[1] Come then, clear yourself of all the prejudice
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which occupies your mind, and throw aside the custom which deceives you, and become as it were a new man from the beginning, as one, as you yourself also admitted, who is about to listen to a new story. Look, not only with your eyes, but also with your intelligence, what substance or form they chance to have whom you call gods and regard as such.
[2] Is not one a stone, like that on which we walk, another bronze, no better than the vessels which have been forged for our use, another wood already rotten, another silver, needing a man to guard it against theft, another iron, eaten by rust, another earthenware, not a whit more comely than that which is supplied for the most ordinary service?
[3] Are not all these of perishable material? Were they not forged by iron and fire? Did not the wood-carver make one, the brass-founder another, the silversmith another, the potter another. Before they were moulded by their arts, into the shapes which they have, was it not possible and does it not still remain possible, for each of them to have been given a different shape? Might not vessels made out of the same material, if they met with the same artificers, be still made similar to such as they?
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[4] Again, would it not be possible, for these, which are now worshipped by you, to be made by men into vessels like any others? Are they not all dumb? Are they not blind? Are they not without souls? Are they not without feeling? Are they not without movement? Are not they all rotting? Are they not all decaying?
[5] Do you call these things gods? Are these what you serve? Are these what you worship and in the end become like them?
[6] Is this the reason why you hate the Christians—that they do not think that these are gods?
[7] For is it not you, who, though you think and believe that you are praising the gods, are much more despising them? Are you not much rather mocking and insulting them, when you worship those of stone and earthenware without guarding them; but lock up at night and in the day-time place guards over those of silver and gold, that they be not stolen away.
[8] And, if they have powers of perception, by the honours which you think to pay them you are rather punishing them, and, if they are without perception, you are refuting them by worshipping them with blood and burnt fat.
[9] Let one of you suffer these things, let him endure that it should be done to him. Why, there is not a single man who would willingly endure this punishment, for he has perception and reason. But the stone endures, for it has no perception. Do you not then refute its perception?
[10] I could say much more as to the refusal of Christians to serve such gods, but if any one find these arguments insufficient, I think it useless to say more.
The Epistle to Diogentus. . . 1913.
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