Our God is good, because love is ineffable. He is true because he deceives no one, and he is not deceived by anyone. He is patient, ordering all with mercy. In his goodness he waits patiently for us to turn to the good, because he wants no one to perish but all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.^[1] It is he who says through the prophet, I do not delight in the death of the wicked.^[2] If we sin, we cannot flee from his hand, since we are his creatures. If we cease from sin and persist in good works, we will receive a sure reward from him in whom the essence of every good act remains whole and entire. He knows everyone, and no secret is hidden from him.^[3]

Not only those who fabricate idols are criminals and traitors, but also those who love and worship them, putting their hope in them, since not only those who do evil deserve death but also those who agree with them.^[1] The psalmist shows the condition of those who put their hope in idols, The idols of the nations are of silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths and do not speak, eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear, noses and do not smell. They have hands and do not feel, feet and do not walk. No sounds issue from their throats. Those who make them and trust in them will be like them.^[2] Indeed, with wicked hands a mortal shapes something dead, and a fool worships what is beyond foolish. Speaking allegorically, this treats first of heretics, who devise and give shape to perverse opinions, while those who love and worship them are their followers and disciples. And all of them are condemned and destined to be lost. In fact, they will all be amazed and confused together.^[3] The Lord will disperse the one who has acted thusly, the master and his disciple.^[4] Woe to the godless! He will be repaid according to the misdeeds of his hands.^[5]

Perhaps someone among people, having little discernment and lacking in wisdom, might be able to convince them that the garment of the soul, that is, this body of flesh generated by human beings, is formed on its own impetus, outside of God’s decision. He will certainly not be believed if he teaches that the substance of the soul is sown together with the mortal body. In fact, only the Almighty breathes into human beings what is immortal and what does not decay, since he alone is Creator of all invisible and imperishable things. It says, He breathed on his face a spirit of life, and the man became a living being.^[1] Moreover, the Word, accusing precisely those artists who, to people’s hurt, make statues of human features while not acknowledging the Creator, says in Wisdom, full of virtue, Their heart is ashes, their wisdom more vain than the earth and their life more vile than mud, because they did not recognize the One who made them, who inspired in them the soul that acts and blew into them the spirit of life. The Creator of all people is therefore God. For this reason, according to the saying of the apostle, He wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.^[2]

And they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of the image of corruptible human beings.^[1] Their heart was darkened to such a degree that they transferred the majesty of the invisible God, whom they knew from these works, not to human beings but, a worse and unpardonable crime, to the likeness of human beings. They thus call the image of the corruptible human being—the likeness of a person—god. In this way they attribute the glory that belongs to God to images of dead people,^[2] to whom they would not dare to give this name while they were alive. What dullness, what foolishness, calling themselves wise to their own condemnation. In their eyes, the image is more powerful than truth, and the dead are better than the living! Indeed, separating themselves from the living God, they serve the dead. In this category are those of whom it is written in the Wisdom of Solomon, The dead person forms a dead work with his wicked hands. The Wisdom of Solomon says this about this kind of person.

You say that your god lies, but that that object that you have made convinces you of the truth. By the fact, however, that it convinces you of the truth, it does not follow that it is superior to you. Even if you say what is false and he what is true, even if you say that it is a god and he a piece of wood, it is not for that reason superior to you. You have no reason, therefore, to worship it, almost as though it were superior to you. You in fact have sensible faculties, whereas he does not. You hear, whereas he does not hear. You see, whereas he does not see. You walk, whereas he does not walk. You live, whereas of him, I cannot even say that he is dead, since he has never been alive. You, therefore, are superior to the image you have made. Well then, worship one who is superior to you, that is, the One who created you! It would be an insult to you if someone considered you as equal to that object you have made. You ask what the one you worship is like? If someone were to say to you out of ill will, If only you were like that thing there, you would be beside yourself with rage. And yet you adore what you would abhor to be, and adoring it you become in some way similar to that object, not, of course, changing into wood and ceasing to be a person but rendering your interior person almost similar to the bodily effigy you have made.

Paganism was so disgusting that it not only worshiped as gods the image of human beings shaped in insensible material, but it also gave perverse cult to the images of other animals, being entirely without discretion in this regard. Indeed, according to the sense of the truth, the living are prior to the dead, and sensible things prior to inanimate and rational animals prior to the other animals. But it stands to reason that someone who ignored the Creator would be unable to adequately distinguish his creatures. He who neglected to bear within himself the praise and blessing of God showed himself capable of erring with respect to the nature and differences between animals.