Exhortation to the Greeks 4.62

“Blessed,” then, in a word, are all those alone, with one accord, as the Sibyl says, “who, when they see them, will reject all temples and altars, vain foundations of dumb stones, and stone xoana and statues made by hands, defiled with the blood of living creatures and with sacrifices of four-footed and two-footed beasts, of birds, and slaughterings of wild animals.” Indeed, we are openly forbidden to practice a deceptive art. “For you shall not make,” says the prophet, “the likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth below.” Could we still suppose the Demeter and Kore and the mystic Iacchus of Praxiteles to be gods, or the works of Lysippus, or the hands of Apelles, which have clothed matter with the form of divine glory? But while you take pains that the statue may be made as beautiful as possible, you give no thought that you yourselves may not, through your senselessness, be made like the statues. Very clearly and concisely the prophetic word convicts this custom: “All the gods of the nations are images of daemons; but God made the heavens …”