning is, as if to say: The idolaters could not from finite beings and goods come to know the infinite being and good, from whom those things drew all their being and all their goodness. "They could not" (because they would not), "for their malice blinded them," as he said in chapter 2:21 — namely because they loved darkness more than light. For being given over to vanity and vain desires, they were unwilling to open their eyes to the Sun of justice, that is, to God, so as to acknowledge Him and worship Him in holiness. For that they could and should have acknowledged the Creator from creatures, he clearly asserts in verse 5. For God is His own being and the being of all other things; if therefore you recognize your own being and that of others, and are willing to raise your eyes to its Author, you will immediately know God as well, on whom your being and that of others depends more than on yourself and your own essence. For unless God continually preserved it, it would immediately collapse and return to its own nothingness. Therefore if you are asked, "Who are you?" answer with St. John the Baptist: "I am he who is not." Just as God, when asked by Moses, "Who are You, Lord?" conversely answered: "I am who I am."
Note: The proper name of God is Being, or He who is, and therefore this name was given to God by the prophets, apostles, and theologians, as well as by the philosophers. By the prophets: as by Moses, who, asking God by what name He should be called, heard from Him: "I am who I am," or "I am Jehovah," that is, He who is (Exodus 3, and 6:3 — see what was said there). Job 14:4: "Who can make clean what was conceived from unclean seed? Is it not You who alone are?" David, Psalm 102:28: "But You are always the selfsame." Jeremiah 51:19: "He who made all things, He it is, and Israel is the rod of His inheritance. The Lord of hosts is His name." St. John, Revelation 1:8: "Who is, and who was, and who is to come." Esther 14:11: "Do not deliver Your scepter, Lord," she says, "to those who are not," that is, to idols and idolaters. For God alone properly and fully is, while idols and all things rather are not than are — both because of themselves they are not, and what they are they received from God; and because the malice of sin is in a certain way below nothingness, and therefore the first author of sin, the devil, is called in Isaiah 28:15 "he who is not," and sinners are called companions of him who is not. Hence Ezekiel 28:19, speaking of the proud king of Tyre, who was a type of the devil: "You have been brought to nothing," he says, "and you shall not be forever."
Among the theologians: as St. Justin at the beginning of his Dialogue against Trypho, who defines God thus: "That which always is in the same and similar condition and state, and is the cause for all other things that they exist — that is God." St. Gregory Nazianzen, in Iambic 45: "What is God? He is," he says, "the first being of all and the supreme good. What is an angel? The first creature of God. What is a demon? One who deviates from good. What is matter? The form—"
the basis of forms. What is form? The adornment of matter. What is heaven? The boundary between things perishable and things enduring. What are the stars? Flames keeping the course of a circle. What is eternity? That which flows constantly without time. What is time? The measure of the motion that the sun makes. What is man? A creation and noble image of God. What is life? The bond of flesh and mind. What is death? The separation of both. What is the mind? An interior sight having no limit. What is the will? The movement of the mind. What is reason? That which tracks down truth. What is speech? That which expresses the same. What is free will? To wish to be moved wherever one pleases." So says Nazianzen. St. Anselm in the Proslogion, chapter 22, philosophizes more fully and profoundly about the being and essence of God; hear him: "You alone, Lord, are what You are; and You are He who is. For that which is one thing in the whole and another in its parts; and in which something is changeable, is not altogether what it is; and that which began from non-being, and can be thought not to be, and unless it subsists through another returns to non-being; and that which has a past that no longer is, and a future that is not yet — that does not exist properly and absolutely. But You are what You are, because whatever You are at any time or in any way, this You are wholly and always; and You are He who properly and simply is, because You have no past or future being, but only present being, nor can You be thought at any time not to be," etc. Hence Evagrius, cited by Socrates in Book 4 of the Tripartite History, chapter 21, says that God cannot be defined because He has no genus, nor difference, nor species, but is the fullness of being and of all genera, species, and things. The martyr Attalus, according to Eusebius in Book 6 of the History, chapter 3, when asked by a tyrant "what name God has," replied: "Those who are many are distinguished by names; but He who is one has no need of a name."
Among the philosophers: as Plato, who in the Timaeus calls God τὸ ὂν, that is, Being itself. Aristotle, in Book 8 of the Physics, names God the first being, the first cause, the first mover, who moves all other things. Hence the same Aristotle, on his deathbed, is said to have invoked God thus: "Naked I came into this world, wretchedly I lived, in doubt I die, whither I am going I know not; yet You, Being of beings, Cause of causes, have mercy on me." Thales of Miletus, when asked what was the most ancient thing in nature, answered: God, because He never began to be. The same, when asked "What is God?" answered: "That which lacks beginning and end," or "That which always is," as Laertius testifies in Book 1 of his Life. Apuleius, in his book On the World: "What is God? What," he says, "a helmsman is in a trireme, a driver in a chariot, a choirmaster in a chorus, a general in a city, a commander in an army — that is what God is in the world." Alexander the Great, when told in the temple of Ammon by a prophet that he was the son of Jupiter, said: "This is no wonder, for Jupiter is by nature the father of all, but from among them He makes the best ones peculiarly His own." Pythagoras, as the Philosopher (Aristotle) testifies in Book 1 of On the Heavens: "The number three itself," he says, "is everything: and the three itself is itself thrice," that is, "that which is in every respect." Hence some suspect that he knew the Holy Trinity, at least
through shadow and obscurely. Orpheus called God the beginning, the middle, and the end of the universe: the beginning, I say, as producing all things; the middle, as drawing produced things to Himself; and the end, as perfecting those things that return to Himself. Trismegistus, in Dialogue 5, speaking of God: "Nothing," he says, "exists in all of nature that He Himself is not. He is indeed the things that are; He is also the things that are not. Those things that are, He brought forth into light; but those things that are not, He hides within Himself." Hence Suidas asserts that Hermes, or Mercury, the wisest of the Egyptians, who was nearly a contemporary of Moses, was called Trismegistus because he spoke of the Holy Trinity by a certain divine spirit, saying: "And there was an intellectual light, and there was always a luminous mind, and a spirit containing all things. Outside of this there is no God, no angel, no other substance at all: for He is the Lord, and Father, and God, and Fountain, and Life, and Power, and Light, and Mind, and Spirit of all things, and all things are in Him and under Him." Although others maintain that by these words he merely noted the attributes of the deity. More accurately, Clement of Alexandria, in Book 6 of the Stromata, says that he was surnamed Trismegistus, that is, Thrice Greatest, because he was the greatest king, philosopher, and priest.
NOR BY ATTENDING TO THE WORKS DID THEY RECOGNIZE WHO (of what kind and how great) WAS THE ARTISAN. — That is, who created the heavens, stars, elements, and all things that are in the world from nothing, and fashioned all of them so skillfully; who arranged them in such great order and joined them in such harmony; who continually preserves, nurtures, increases, and propagates those same things — as Nazianzen beautifully teaches in Oration 34, which is the second On Theology. He aptly compares God to a harpist, skillfully playing the harp in a house, whose melody you hear from outside and whose skill you admire, but whose person you do not see. For thus God moves this world as it were a harp harmonically, and produces from the consonance of all things within it a most sweet concert, at which all are amazed and whose Author they admire, but whose Person they cannot behold.
2. BUT EITHER FIRE, OR WIND, OR THE SWIFT AIR, OR THE CIRCUIT OF THE STARS, OR THE GREAT WATER, OR THE SUN AND MOON, THEY SUPPOSED TO BE THE GODS THAT RULE THE WORLD. — The idolatry of the ancients consisted in this: that they worshipped the sun, the heaven, and other creatures in place of the Creator. The origin and reason for this was, first, that they believed nothing existed beyond this visible world, and therefore they denied that there was a God who was an invisible spirit. So Plato in the Cratylus, whom Eusebius cites in Book 3 of the Preparation, chapter 1: "It is clear," he says, "that the most ancient Greeks supposed the heavens, the stars, the sun, and the moon — which even now many barbarians worship — to be gods." Likewise, "the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit," says St. Luke in Acts 23:8. For they believed that nothing existed beyond what we see with our eyes, and that what is not visible does not exist in nature — just as atheists and gross, carnal men still think today.
The second cause was the beauty, utility, power, and efficacy of creatures — such as the sun, sky, stars, water, fire, and earth. For these allured ignorant men to worship and invoke them, because they felt they needed these things and experienced their power and aid. So Eusebius, Book 3 of the Preparation, chapter 2. In addition, the mystical theology of philosophers and the elegant fables of poets contributed to and promoted the error: they called fire Vulcan, the ethereal spirit Jupiter, the air Juno, water Tethys or Neptune, the earth Ceres, and the sun and moon Phoebus and Diana. Likewise they gave the stars the names of gods and assigned to them dominion over the world. From this arose the error that some posited and believed that heaven, others the sun, others the air, others fire, others earth, others water, others something else was the first principle of the world and of all things — as Aristotle testifies in Book 1 of the Physics. From this the same things were held to be gods and worshipped as divinities by the superstitious and ignorant common people, as St. Augustine teaches in Book 4 of The City of God, chapter 10, and Eusebius in Book 3 of the Preparation, chapter 2; hear him:
"The Egyptians say that Osiris and Isis are the sun and moon; that Jupiter is the spirit that passes through all things; Vulcan is fire; the earth is Ceres; the Ocean is moisture; and the Nile is a river, to which they attribute the generation of the gods. They called the air Minerva. Those whom they sometimes call gods — the air, I say, water, fire, earth, and spirit — they claim to pass through the whole world and to be changed into various forms of men and animals, under whose names men flourished among them: the Sun, Saturn, Ops, and moreover Jupiter, Juno, Vulcan, and Vesta. All this Manetho wrote at greater length, but Diodorus more briefly in these words: Osiris and Isis are the sun and moon according to the Egyptians, by whom, being invisibly guided through three seasons — spring, summer, and winter — the world is governed, and all things are born, nourished, and grow." So far Eusebius from Diodorus, and he confirms the same from Plutarch. He then adds from Porphyry: "They worship water and fire above all, and use them in all sacred rites, because these elements are most important for human well-being." Finally he concludes thus: "So the noble theology of the Greeks and Egyptians, which promised through the allegories of fables to lead us to higher things, led us back to bodies instead: and exhorted us to worship nothing other than fire, water, and parts of the world. How then is the Gospel of our Savior not wonderful, by which we have learned to worship the Creator of the sun and moon and the whole world with fitting faith, and to admire and adore not the elements of bodies nor any visible things, but solely the creating Intellect who is invisibly known through these things? He who penetrates all things, since He is incorporeal, is perceived by the intellect alone: indeed He is ineffable and incomprehensible. Yet He is revealed and perceived through the things He makes, produces, governs, and preserves, manifestly present to all things—"
perceptibly present, not only to celestial things but also to terrestrial ones, showing the magnificence of His works through these things which they supposed to be gods." Therefore the praises, excessive laudations, and as it were flatteries of the poets, by which they celebrated created things as divine and as gods, drove the ignorant common people to believe them to be gods and worship them, as Lactantius teaches in Book 1, chapters 10 and 11.
WIND. — That is, the subtler air, or the wind. For Seneca teaches in Book 4 of the Natural Questions, chapter 17, that the winds were worshipped as quasi-gods. Hence Aeolus was the god and ruler of the winds. Finally, Plato held that God was the spirit and soul of the world, whence Virgil:
A spirit within nourishes, and a mind infused through the members Moves the whole mass, and mingles with the great body.
And another poet:
Jupiter is whatever you see.
Therefore they worshipped the sun, moon, stars, and elements as the body and members of God. Hear St. Augustine, Book 4 of The City of God, chapter 11: "He himself is Jupiter in the ether, Juno in the air, Neptune in the sea; in the lower depths of the sea he is Salacia, on earth Pluto, in the lower earth Proserpina, in domestic hearths Vesta, in the forge of craftsmen Vulcan; in the heavenly bodies he is the sun, moon, and stars; in diviners Apollo; in merchandise Mercury; in Janus the initiator; in Terminus the terminator; Saturn in time, Mars and Bellona in wars, Liber in vineyards, Ceres in grain, Diana in forests, Minerva in intellectual pursuits."
OR THE SWIFT AIR. — In Greek, ταχινὸν ἀέρα, that is, the rapid and mobile air, which was called Juno. For from ἀὴρ, that is, air, comes Ἥρα, that is, Juno. Hence Macrobius, in Book 1 of the Dream of Scipio, chapter 17: "Juno," he says, "was surnamed the aerial one, because she was thought to be the air itself and the mistress of the air." The reason is that Anaximenes and many others held that the first principle of all things was air, just as Thales held it was water, Heraclitus fire, Democritus atoms, and Pythagoras numbers, according to Aristotle in Book 1 of the Physics.
OR THE CIRCUIT OF THE STARS. — That is, first, the stars of the zodiac, for this is the circuit and circle, the belt and girdle, as it were, of the sky. So Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius, and others. For these stars, and especially the sun traversing the zodiac, produce crops, fruits, and all things on earth. Hence the zodiac is so called from ζωή, that is, life, because by its motion it confers life on sublunary things. The principal constellations of the zodiac are twelve, which are also called signs because they bear a certain likeness to animals, about which there is the verse:
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.
Second, more plainly and fully, by the circuit of the stars understand the constellations that are composed of many individual stars, and thus constitute, as it were, a circuit of stars — or rather the star-bearing sphere, that is, the starry sky, namely the eighth heaven, that is, the firmament. For this, adorned and variegated with so many and such great stars like gems or fires, many considered to be a divine power and a god. Hence in the Scriptures it is called the host of heaven, which even the Jews themselves worshipped, as is clear from 4 Kings (2 Kings) 23:5. So St. Bonaventure, Osorius, and others.
Hence they gave the planets the names of gods: for they called the highest planet Saturn, the second Jupiter, the third Mars, the fourth Phoebus, the fifth Diana, the sixth Venus, the seventh Mercury. So St. Augustine in Book 7 of The City of God, chapters 15 and 16: "Although they want Apollo to be a diviner and physician, nevertheless, in order to place him in some part of the world, they said he was also the sun; and Diana, his twin sister, was likewise the moon, presiding over roads — hence they want her to be a virgin, because a road begets nothing. And both carry arrows because these two heavenly bodies extend their rays from the sky down to the earth. They want Vulcan to be the fire of the world, Neptune the waters of the world, Dis Pater, that is Orcus, the earthly and lowest part of the world. They set Liber and Ceres over seeds — him over the masculine, her over the feminine; or him over the liquid element, her over the dry element of seeds. And all this of course refers to the world, that is, to Jupiter, who was therefore called both progenitor and genetrix, because he sent forth all seeds from himself and received them into himself." He adds that Minerva was the highest ether, Vesta the lighter fire of the world, and Ceres the earth.
OR THE GREAT WATER. — In Greek, βίαιον ὕδωρ, that is, violent water — namely the sea agitated by waves, overflowing and overwhelming everything. Hence Thales held that water was the first principle of all things; indeed, that the heavens, birds, fish, animals, etc., were made from water or from the primordial abyss — which is the opinion of very many, as I showed at the beginning of Genesis 1. Hence also water is called in Latin aqua, as if a qua ("from which") all things come. Moreover, the Persians and Germans worshipped water under the name of Tethys or Neptune as a god, but especially the Egyptians, who worshipped their Nile as a god, since it irrigated and fertilized their fields with its flooding, as St. Athanasius testifies in his oration Against the Gentiles. Hence Claudian, Epigram 6:
Egypt, fertile without clouds, holds serene rains Alone, secure from the sky, not needing wind; She rejoices in the waters that the Nile itself carries, and overflows with them.
OR THE SUN AND MOON. — In Greek, φωστῆρας οὐρανοῦ, that is, the luminaries of heaven, of which one, the sun, presides over the day, and the other, the moon, over the night (Genesis 1). For the beauty and brilliance of these, surpassing the stars, so captivated the deranged minds of men that they thought them to be gods. Hence the Persians worshipped the sun under the name of Mithras, the Egyptians under the name of Osiris, and the moon under the name of Isis; others under the names of Phoebus and Diana; others under the names of Apollo and Lucina. Hence also Pliny, in Book 2, chapters 5 and 7, doubting about God: "If there is any God," he says, "he is none other than the sun."
RULERS OF THE WORLD. — In Greek, πρυτάνεις: this is what the chief magistrates were called at Athens, who managed civil and sacred affairs. By "rulers of the world" he therefore means the gods who governed the world, to whom the gentiles attributed supreme power, providence, and divinity — which belong to the one true God alone.
3 and 4. IF, DELIGHTED BY THEIR BEAUTY, THEY TOOK THEM FOR GODS: LET THEM KNOW HOW MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THESE IS THEIR LORD, FOR THE AUTHOR OF BEAUTY CREATED ALL THESE THINGS. OR IF THEY ADMIRED THEIR POWER AND WORKS, LET THEM UNDERSTAND FROM THESE THAT HE WHO MADE THEM IS MIGHTIER THAN THEY. — Instead of "more beautiful," the Greek has βελτίον, that is, "better." St. Cyprian, Book 3 of the Testimonies, chapter 9, has "more precious." Instead of "generator" (author), the Greek has γενεσιάρχης, that is, the author or chief of generation. Hence you may translate literally: for the genesiarcha, or author of beauty, created these things — genesiarcha meaning author, or first origin, or chief of the beauty to be generated.
The world in Greek is called κόσμος, that is, ornament or adornment, from its beauty and loveliness. Hence Lactantius, Book 1 of The Wrath of God, chapter 10: "The work of the world," he says, "than which nothing can be more orderly in arrangement, more suited to utility, more adorned in beauty, or greater in mass." See what was said on Genesis 1. But the gentiles erred in this, that they remained fixed upon the beauty of creatures and did not rise to investigate their Maker and Creator. For they could and should have known that creatures could not produce and create themselves, and therefore that they were created by another, namely by God. Hence St. Athanasius, in his book On the Incarnation: "It is wonderful," he says, "that nothing among created things went astray in understanding the Divinity, except man alone. Not the sun, not the moon, not the heaven, not the stars, not the water, not the ether change their order, but recognizing their Maker and Prince, the Reason, the Word of God, they continue in the same course in which they were created. Only men, having turned away from that good position of truth, and having fashioned things that were not, dedicated the honor and knowledge of God to demons and to men portrayed in stone."
Hence St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapter 1, says that God is beautiful, beautiful through all things, supremely beautiful, always beautiful in the same way, and that He possesses in Himself before all things the principal beauty of all that is beautiful — and therefore He is the fountain of all beauty and the cause of all beautiful things in the world. And Boethius, Book 3 of The Consolation of Philosophy, meter 9:
You draw all things from the supreme Example, Yourself most beautiful, bearing the beautiful World in Your mind, and forming it in a like image.
Hence also Plato in his second epistle to Dionysius the king calls God the cause of all beautiful things. Following Plato as usual, Philo does the same in his book On the Creation of the World. Therefore St. Augustine exclaims with great feeling in Book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 27: "Late have I loved You, Beauty so ancient and so new: late have I loved You! And behold, You were within and I was without, and I sought You elsewhere, and in my ugliness I rushed into the beautiful things that You had made." The same, in the Soliloquies, chapter 31: "I went around," he says, "seeking You through all things and abandoning myself for the sake of all, I asked the earth if it were my God, and it told me it was not, and all things in it confessed the same. I asked the sea and the depths and the creeping things in them, and they answered: We are not your God; seek Him above us. I asked the stable air, and all the air with all its inhabitants said: Anaximenes is mistaken; I am not your God. I asked the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars: Neither are we the God whom you seek, they said. And I said to all these things that stand around the doors of my flesh: Tell me about my God, since you are not He; tell me something about Him. And they all cried out with a loud voice: He made us. I then asked the great mass of the world: Tell me, are you my God or not? And it answered with a mighty voice: I am not, but through Him I am; He whom you seek in me, He made me; seek above me for Him who governs me, who made you. The questioning of creatures is a profound contemplation of them; their response is their testimony about God, because all things cry out: God made us — since, as the Apostle says in Romans 1:20: The invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made." And after some further words: "You, Lord, are the beginning and end of all things, who exist before the first ages and before all the origins of ages. You are my God and the Lord of all the good things You have created, and with You are the causes of all things that endure, and with You the immutable origins of all mutable things stand and remain, and in You the eternal reasons of all rational and irrational and temporal things live." He says the same in Book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 6, where he also adds: "Lord, I love You. You struck my heart with Your word, and I loved You. But also the heaven and the earth and all things in them — behold, from every side they tell me to love You, and they do not cease telling all men, so that they are without excuse. But more deeply will You have mercy on him on whom You have had mercy, and You will show compassion to him on whom You have been compassionate. Otherwise heaven and earth speak Your praises to the deaf."
IF THEY ADMIRED THEIR POWER AND WORKS. — In Greek, εἰ δὲ δυνάμει, καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐκπλαγέντες, that is, if they were struck by their power and efficacy, let them understand from them that He who established these mighty things is mightier than they. As if to say: If the idolaters admire the wondrous active power in the sun, heavens, stars, fire, herbs, plants, winds, storms, lightning, etc., and therefore worship them, how much more should they admire and worship the omnipotence of God, who bestowed these powers upon creatures, but in such a way that He reserved far greater powers for Himself. Hence He can also create other creatures far more efficacious and powerful than those He has already created, and He can recall and take away at will the powers He has already given to created things — as He took away from fire—
the power of burning the three faithful youths in the Babylonian furnace; He took away from the lions their ferocity so they would not harm Daniel (chapter 6); He took away from the sun, moon, and heavens their motion and course when He stopped them at the command of Joshua (chapter 10:13); He took away from the sea its continuity and channel when He divided it at the command of Moses so the Hebrews could cross dry-shod (Exodus 14). Trismegistus in the Pimander compares God to a farmer: "Behold," he says, "a farmer scattering seeds into the bosom of the earth — here wheat, there barley, elsewhere seeds of other kinds. Behold the same man replanting and pruning vines, apple trees, and fig trees. In the same way God Himself sows immortality in the heavens, change upon the earth, and throughout the whole world, life and motion." Lactantius, Book 7, chapter 3: If God made the world, He says, then He existed without the world; if He governs it, He does so as the mind governs the body — but as a master governs a house, a helmsman a ship, a charioteer a chariot; and yet they are not mixed with the things they govern.
5. FOR FROM THE GREATNESS OF THE BEAUTY AND OF THE CREATURE, THE CREATOR OF THEM MAY BE SEEN SO AS TO BE KNOWN. — The Greek texts vary here. The Vatican has: from the greatness of the beauty, or loveliness, of creatures. The Complutensian and Royal: from the greatness and beauty and creatures. St. Chrysostom, Homily 14 on Genesis: from the greatness and beauty of creatures the Creator of the universe is fittingly contemplated. St. Gregory, Book 26 of the Moralia, chapter 28: through the greatness and beauty of the creature the Creator can be intelligibly seen. Instead of "so as to be known," the Greek has ἀναλόγως, that is, analogically, or by analogy, comparison, proportion, collation, and inference.
The meaning therefore is, as if to say: From the greatness of the beauty, mass, and power of creatures, one can know analogically how great is the greatness — both of beauty and of immensity, perfection, and omnipotence — of the Creator Himself. This is so, first, because from the effect we know the cause, and "from the works the Maker is recognized," says St. Athanasius in Book 1 Against the Gentiles; second, because if there is such great beauty, quantity, perfection, and power in angels, the sun, the heavens, and other finite and limited creatures, how great must it be in the infinite Creator who is unlimited in every direction, who fills heaven and earth with His essence, presence, and power — indeed, who extends beyond the heavens through those empty spaces by His immensity into the immeasurable! For this is the analogy, the analogical comparison of creature with Creator. Hence the greatness, majesty, power, and other attributes of God are absolutely infinite, so that nothing can be added to them — to such a degree that the whole world adds not even a jot to God, but God alone is as great as God joined with the world, because God is plainly immense and infinite, and to the infinite nothing can be added. Just as the shadow of the sun adds no light to the sun, so neither does the world add any goodness or perfection to God. For the world is the shadow of God.
St. Justin explains the same thing with another simile, in his Response to the Orthodox: "Just as," he says, "the fact that one or unity is the principle of number adds nothing to its perfection — for even before it was the principle of number it was perfect, and having become the principle of number it was not increased — so God before creation was perfect, and after creation was not increased. Nothing therefore that comes from creation increases God." Hence from this maxim of the Wise Man, and from the Apostle's statement in Romans 1:20 — "For the invisible things of Him are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made" — it is certain that by the powers of nature one can know that God exists and that He is one. See the natural arguments by which Damascene proves this in Book 1 of The Faith, chapter 5; Richard of St. Victor in Books 1 and 2 On the Trinity; St. Thomas in Book 1 Against the Gentiles, chapter 43. This is what St. Dionysius says in chapter 6 of On the Divine Names: that God is perceived from the most orderly arrangement of all creatures. The same in his Epistle to Titus: The fabric of the world, he says, is the veil of divine things that are not seen. And Plato in the Symposium asserts that from the beauty of created things a certain admirable beauty of the divinity is discerned. For "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1); and "the whole earth is full of His glory" (Isaiah 6:3). Hence the Apostle, alluding to this in Romans 1:20, says: "For the invisible things of Him (God) from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made — His eternal power also and divinity." On which I annotated more extensively there. See Theodoret, Sermons 1 and 2 On Providence; St. Prosper, Book 2 of On the Calling of the Gentiles, chapter 4; SS. Ambrose and Basil in the Hexameron.
See also Job, chapters 38 and following, where God from the greatness of the earth, the sea, the clouds, rains, thunders, lightnings, Behemoth (that is, the elephant), and Leviathan (that is, the whale or—
whale, etc.) demonstrates His magnificence — indeed, represents it before our very eyes.
Moreover, St. Cyril in Book 1 Against Julian cites the following statements of gentile philosophers and poets concerning the one true God. Of Orpheus: "He is one, existing of Himself; from One all things were made, and He Himself is greater than they; nor has any mortal beheld Him, but He Himself sees all." And again further on: "He Himself is established in the airy heaven, on a golden throne; but upon the earth He walks with His feet, and extends His right hand to the ends of the Ocean on every side; for the great mountains tremble round about, and the rivers, cities, and the depth of the pleasant sea." Of Pythagoras: "God is indeed one, and He is not, as some suspect, outside the governance of the world, but in it wholly, in the whole circle, observing all generations, being the harmonious blending of all ages, and the light of His own powers and works, the beginning of all things, the light in heaven, the father of all, the mind and animation of all things, the motion of all the circles."
Of Plato: "To find the Father and Maker of this universe is a difficult task, and having found Him, to declare Him to all is impossible." Again, he says, Plato perceived "concerning the one God, that no name is fitting for Him, nor can human thought comprehend Him, but that the names which are said of Him come from posterior things and are spoken of Him improperly. If one must venture to say something about Him using the names we employ, the appellation of 'One' and 'Good' should most be attributed to Him: for the former suggests His simplicity, and through this His self-sufficiency — for He needs nothing, neither parts, nor substance, nor powers, nor efficacies, but is the Author of all these. The word 'Good' commends to us that all that is good comes from Him, while others, imitating His property as best they can (if one may so speak), receive salvation through it." Of Mercury Trismegistus, or Hermes the Thrice Greatest: "To understand God is indeed difficult, and to express Him in words is impossible, even if understanding were possible. For to signify the incorporeal by the corporeal is impossible, and to comprehend the perfect by the imperfect is not possible, and to compare the eternal with the momentary is difficult. For the one always is, while the other passes away; and the one is true, while the other is shadowed by appearance. Therefore, as much as the weaker is distant from the stronger, and the less from the better, so much also does the mortal differ from the divine and immortal. If then an incorporeal eye should go forth from the body to contemplate the beautiful, and should fly up and contemplate — seeking to behold not a figure, not a body, not a form, but rather that which can make all things, that which is quiet, tranquil, solid, unchangeable, that which is itself all things and alone, which is one, which is itself from itself, which is itself in itself, which is like itself, which is neither like anything else nor unlike itself."
And he again: "Therefore, understanding about that one and sole Good, you shall say nothing is impossible: for He Himself is every power. Do not think of Him as being in something, nor again as if outside something, for He it is who without limit is the limit of all things, and who, comprehended by none, comprehends all things in Himself. For what is the difference between bodies and incorporeal things, between the generated and the ungenerated, between things subject to necessity and that which exists freely, or between earthly things and heavenly, and between corruptible and eternal? Not that one thing exists freely and another is subject to necessity. But those things that are below are imperfect and corruptible." Of Sophocles: "Most truly one is God, who ordered the heaven, and the great earth, and the pleasant wave of the sea, and the force of the winds. But most of us mortals, erring in our hearts, set up for the ruin of our souls images of gods from stones and wood, or from wrought gold or ivory figures, and preparing sacrifices and idle festivals for them, we think we worship them." Of Xenophon: "Therefore it is manifest that He is great and powerful and shakes and sustains all things; but what His form is like remains unknown, for He does not appear to be—"
the most brilliant sun, and even this does not seem to permit itself to be gazed upon; but if anyone rashly looks at it, he is deprived of his sight."
Morally, learn here to rise from creatures to the Creator, and to behold God in each thing. For in them God expressed, or rather shadowed forth, His beauty, as the sun expresses itself in a parhelion (sun-dog). Read Bellarmine's On the Ascent of the Mind to God. Hence this world was for St. Anthony, St. Benedict, St. Bernard, and the other hermits a volume of divinity, in which they read and contemplated God and His magnificence. St. Augustine speaks beautifully on Psalm 26: "I went about," he says, "and I offered in His tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation. We offer a sacrifice of jubilation, a sacrifice of joy, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a sacrifice of gratitude, which cannot be expressed in words. But where do we offer it? In His very tabernacle, in the holy Church. What then do we offer? A most abundant and ineffable joy, with no words, with an ineffable voice. This is the sacrifice of jubilation. Whence was it sought, whence found? By going about, he says, I went about and offered in His tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation. Let your soul go about through all creation; everywhere creation will cry out to you: God made me. Whatever delights you in art commends the Artisan, and the more you survey the whole, the more your contemplation conceives praise of the Maker. You see the heavens — they are the great works of God. You see the earth — God made it, with innumerable seeds, diverse kinds of plants, a multitude of animals. Go about still from heaven to earth, leave nothing out. Everywhere all things resound with the Creator. And the very forms of creatures are like voices of those praising the Creator. But who can unfold in praises all creation? Who can worthily praise heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them?"
And after some further words: "Who can worthily praise the angels, thrones, dominations, principalities, and powers? Who can worthily praise this very thing within us that gives life, animating the body, moving the limbs, exercising the senses, and embracing so many things in memory, discerning so many things by the intellect — who can worthily praise it? But if in these creatures of God human speech so labors, what does it accomplish in regard to the Creator, except that when words fail, only jubilation remains? I went about, and I offered in His tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation." The same, in Sermon 143 On the Seasons: "Ask," he says, "the beauty of the earth; ask the beauty of the sea; ask the beauty of the expanded and diffused air; ask the beauty of the sky; ask the order of the stars; ask the sun brightening the day with its splendor; ask the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its glow; ask the animals that move in the waters, on the land, that fly in the air — hidden souls, visible bodies; the visible things that must be governed, the invisible ones that govern them. Ask all these things. They all answer you: Behold, see, we are beautiful! Their beauty is their confession.
These beautiful things that change — who made them, if not the Unchangeably Beautiful in Himself?"
What then is the world? "The world is a book of divinity," says Trismegistus, and St. Basil in Homily 2 on the Hexameron, and St. Chrysostom on Psalm 148. What is this age? "It is a mirror of divine things," says the same Trismegistus — indeed, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, in which the divine majesty shines forth. What is the world? It is a lyre or harp producing the sweet harmony of divine providence, whose musician or harpist is God — so St. Athanasius in his oration Against Idols, and St. Augustine in Book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 6. What is the globe? It is a picture most beautifully variegated (like a field that is a tapestry colored with diverse flowers and grasses), whose Apelles and painter is God — so St. Athanasius and St. Augustine in the passages already cited. What is the earth? "It is the temple of the whole world," says Trismegistus according to St. Augustine in Book 8 of The City of God, chapter 23. What is the world? It is a colossus, a basilica — indeed, a most beautiful city, whose Artisan and Founder is God (Hebrews 11:10). Hence St. Basil in his Oration on St. Julitta says: "Let the night supply you with new reasons for praying to the Divinity: when you gaze up at the sky and behold the beauty of the stars, pray to the Lord of visible things, and venerate God, the best Maker of this universe." St. Paulinus, Epistle 4 to Severus: "All things under the sun are vanity; therefore above the sun is truth. So those who stand in truth, even if they live within the world in their bodily habitation, are nevertheless above the world in their heavenly manner of life, and soaring in spirit they mount and pass beyond the choirs of stars and the poles of heaven, and dwell higher than the elements," etc. Blessed Lawrence Justinian, Sermon on St. Martin: "He looked up to heaven with his eyes, where he knew the treasure of his heart was stored: for Christ the Lord is the treasure of the humble and the riches of the poor. O Israel, how great is the house of God, and how vast is the place of His possession!" (Baruch 3:24). If you tread the earth and earthly things, you exchange a mere point for the vastness of heaven. How great then is the supreme greatness and majesty of God who presides over heaven! If you give Him your whole heart, you give all you can, but in reality you give little. Even if you gave God a thousand hearts, even if with immense spirits and seraphic ardors you served Him, even if for a thousand million years you labored with sweat for Him — what are these things to God? What compared to such an outpouring of love and magnificence?
6 and 7. BUT YET ("yet" is not in the Greek) FOR THESE THERE IS LESS BLAME. FOR THEY PERHAPS ERR, SEEKING GOD AND DESIRING TO FIND HIM. FOR BEING CONVERSANT IN HIS WORKS, THEY SEARCH, AND ARE PERSUADED THAT THE THINGS WHICH ARE SEEN ARE GOOD. — Instead of "blame," the Greek has μέμψις, that is, reproach, fault. From the first species of idolatry — of those who worshipped the sun, moon, and other creatures — he proceeds to the second species, of those who worshipped idols, that is, statues made by human art, and shows this latter to be worse and graver, so that in comparison the former seems pardonable and in a way worthy of pardon, or at least less unworthy. The meaning is, as if to say: Those who worship the sun, the heavens, or any other creature with divine honor seem less blameworthy than those who made and worshipped idols. For perhaps they erred in worshipping the sun or some other creature because, while they were seeking God and wishing to find Him, they gazed upon the sun, stars, and other created things on account of their surpassing beauty, became attached to them, and did not raise their minds to God, whom they could not see with their eyes. Therefore they attributed divinity to the sun and other things of surpassing beauty, than which they could see nothing more beautiful.
Note that the word "perhaps" does not refer precisely to "they err" — for it is certain that they err in the worship and adoration of creatures — but to the phrase "they err seeking God," as if to say: Perhaps these can to some extent be excused from the gravity of the crime of idolatry, if not entirely, at least partially, because their error was accidental. For while they were seeking God, they accidentally fell upon the beautiful creatures, and since they found and saw no other God, they took those creatures for gods. So Dionysius, Jansenius, Cantacuzenus, and others. Hence he says: "Being conversant in His works" (that is, while they occupy themselves in contemplating the works of God), "they are persuaded" — in Greek, πείθονται τῇ ὄψει, that is, they are persuaded by sight, they believe their eyes — "that the things which are seen are good" (in Greek, "beautiful"), as if to say: Deceived by the allurement of their eyes, they worshipped these beautiful creatures, since they could see nothing more beautiful, and could not behold with their eyes God who is most beautiful.
8 and 9. BUT AGAIN, NEITHER ARE THESE TO BE PARDONED. FOR IF THEY WERE ABLE TO KNOW SO MUCH AS TO BE ABLE TO ESTIMATE THE WORLD, HOW DID THEY NOT MORE EASILY FIND THE LORD THEREOF? — This is a correction: lest anyone, from the fact that he mitigated the fault of sun-worshippers, etc., should free them from blame. Therefore here he convicts their error and denies that it is worthy of pardon, as if to say: Not even by this excuse of zeal and the intention of seeking God do they deserve pardon, because from this age, that is, from the world — from the creatures of the world — they could and should easily have ascended to the Maker and recognized the Creator; they should therefore have raised the eyes of the mind to Him. Trismegistus demonstrates this with a beautiful and clear argument and simile in Dialogue 5: "For since no one would dare assert that a statue and image could come into being without an artisan and painter, shall we think that the wonderful construction of this world was established without a Maker? O blind little man! O excessively impious one! O one overwhelmed by the deep shadows of ignorance! Beware, beware, my son Titus, lest you ever deprive the work of art of its artisan."
TO ESTIMATE THE WORLD. — In Greek, στοχάσασθαι, that is: first, to observe, examine, and penetrate by your sagacity the nature of this world; second, to conjecture and arrive at by conjecture, and through effects and signs to know this age, that is, the world and the natural things that were created by God in the world; third—
to aim, to direct one's gaze at the target, and to fix the sharpness of the mind upon the nature, gifts, and properties of the world, as a marksman fixes on the target set before him. For thus Aristotle and the philosophers, with their whole mental concentration, investigated the natures of the elements, animals, and other physical things, and understood and comprehended them. But remaining fixed there, they did not raise their eyes to the Maker and Creator, God. Therefore "they became vain in their thoughts," as the Apostle says in Romans 1. The same can be seen today in many philosophers, astrologers, mathematicians, merchants, and artisans — and so the greater part of mankind clings to some creature and forgets the Creator. This is the great and supremely pitiable vanity and blindness of mortals.
10. UNHAPPY (ταλαίπωροι, that is, wretched, afflicted, calamitous) ARE THEY, AND THEIR HOPE IS AMONG THE DEAD, WHO CALLED THE WORKS OF MEN'S HANDS GODS — GOLD AND SILVER, THE INVENTION OF ART, AND THE LIKENESSES OF ANIMALS, OR A USELESS STONE, THE WORK OF AN ANCIENT HAND. — As if to say: Far more wretched and unhappy than those idolaters who worship the sun, moon, or other created things are those idolaters who worship idols and images fashioned from gold, stone, wood, or clay by an artisan through human art. For the former worship the works of God, while the latter worship the works of men — carpenters, potters, painters, etc. So St. Athanasius in his oration Against Idols, who also adds that craftsmen cannot manufacture gods, but only statues made by craft, and those lifeless, which they cannot animate or give life to, much less deify. But God can animate the lifeless, deify the human, and make gods out of men, according to Psalm 82:6: "I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." Indeed, God, uniting man to the Word in Christ, made Him truly God. "For it is exceedingly foolish to believe that gods made by men have more power with those whom God made than the very men themselves whom the same God made," says St. Augustine in Book 8 of The City of God, chapter 24.
THEIR HOPE IS AMONG THE DEAD. — In Greek: among the dead are their hopes. That is: First, as if to say: These idolaters fix their hopes on lifeless and dead idols, and invoke gods that are not living but insensible. Hence, second, Vatablus translates: their hope is dead, that is, they lack all hope, because they have fixed it on dead idols that cannot help them — indeed, cannot even hear them. Therefore their hope is hopeless, and so it is not hope but despair. Third, as if to say: They are so desperate that they seem to be virtually numbered among the damned, who have cast away all hope of salvation. Or, as if to say: Just as the dead have no hope of life, so idolaters have no hope of salvation; but as the life of the former is hopeless, so is the salvation of the latter, because they lack the faith and knowledge of God, by whom alone they can be saved. Fourth, as if to say: They hope for — that is, they expect — nothing other than death and damnation, so that they may be reckoned among the dead and the damned, for this and nothing else awaits them and—
awaits them. On the other hand, concerning the faithful and the just he said in chapter 3, verse 4: "Their hope is full of immortality." All these meanings are true and fitting, but the first seems plainer and simpler. This is what the Psalmist sings in Psalm 115: "Let those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them."
GOLD AND SILVER (that is, golden and silver images, statues fabricated from gold and silver — statues, I say, of lifeless gods, or rather of dead men) THEY CALLED GODS. — The devil fostered and aided the error and superstition, for, as St. Augustine teaches from Trismegistus in Book 7 of The City of God, chapter 6, and Book 8, chapters 13 and following, he insinuated himself into the images and spoke through them, giving responses and oracles. Hence they were consulted and worshipped by the people as divine powers. But hear Augustine: "But he (Trismegistus) asserts that visible and tangible images are, as it were, the bodies of gods; and that there are within them certain invited spirits who have some power, either for harm or for fulfilling some of the desires of those who pay them divine honors and the services of worship. Therefore he says that to join these invisible spirits by a certain art to visible things of corporeal matter, so that the images become, as it were, living bodies dedicated and subject to those spirits — this is what it means to make gods, and men received this great and wonderful power of making gods." Note here that the wisest of the gentiles, such as Trismegistus, held that idols were the bodies and members of gods — that is, of demons — and thus worshipped them, just as we worship the humanity and body of Christ. Moreover, who this Trismegistus was, how great and how ancient, the same St. Augustine explains in Book 18, chapter 39: "For as regards philosophy, which professes to teach something by which men become happy: around the time of Mercury, whom they called Trismegistus, studies of this kind flourished in those lands, long indeed before the wise men or philosophers of Greece — but nevertheless after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and indeed after Moses himself. For at the time when Moses was born, that great astrologer Atlas is found to have lived, the brother of Prometheus and the maternal grandfather of the elder Mercury, whose grandson was that Mercury called Trismegistus."
THE INVENTION OF ART — ἐπιμελέτημα, that is, a study, a contrivance, a fabrication — meaning a work devised and elaborated by ingenious art. This refers back to "gold and silver" by way of apposition, as if to say: "Gold and silver fashioned by art, etc., they called gods." Likewise St. Paul, in Acts 17:29, calls an idol "a graven thing of art and man's thought," that is, an image ingeniously devised and carved by man. St. Augustine aptly calls idols the phantasms of men, for in the book On True Religion, chapter 37, having said that some worship the sun, others the moon, others the stars, he adds: "But among these, those seem to themselves—"
the most religious, who consider the whole creation at once — that is, the entire world with everything in it, and the life by which it breathes and is animated, which some believed to be corporeal and others incorporeal. They suppose this entire totality to be one great god, of which all other things are parts. For they do not know the Author and Founder of all creation. Hence they fall headlong into images, and from the works of God they sink down to their own works, which are still visible. For there is another worse and lower worship of images, by which they worship their own phantasms, and whatever they have imagined in their erring minds with pride or vanity, they observe under the name of religion." Hence the same St. Augustine aptly says in Question 29 on Joshua that the mystical and greatest idols are the phantasms of our heart and desire — when someone pursues and worships the honors, riches, and pleasures that he imagines for himself and represents as the supreme good. These, he asserts, must plainly be demolished and eradicated.
OR A USELESS STONE (as if to say: not only golden and silver images, but also stone ones fashioned from a useless and worthless stone they called gods, as even now in Rome we see the lifelike marble faces of the ancient gods), THE WORK OF AN ANCIENT HAND. — For the antiquity of the image increased its veneration, since it was the ancient work of an ancient artisan — just as even now in Rome and elsewhere the ancient statues of the Romans are of greater value because of their age. To this was added the superstition of old women and the common people, who believed that images acquired a wonderful power after a certain period of years. On this see William of Paris, On Laws, chapter 23, and Delrio in his Disquisitions on Magic. Moreover, the first Christians from among the gentiles, out of hatred for the idolatry then raging, and to testify that they had removed themselves as far as possible from their former idols, used no images in their churches, especially not of God. Hence they were called atheists by the pagans — a calumny refuted by St. Justin, Arnobius, Athanasius, Augustine, Tertullian, and others who wrote apologies for Christians against the gentiles. But when through Constantine idolatry was abolished, so that there was no longer danger of relapse into it, the faithful introduced images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints into churches, as we see the most ancient ones in Rome, both in churches and in catacombs. The Church approved their use and defined it as holy in the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which was the Second Council of Nicaea, and at the Council of Trent, Session 25, near the beginning. For images are books for the unlearned, in which they read the deeds of Christ and the saints, so as to imitate them and venerate them.
So far about images fabricated from gold, silver, and stone; now he adds similar ones fashioned from wood, which are more common, and demonstrates their worthlessness and unworthiness. He says therefore:
11 and 12. OR IF SOME ARTISAN, A CARPENTER, HAS CUT DOWN A STRAIGHT TREE FROM THE FOREST, AND SKILLFULLY STRIPPED OFF ALL ITS BARK, AND EMPLOYING HIS ART, DILIGENTLY FASHIONED A USEFUL VESSEL FOR THE SERVICE OF LIFE, AND USED THE REMNANTS OF HIS WORK TO PREPARE FOOD.
— "Or if someone" — repeat from the preceding verse — "called the works of men's hands gods," namely images fashioned from gold, silver, and stone, and likewise from wood. He vividly depicts the vanity and vain superstition of these in this verse and the next: that a carpenter, cutting down a tree and stripping its bark, fashions from it a chest, a table, a window, or some other useful instrument for the common uses of this life; and from its remnants and scraps, he partly lights a fire to cook food, and partly makes an idol — that is, an image of a man or animal — which, once polished, he places in a temple and fastens to a wall with iron nails lest it slip and fall. In exactly the same way Baruch depicts and mocks the manufacture of idols throughout chapter 6, as do Jeremiah in chapter 10 and Isaiah in chapter 44:9 and following, whom the Wise Man here seems to be imitating. Therefore what I said there I will not repeat here, and so I will briefly touch upon what follows.
THE ARTISAN CARPENTER. — In Greek, ὑλοτόμος τέκτων, that is, a cutter of material, a carpenter or woodworker who prepares material for some work. The word ὑλοτόμος means "one who cuts wood": for the forest provides trees as material for craftsmen's works. ὕλη means forest, and from that, material. For the Latins often change the Greek aspiration into the letter S: instead of ὑπέρ they say super, instead of ὕς they say sus, instead of ὕλη they say silva. Hence ὕλη signifies any material whatsoever, but especially that which can be felled. The meaning is, as if to say: A lowly and common craftsman fabricated the idol; therefore he himself is superior to the idol, because the maker surpasses his work, and one endowed with a soul surpasses a lifeless idol. Hence the craftsman should be ashamed to worship an idol made by himself, because he knows that the idol received all its form and beauty from him. Therefore since he himself is not a god, much less is the idol a god, since he himself cannot manufacture gods.
A STRAIGHT TREE. — In Greek, εὔτακτον φυτόν, that is, a plant or tree that easily melts (for τήκω means to melt, to soften, to cause to waste away), dissolves, rots, and decays. Others read εὔτακτον as meaning easy to work, elegantly crafted. The Vatican reads εὐκίνητον, that is, easily movable, because it easily yields to the hand of the artisan — for images are not usually carved from oak. Others read εὔγνητον, that is, well-born, rightly grown and formed. Our translator aptly renders it as "straight," because things that are straight are more easily shaped; hence they are called straight-grained trees, trees whose veins and fibers run straight. The Complutensian edition translates "straight"; Vatablus, "excellent"; others, "suitable, apt, tractable"; Cantacuzenus explains it as "fit, straight, agile." Instead of "diligently," the Greek has εὐπρεπῶς, that is, fittingly, decorously, neatly, elegantly. Instead of "useful," Lyranus, Hugo, and Dionysius incorrectly read "useless."
FOR THE SERVICE OF LIFE. — In Greek, εἰς ὑπηρεσίαν ζωῆς, that is, for the ministry or service of life. Instead of "remnants," the Greek has ἀπόβλημα, that is, scraps, reje—
the Greek has ἀπόβλημα, that is, cuttings, scraps, remnants, the pieces left over from cutting wood. The Greek therefore reads: having used the scraps of the work for preparing food, he was satisfied. He exaggerates the vileness of the material of idols, since the idol is made from the same wood whose shavings or branches are used to cook the food by which he refreshes and fills himself.
HE USES — that is, he employs. Thus Cicero in the third oration against Verres, and in Book 9, Epistle 6, says that he "uses" (abuti) the time and leisure that the state granted him — that is, uses it for study. Likewise the jurists say that we "use" things that are not consumed by use, but "use up" (abuti) things that are consumed by use, such as the wood here, which is burned for cooking. Hence Cato in On Agriculture, chapter 76, says: "Until you have used up all the cheese with honey," that is, consumed it. Again, abuti in Cicero and other classical authors means to use abundantly or copiously, just as we copiously use many pieces of wood for the kitchen fire, and therefore "use them up."
13. AND THE REMAINDER OF THESE, A PIECE OF WOOD THAT IS GOOD FOR NOTHING, BEING CROOKED AND FULL OF KNOTS, HE CARVES DILIGENTLY IN HIS LEISURE TIME, AND BY THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ART HE SHAPES IT AND MAKES IT LIKE THE IMAGE OF A MAN. — Here he depicts a carpenter carving an image or idol, to show that it has nothing divine, but is a mere fabrication of the thought and work of the artisan, made according to his whim and pleasure. Almost every word carries emphasis and denotes the particular baseness of the idol. Hence he says, first: "the remainder of these" — in Greek, τὸ δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν ἀπόβλημα, that is, their rejected piece — as if to say: That which is rejected from the pieces of wood, as a scrap unfit for making a vessel and for building a fire, this he made into an image and idol. Second, "which is good for nothing," as if to say: useless for everything. Third, "crooked" — in Greek, σκολιόν, that is, twisted, oblique, distorted. Fourth, "full of knots" — in Greek, ὄζοις συμπεφυκός, that is, born with knots, knotty, branchy; for ὄζος is a knot, and from it a branch sprouts. Our translator calls the knots "vortices," or, as the Vatican text has, "vertices" (for vortex and vertex are the same), because they turn and twist upon themselves like a rotation and spinning, as water whirlpools do, according to Ovid, Book 4 of the Epistles from Pontus: The Halys, twisted with frequent eddies.
For knotless wood is smooth, beautiful, and easy to work; but knotty wood is rough, deformed, and difficult. Fifth, that he "carves it diligently in his leisure time" — in Greek, ἐν ἐπιμελείᾳ ἀργίας αὐτοῦ, that is, in the diligence, care, and industry of his leisure. Here therefore "vacancy" does not mean the hollowed-out wood, as Lyranus wants, nor empty and vain labor, as St. Bonaventure wants, nor an empty brain, that is, a madman, as Dionysius wants, but rather signifies leisure, as if to say: The wood for the idol is so rough that by the craftsman it must be carved and polished with great effort, care, and art—
but he himself, being occupied with other tasks necessary for the support of his family, carves and sculpts it only in his spare time — that is, when he is at leisure from other more pressing works. The idol therefore is a product of leisure, and consequently neglected, imperfect, and of no account. Sixth, he adds that "by the knowledge of his art he shapes it" — in Greek, ἐν ἀνομοιώματι, that is, by the experience of the intellect, meaning through the experience that, by frequent carving, he has acquired skill and the art of carving skillfully. Therefore the idol, being ignorant and lacking a mind, needs the knowledge, mind, and art of the man who carves it, and is his work and fabrication. For he gives it its form, figure, and all its adornment; but divinity, which he does not possess, he cannot bestow upon it. Seventh, "he makes it like the image of a man" — as if to say: The idol is so far from being God that it is not even a living man, but merely a dead image of a living man fashioned by a man. Therefore it is not a true but a feigned and painted god. Hence Horace, mocking it in Book 1, Satire 8:
When the craftsman was uncertain whether to make a bench or a Priapus, He preferred to make a god.
Therefore most idols bore the appearance of a man, because it is established that all the gods were originally men. For men distinguished for their bravery, command, beneficence, or service rendered to the state were enrolled among the gods by the people. Hear Tertullian, On Idolatry, chapter 15: "Let us recollect that all idolatry is worship of men, since it is established that the very gods of the nations were formerly men among their own people." St. Augustine teaches the same throughout chapter 26 of Book 8 of The City of God, and St. Cyprian in his book That Idols Are Not Gods. It is established that Saturn, Jupiter, Minerva, Mercury, Ceres, and Venus were human beings, as Tertullian shows at length in the Apology, chapter 11, where he likewise demonstrates that they were also criminals.
Moreover, the Wise Man, like the prophets, describes the vanity and worthlessness of idols at such length because originally idolatry consisted in the worship of gods in empty temples without any images of them, and at that time it was more restrained and rare. But afterward, when images of the gods were fashioned, elegantly carved, painted, and adorned with gold and gems, then these, being conspicuous to the eyes, began to be worshipped everywhere by all, and so through idols, idolatry greatly increased, as Tertullian teaches in On Idolatry, chapter 3. Hence also St. Augustine in Book 19 of The City of God, chapter 3, says that Cicero laughed at idols and idolaters; and in chapter 31, he asserts that Varro, the most learned of the Romans, held that God was not an idol but "the soul governing the world by motion and reason." And shortly after he adds about the same: "He also says that the ancient Romans worshipped the gods without any image for more than one hundred and seventy years. If this had continued, he says, the gods would be worshipped more purely. As a witness to this opinion of his, he adduces among others even the Jewish nation; nor does he hesitate—"
moreover he calls this color a "paint" (fucus), because by coating the statue of the idol with it, they covered over all its blemishes, ugly colors, and filth, as the Wise Man adds — which was to deceive the people. For fucus is the name for ointment or pigment with which women are dyed and colored, to conceal sallow pallor and bodily blemishes: hence with paint they apply a red or rosy color to the face. As the comedian says:
For those old women who continually anoint themselves with ointments, Toothless hags who conceal their bodily defects with paint.
Finally, paint can be made in any color. Vatablus translates this entire passage from verse 11 clearly and elegantly in this way: or when some carpenter, having stripped all the bark from a felled tree of excellent quality, has skillfully and beautifully fashioned from it a vessel useful for the needs of life; and having been satisfied by consuming the scraps of the work in preparing food, he then took the remaining useless and unfit stump, knotty with branches, and in his leisure time carefully carved it, and with skill shaped it when he was free, and so fashioned it in the likeness of a man, or carved the image of some vile animal. Then by smearing it with red lead and paint, he gave it a ruddy appearance and covered over every blemish in it.
to conclude that passage so as to say: Those who first set up images of the gods for the peoples both took away fear from their cities and added error, wisely judging that the gods could easily be held in contempt through the foolishness of images. And because he does not say "they handed on error" but "they added it," he means that error already existed even without images." Plutarch testifies the same in the Life of Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, who succeeded Romulus: "He," he says, "forbade the Romans to think that an image of God had the form of a man or of an animal. Nor was there among them any fabricated form of God before this; but during the first one hundred and seventy years, they built temples indeed and erected sacred huts, but dedicated no corporeal image — as if it were sacrilege to liken inferior things to superior, and as if God could be perceived in no other way than by the intellect." Clement of Alexandria teaches the same in Book 1 of the Stromata, as do Eusebius and others.
After Numa, therefore, Tarquinius Priscus, imbued at home with the vanity and foolishness of Greek and Etruscan superstitions, taught the Romans to set up images of the gods. Hence he himself built the Capitol and dedicated it to Jupiter. Indeed, the earliest pagans made the first images of the gods without the likeness of a man or animal — in rough trunks or shapeless blocks of wood, especially when they set them up to mark the boundaries of fields and territories. Hence Lucan, Book 3:
And the gloomy images of gods Lacked art, and stood shapeless on hewn trunks.
Afterward they gave the god Terminus the face of a man, but truncated — without hands, arms, feet, etc. — as can still be seen in Rome in the ancient images of Terminus. Finally, as both art and superstition grew, they painted and sculpted the gods in the full and perfect likeness of a man, and adorned them with colors, purple, golden crowns, and scepters, to make them seem venerable to the ignorant. And then idolatry so increased that idols filled even the streets, the forum, baths, stables, and houses, as Tertullian testifies in On the Spectacles, chapter 8, where he adds: "Satan and his angels have filled the whole world."
14. OR COMPARED IT TO SOME ANIMAL, COATING IT WITH RED LEAD, AND MAKING ITS SURFACE RED WITH PAINT, AND COVERING OVER EVERY BLEMISH THAT IS IN IT. — The superstition of idolatry grew to the point that they fashioned idols not in the likeness of a man, but of some animal — and that a vile and contemptible one (for this is the meaning of the Greek σκωρίοι) — such as a dog, cat, monkey, or fly, such as Beelzebub was. "Coating with red lead" — in Greek, μίλτῳ, that is, with red lead (minium), just as the ancients marked the titles of books or chapters with red color, which are therefore called rubrics. Thus the ancient idols were dyed with a red color, as if purple and fiery — for purple is the garment of kings, and fire is the sign of divinity — to signify that they were kings of the universe and hurled thunderbolts and fires.
15 and 16. AND HE MAKES FOR IT A WORTHY DWELLING, AND SETTING IT IN THE WALL AND FASTENING IT WITH IRON, LEST PERHAPS IT FALL, TAKING CARE FOR IT; KNOWING THAT IT CANNOT HELP ITSELF — FOR IT IS AN IMAGE AND HAS NEED OF HELP. — As if to say: Then for the idol, as if for a divine being, he builds a little shrine, an altar, a temple, or more precisely a small cabinet, a tabernacle, or a case in which to enclose it — as Demetrius the silversmith used to make little silver shrines for Diana (Acts 19:24). For originally there were no temples; Solomon was the first to erect a temple for the Hebrews. Indeed, Xerxes, on the advice of the Magi, burned the temples — because, as Cicero writes in Book 2 of On the Laws, the whole world was a temple, and the gods should not be enclosed in houses, but all things should be open and free for them. Therefore those about to pray would ascend high mountains. Household idols, then, they placed in the chambers of their houses, namely in household shrines or oratories (for all these things serve to demonstrate the vileness of idols), and there they set them in the wall, fastened them with nails, and secured them, making provision for them lest they fall — because they knew they could not sustain themselves but needed the help of others, since an idol is nothing other than a feeble image that requires the support and assistance of another. Jeremiah reproaches idols with the same thing in chapter 10, verse 4: "He fastened it," he says, "with nails and hammers, so that it will not come apart, etc.; they must be carried because they cannot walk." And Baruch, chapter 6, verse 26: "If they fall down," he says, "they cannot rise of themselves, nor if one sets them upright will they stand by themselves."
St. Augustine rightly says in Sermon 29 On the Words of the Lord: "A golden god," he says, "and a wooden god are unequal in value; but in having eyes and not seeing, they are equal."
17. AND ABOUT HIS SUBSTANCE, AND ABOUT HIS CHILDREN, AND—
ABOUT HIS MARRIAGE HE MAKES A VOW AND INQUIRES. HE IS NOT ASHAMED TO SPEAK TO THAT WHICH HAS NO SOUL. — In Greek: finally, for his possessions, for his marriage, and for his children, προσευχόμενος, that is, praying or making vows to it, he is not ashamed to address it in his heart. So Vatablus. Therefore "he inquires" is not in the Greek, but is understood and strengthens the force of the sentence, as if to say: What is this madness, that they make vows to a wooden and senseless idol so that they may obtain fortunate marriages, children, and possessions, and inquire of it whether they will attain these things or not? — when the lifeless idol can neither speak, nor hear, nor understand, much less prophesy. See Baruch, chapter 6, verse 33 and following. Moreover, it is well known that the Hebrews, gentiles, and Christians, when asking something from God or from idols, were accustomed to add vows to their prayers in order to obtain their request more easily. Hear Valerius Maximus, Book 1, chapter 1: "Even by ancient custom, attention is given to divine matters: when something must be commended, by prayer; when sought, by a vow; when fulfilled, by thanksgiving; when investigated, by entrails or by lots; when something must be carried out, by a solemn rite of sacrifice — by which even the portents of prodigies and lightning are addressed."
18 and 19. AND FOR HEALTH HE MAKES SUPPLICATION TO THE WEAK, AND FOR LIFE HE PRAYS TO THE DEAD, AND FOR AID HE CALLS UPON THE USELESS. AND FOR A JOURNEY HE ASKS OF ONE WHO CANNOT WALK, AND FOR GAINING AND FOR WORKING AND FOR THE SUCCESS OF ALL THINGS HE ASKS OF ONE WHO IS USELESS IN ALL THINGS. — "Weak" means not sick, but powerless and impotent, for that is what ἀσθενές means. "Dead" means destitute of soul and life. This is a catachresis: for properly speaking, one is called dead who once lived and is capable of life, but an idol is incapable of life. "Useless" — in Greek, ἀδοκιμώτατον — means most inexperienced, most ignorant, and most inept, since it could never experience anything or learn anything through experience. Petrus Nannius reads ἀπορώτατον, that is, most destitute, and utterly lacking in help and counsel, so that the whole discourse runs in antitheses, as if to say: For help he invokes one who itself needs help and, as Vatablus translates, is extremely helpless. Our translator seems to have read ἀχρεῖον, that is, useless; or ἀναπηράτον, that is, supremely blind, maimed, and crippled; or ἀπόρτιον, that is, utterly destitute of wallet and purse — that is, most poor.
AND FOR A JOURNEY HE ASKS OF ONE WHO CANNOT WALK. — Vatablus: he beseeches one who cannot take even a single step, for the sake of making a journey. As if to say: The idolater, in order to have a successful journey, invokes the idol as a guide of the journey, when it cannot even move a foot, according to Psalm 115:7: "They have feet but they shall not walk." Thus the Romans called and invoked the goddess of travel Iterduca and Domiduca; and when tired, the goddess Fessonia, as St. Augustine testifies in Book 7 of The City of God, chapter 3.
FOR GAINING AND FOR WORKING AND FOR THE SUCCESS OF ALL THINGS HE ASKS OF ONE WHO IS USELESS IN ALL THINGS. — The Greek reads clearly and elegantly: for profit, for the success of his craft, and for the dexterity and prosperous success of his hands, he asks the most sluggish of things for skill, ease of action, dexterity, power, and efficacy. For all these things are signified by εὐχείρωμα, or as others read, εὐδρανείαν, to which is beautifully opposed ἀδρανέστατον, that is, the most sluggish, most feeble, most impotent idol. Moreover, for the acquisition of wealth and profit, the gentiles invoked the god Plutus (for πλοῦτος means money), or Dis, as if "the Rich One." Thus the goddess Pecunia presided over money, Aesculanus over copper coins, Argentinus over silver — why not also Aurinus over gold? asks St. Augustine in Book 4 of The City of God, chapter 21. He also says in Book 7, chapter 12, that Jupiter himself was called Money: "For money commands all things." Again, Arnobius in Book 4 Against the Gentiles calls the Lucrii the gods set over gain. See what was said on Ecclesiastes 10:19. For work and the success of work, they invoked Mercury, Minerva, and Vulcan.
From what has been said, it is clear that Calvin errs most shamefully when he asserts in Book 1 of the Institutes, chapter 11, sections 9 and 10, that the gentiles were not so stupid as to worship stones and wood. Hence, he claims, when the Wise Man and the prophets rebuke their idols, they are rebuking what Christians now do — namely, venerating God in wood and stone, that is, in a wooden or stone image, in a carnal manner. That this is most false is clear from the entire passage, and more clearly from Baruch chapter 6, Isaiah 44, Jeremiah 10, and Psalm 115. For these prophets, at great length and with painstaking detail, drawing on the vileness of the material, the craftsmanship, the carving, etc., devote themselves entirely to removing from the ignorant people the opinion that the idol has divinity, and to persuading them that there is nothing divine, nothing of the godhead, in the idol. Hence Baruch, after each argument, repeatedly infers and concludes by repeating: "Whereby let it be known to you that they are not gods." From all this it is most clear that the gentiles worshipped the very stone and wooden idols as gods and divinities. All the Fathers who wrote against idols teach the same thing most clearly — Tertullian, St. Justin, St. Athanasius, St. Cyprian, Athenagoras, Arnobius, Minucius Felix, St. Augustine, and others, who everywhere ridicule the gentiles for worshipping stones and wood as gods. Mercury Trismegistus, the greatest and most ancient philosopher and theologian of the gentiles, teaches the same in the explicit words that I quoted from St. Augustine at verse 10.
Nor is it surprising that simple men were so foolish as to worship idols, since we know that even now such people exist in Japan and the Indies. For this error, strengthened by the usage of so many centuries, and confirmed by the oracles that demons speaking through idols gave, and by their other gestures and deceptions performed around the idol — by which they tried to persuade the people that the idols were alive, indeed divine — was passed on, as it were, from hand to hand to posterity, along with their other no less astonishing and infamous crimes, which they consequently considered permissible, as we read in Laertius, Plutarch, and others.
Note here that the shrewder and more learned gentiles, as Trismegistus asserts according to St. Augustine in Book 8 of The City of God, chapter 23, considered that "certain gods, namely idols, are made by human hands—"
and therefore there are very many of the same god, for example of Jupiter" — but these idols are the body of the god, while the god himself is a spirit enclosed in the idol as its soul. Some thought this spirit was the soul of the dead man for whom the idol was erected; others thought it was a demon, either invoked by the idol-makers or voluntarily inserting itself into human superstition and idols, as Trismegistus says in the passage cited. Others held it to be the soul of the universe, or the soul of the sun, moon, earth, etc., as Eusebius reports in Book 3 of the Preparation, chapter 3, and St. Augustine in Book 7 of The City of God, chapters 5 and following. See more in Giraldus, On the Gods of the Gentiles, chapter 1. Moreover, St. Cyprian explains by what and how great arts and actions the demons deluded the pagans so that they would be believed to be the souls of the idols, in his book On Idolatry, not far from the beginning: "These spirits," he says, "lurk under consecrated statues and images. By their breathing they inspire the breasts of seers, animate the fibers of entrails, govern the flight of birds, direct the lots, produce oracles, always mingling falsehood with truth. For they are both deceived and deceive; they disturb life, disquiet sleep, creeping even into bodies secretly, they terrify minds, distort limbs, break health, provoke diseases — in order to compel men to worship them, so that, fattened by the smoke of altars and the burning of cattle, by releasing what they had bound, they may seem to have cured. This is their remedy, when their harm ceases. Nor do they have any other goal than to call men away from God and turn them from the understanding of true religion to the superstition of themselves; since they are themselves under punishment, they seek companions in punishment — those whom they have made partakers in their crime through error."
You will object: the wiser among the gentiles acknowledged the true God and worshipped Him in the idol, just as Christians worship Him in an image; but those people are here rebuked as idolaters; therefore so too are Christians. I reply: you will hardly find anyone who worshipped the true God in an idol. For those who acknowledged the true God despised and laughed at idols — such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Lucretius. Some, however, out of fear of the people, lest they be killed (as Socrates was killed as a supposed despiser of the gods), worshipped them publicly — not willingly, but under compulsion, while privately and secretly they scorned them and worshipped the one God, Creator of all. But even granting that some worshipped the true God in an idol, they erred in that they thought the idol was the body of God, as I have already said, and that God took pleasure in it and enclosed and hid Himself in it; or at least that God was similar to the idol, or had similar limbs — human, bovine, or serpentine. For this is why they gave these limbs to the idol, different ones to different idols, and consequently attributed to the true God a body, limbs, and other things that are false. And thus they consequently worshipped not the true God, who is a pure spirit, but a corporeal and false god. Finally, they supposed the idol to be something of God, and therefore to possess something of divine power, something of divinity, something of the godhead, whatever that might be — for what exactly it was—
in particular they could neither express, nor understand, nor grasp.
Christians have nothing of this kind. For in an image, even of God, they place no divine power, no spirit or life, no corporeal likeness, but only the bare representation of God, and that an analogical one — insofar as a corporeal thing and image can represent a spiritual reality. This is the proper and bare function of an image: to represent its prototype. And therefore theologians rightly teach, following St. Basil and St. John Damascene, that the honor paid to an image is by its nature referred to the prototype. Moreover, images of visible men — namely of Christ and the saints — are frequent among Christians; but images of the invisible God are rare, lest the ignorant common people think that God has a body similar to the image. Therefore God should not be depicted except in the mode and form in which He is read in Sacred Scripture to have appeared to the saints — to Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets. And to the unlearned it must be explained what that form signifies: namely that God is incorporeal and lacks all form and figure, as the Seventh Council teaches in its Acts, Session 3 and following.
Finally, if any of the wise worshipped the true God in an idol as in a mere image, they are not properly censured here, and they did not sin by formal and properly so-called idolatry. But they did sin, both by the sin of scandal — because by their example they confirmed the people in their idolatry — and by the sin of professing a false faith and idolatry. For by participating with idolaters in the common and public worship of the idol, they outwardly professed faith in and worship of the idol, even though inwardly they adored not the idol but God in the idol, as in an image. Add that the idol is the image not of the true God but of a false one. For it is not lawful for anyone to give the true God an image that he himself has invented, but only one that God and the Church approve. Therefore whoever worships an idol worships not the true God but a false one — the one, namely, that the idol-makers and idolaters fashioned and formed for themselves, neglecting the true God, Creator of heaven and earth. Whoever therefore worships an idol worships a false god and is an idolater. Hence most idols are so deformed and horrible that by their very form and appearance they seem to be images of demons. For they are black like Ethiopians, with bovine heads, fierce and menacing faces, huge and glittering eyes, bull-like foreheads, and sometimes horned, with bragging noses, thick piggish lips. The mouth-opening is drawn wide like a snarling dog; the mouth is gaping and yawning like a wolf's, and at the same time huge and hollow like a furnace — so that the demon might more easily form articulate sounds in it, by which to give responses and oracles. Many such we see in Rome, especially in the Vatican.
Mystically, apply all these things to heresy and to every desire. For to the heretic the idol is heresy; to the proud man, honor; to the miser, gold; to the glutton, the belly; to the lustful, sensual pleasure; to the slothful, sleep; to the wrathful, vengeance; to the envious, spite — as St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and the other doctors teach, and indeed St. Paul in Philippians 3:19 and Ephesians 5:5.