That Idols Are Not Gods

Contents

1. 1The gods of the pagans were once kings, honored after death with images and rites that later generations turned into worship.
2. 2The myths themselves show that the gods were mortals who died, served, fled, and were buried, like Jupiter, Saturn, and Janus.
3. 3Worship differs from nation to nation because each honors its own ancestors, as Alexander the Great learned; and if gods were born once, why no longer?
4. 4Rome's own gods are deified men and vices, and the foreign gods it adopted could not even protect their own peoples.
5. 5Empires rise and fall by the turn of times, not by piety; Rome began in crime, and Roman history shows that auspices neither saved the pious nor hindered the one who scorned them.
6. 6Behind idolatry are fallen spirits, the demons known even to poets, Socrates, and the magi; yet Ostanes, Plato, and Hermes Trismegistus confess one God.
7. 7Demons hide in idols, work oracles and diseases to win worship, but flee when Christians adjure them by the true God; they stir up hatred of Christians.
8. 8There is one God, as shared rule among men always ends in conflict and nature itself has single rulers.
9. 9God is invisible, incomprehensible, needs no temple or name, and is confessed even in the ordinary speech of the common people.
10. 10The Jews once had God's favor but lost it through disobedience, as their dispersion shows.
11. 11God foretold a more faithful people at the end of the age; his Word and Son became incarnate of a virgin so that man might become what Christ is.
12. 12The prophets foretold two comings of Christ, in humility and in power; the Jews, blinded by their sins, recognized only the second.
13. 13Christ's miracles fulfilled prophecy, but the Jewish leaders, thinking him a mere man and a magician, handed him to Pilate and demanded his death.
14. 14As foretold, Christ died by his own will, rose on the third day, stayed forty days with his disciples, ascended, and will return as judge, while the disciples spread his teaching.
15. 15Christians confirm their confession of Christ by suffering; they follow him as their leader and will become what he is.