...the earth; statues resemble life, and on this account they are similar to animals. Prayers imitate that which is intellectual; but characters, superior ineffable powers. Herbs and stones resemble matter; and animals which are sacrificed, the irrational life of our souls. But, from all these, nothing happens to the gods beyond what they already possess; for what accession can be made to a divine nature? But a conjunction with our souls and the gods is by these means produced. {67} be corruptible, have granted that it should yield and be subservient to nature, but afterwards have punished those by whom it was destroyed; which clearly happened to be the case with all the sacrilegious of our time. "Let no one, therefore, deceive us by words, nor disturb us with respect to providential interference. For as to the prophets of the Jews, who reproach us with things of this kind, what will they say of their own temple, which has been thrice destroyed, but has not been since, even to the present time, rebuilt? I do not, however, say this as reproaching them; for I have thought of rebuilding it, after so long a period, in honour of the divinity who is invoked in it. But I have mentioned this, being willing to show, that it is not possible for any thing human to be incorruptible; and that the prophets who wrote things of this kind were delirious, and the associates of stupid old women. Nothing, however, hinders, I think, but that God may be great, and yet he may not have worthy interpreters [of his will]. But this is because they have not delivered their soul to be purified by the liberal disciplines; nor their eyes, which are profoundly closed, to be opened; nor the darkness which oppresses them to be purged away. Hence, like men who survey a great light through thick darkness, {68} neither see purely nor genuinely, and in consequence of this do not conceive it to be a pure light, but a fire, and likewise perceiving nothing of all that surrounds it, they loudly exclaim, _Be seized with horror, be afraid, fire, flame, death, a knife, a two-edged sword_; expressing by many names the one noxious power of fire. Of these men, however, it is better peculiarly to observe how much inferior their teachers of the words of God are to our poets." AN EDICT, FORBIDDING THE CHRISTIANS TO TEACH THE LIFE-RATURE OF THE HEATHENS.