Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a commentator, observes that Baruch predicted this adventure. "They became what the workmen chose to make them:" but might not this be observed of all statues? Had Baruch a visionary anticipation of the "Satires of Horace"? A block of marble may as well be hewn into a cistern, as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter which composed the cherubim of the Holy of Holies might have been equally appropriated to the vilest functions. Is a throne or altar the less revered because it might have been formed into a kitchen table? Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry; their testimony amounts to the express contrary. "It is not the workman," says Martial, "who makes the gods, but he who prays to them." _Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus_ _Non facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit._ "It is Jove whom we adore in the image of Jove," writes Ovid: "_Colitur pro Jove, forma Jovis_." "The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms," observes Statius, "and not images in the form of them:" _Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo._ _Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet._ Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God: "_Estne Dei, sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer?_" A volume might be filled with passages asserting idols to be images alone. There remains but the case in which statues became oracles; notions that might have led to an opinion that there was something divine about them. The predominant sentiment, however, was that the gods had chosen to visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals, and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on the mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?