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And if ever any of them endeavored to make it out that their idols were
only signs, yet still they used them in reference to the worship and
adoration of the creature. What difference does it make to me, for
instance, that the image of Neptune is not itself to be considered a
god, but only as representing the wide ocean, and all the other waters
besides that spring out of fountains? As it is described by a poet of
theirs, who says, if I recollect aright, "Thou, Father
Neptune, whose hoary temples are wreathed with the resounding sea,
whose beard is the mighty ocean flowing forth unceasingly, and whose
hair is the winding rivers." This husk shakes its rattling stones
within a sweet covering, and yet it is not food for men, but for
swine. He who knows the gospel knows what I mean. What profit is it
to me, then, that the image of Neptune is used with a reference to
this explanation of it, unless indeed the result be that I worship
neither? For any statue you like to take is as much god to me as the
wide ocean. I grant, however, that they who make gods of the works
of man have sunk lower than they who make gods of the works of God.
But the command is that we should love and serve the One God, who is
the Maker of all those things, the images of which are worshipped by
the heathen either as gods, or as signs and representations of gods.
If, then, to take a sign which has been established for a useful end
instead of the thing itself which it was designed to signify, is
bondage to the flesh, how much more so is it to take signs intended to
represent useless things for the things themselves! For even if you go
back to the very things signified by such signs, and engage your mind
in the worship of these, you will not be anything the more free from
the burden and the livery of bondage to the flesh.
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