Condemn idols, openly denouncing their error. Indeed, do not even consider them to be dead, because they were never alive. Teach clearly everywhere and to all that these are vain and foolish things. Not existing and never having existed, there is no possibility of their being what they are said to be. They are the products of wicked demons and of the human mind full of impulses to pleasure, since each of us is led to make his own passion an object of veneration. Thus in the beginning idolatry was born of the wicked work of demons and by human conception, through a commingling that was called the first fornication. At first they designed the figures of the idols, then they began to give gods to their own children as objects of veneration, made of various materials according to the art that each one possessed for providing for his needs with his own hands: the potter with clay, the carpenter with wood, the goldsmith with gold, the silversmith with silver.

Human beings seek purification, but the devil, proud spirit, seeing that they sought this out of pride and boasted of it, anticipated them and presented himself as a mediator, capable of giving a semblance of purity to their souls. In this, hinting at his pride, he led people to think that he was necessary, that is, to show them that a soul desirous to reach God could purify itself through recourse to magic arts. He thus instituted in the temples those sacrilegious rites that assure purification to those who perform them. Many of those images were in fact suggested, as the Scripture says, by the desire to honor certain people held to be great, people not present or dead people.

Unquestionably, at the time when the early Israelites fell into sin, religion languished. Judah made for themselves statues in Jerusalem, as well as in that part that came to be called Israel, in Samaria.^[1] But even now, if one considers the mass of sinners taken together, it would not be hard to say that everyone who, serving sin, makes a god out of what seems good to him—making a statue, casting the work of an artisan, setting it up in secret—is under the curse. It is precisely in the secret of the heart that we fabricate many idols when we sin. Therefore the Word admonishes us to do penance and to cry out in lamentation over the statues and the idols that are in Jerusalem and in Samaria.^[2] Truly, if we who desire to be of the church commit sin, we fabricate statues in Jerusalem. If those who are outside of the church sin, as heretics, they make idols in Samaria. Nevertheless God, in conformity with his goodness, calls all to repentance, saying, Cry out in lamentation, statues, in Jerusalem and in Samaria, since as I have acted toward Samaria and the works of their hands, so also will I act toward Jerusalem and its idols.^[3] The threat will be carried out toward those who are in the church just as it was with the Samaritans.

Some attempt to apply to incorporeal and spiritual beings what they have perceived of corporeal beings through sensible experience or what they have learned about them thanks to the very nature of human intelligence, to keen reflection and with the aid of science. They want to measure and represent the former based on the latter. Others have an idea about God, if you can call this having an idea, consistent with the nature and affections of the human soul. From this error it follows that they discuss God based on incorrect and false principles. There are still others who attempt to transcend the created universe, which is obviously changeable, and to raise their vision to that unchanging being that is God. But, weighed down by their mortal nature and wanting to appear wise in what they do not know, and incapable of knowing what they want to know,^[1] they insist too boldly on conjectures. They thus preclude the ways of understanding, preferring to persist in their mistaken opinions rather than changing the opinion they once defended. This is the true evil of the three categories of persons we have just spoken of: those who think of God after the manner of bodily beings, those who conceive of him in a way consistent with spiritual creatures, like the soul, and finally those who, though keeping well away from corporeal and spiritual things, thought erroneously about God, distancing themselves even more from the truth in that their idea of God is drawn neither from sensible experience, nor from spiritual creatures nor from the Creator himself.