necessary that our worship of the gods should be performed in a corporeal manner; but they are incorporeal. And they, indeed, have exhibited to us as the first of statues, that which ranks as the second genus of gods from the first, and which circularly revolves round the whole of heaven*. Since, however, a corporeal worship cannot even be paid to these, because they are naturally unindigent, a third kind of statues was devised in the earth, by the worship of which we render the gods propitious to us. For as those who reverence the images of kings, who are not in want of any such reverence, at the same time attract to themselves their benevolence; thus, also, those who venerate the statues of the gods, who are not in want of any thing, persuade the gods by this veneration to assist and be favourable to them. For alacrity in the performance of things in our power is a document of true sanctity; and it is very evident that he who accomplishes the former, will in a greater degree possess the latter. But he who despises things in his power, and afterwards pretends to desire impossibilities, evidently does not pursue the * Meaning those divine bodies the celestial orbs, which in consequence of participating a divine life from the incorporeal powers from which they are suspended, may be very properly called secondary gods. {64} latter, but overlooks the former. For though divinity is not in want of any thing, it does not follow that on this account nothing is to be offered to him. For neither is he in want of celebration through the ministry of _words_. What then? Is it, therefore, reasonable that he should also be deprived of this? By no means. Neither, therefore, is he to be deprived of the honour which is paid him through _works_; which honour has been legally established, not for three or for three thousand years, but in all preceding ages, among all nations of the earth. "But [the Galilaeans will say], O! you who have admitted into your soul every multitude of daemons, whom, though according to you they are formless and unfigured, you have fashioned in a corporeal resemblance, it is not fit that honour should be paid to divinity through such works. How, then, do we not consider as wood and stones those statues which are fashioned by the hands of men? O more stupid than even stones themselves! Do you fancy that all men are to be drawn by the nose as you are drawn by execrable daemonss, so as to think that the artificial resemblances of the gods are the gods themselves? Looking, therefore, to the resemblances of the gods, we do not think them to be either stones or wood; for neither do we {65}