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| Chapter XIII.
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Chapter
XIII.
We have, I think, faithfully carried out our plan
of showing in how many different ways the sin of idolatry clings to the
shows, in respect of their origins, their titles, their equipments,
their places of celebration, their arts; and we may hold it as a thing
beyond all doubt, that for us who have twice360
| 360 [Bunsen,
Hippol. Vol. III. pp. 20–22.] |
renounced all idols, they are utterly unsuitable. “Not that an
idol is anything,”361
as the apostle says,
but that the homage they render is to demons, who are the real
occupants of these consecrated images, whether of dead men or (as they
think) of gods. On this account, therefore, because they have a common
source—for their dead and their deities are one—we abstain
from both idolatries. Nor do we dislike the temples less than the
monuments: we have nothing to do with either altar, we adore neither
image; we do not offer sacrifices to the gods, and we make no funeral
oblations to the departed; nay, we do not partake of what is offered
either in the one case or the other, for we cannot partake of
God’s feast and the feast of devils.362
If,
then, we keep throat and belly free from such defilements, how much
more do we withhold our nobler parts, our ears and eyes, from the
idolatrous and funereal enjoyments, which are not passed through the
body, but are digested in the very spirit and soul, whose purity, much
more than that of our bodily organs, God has a right to claim from
us.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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