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83

But the sandals of each of us have a difference. For each one has shod himself with his own action. And henceforth, each one obeying you, the disciples and good shepherds, he who had shod himself with idolatry, unloosed it by your counsel, another unloosed adultery, 102.4 another fornication, another theft, and another greed. Not only that, but also renouncing hateful speech and shameful words, with blessed hopes "under the mighty hand" of the good shepherd, through you, the good disciples, each one gives himself to be tended; 102.5 for each one will certainly abstain from error. And you set the truth before their eyes, by disfiguring idols and openly proclaiming the error concerning them, for you do not consider them dead, since they never lived, but reasonably teaching everyone 102.6 always that they are empty and vain and non-existent. For they never were, that they might be something; but they are wicked demons, a product of the human mind, which strengthened the occasions for pleasures; and from this, each person's own passion has been sanctioned 102.7 and dared to become an object of worship. For as soon as this was first introduced among men through the wickedness of demons, this was declared "the first fornication" and the idols were prefigured in shadowy outlines. Then each one delivered his own craft, which he had in his hands, through which he had his prosperity, to his own children as an object of worship, and through the material of their own craftsmanship they fashioned gods, and a potter from clay, a carpenter from wood, a goldsmith from gold and a silversmith likewise. 103.1 Yet again, each one depicted his own passion in visible forms before his own eyes, the bloodthirsty man saying it was Ares, the adulterer or adulteress, the common Aphrodite, and the ty103.2 rant, a winged Nike. For one who was squalid and gaping for the necessities of life would paint the image of Kronos, while one who was effeminate would paint Cybele and Rhea on account of the fluidity, I suppose, of the promiscuity of bodies. 103.3 And another, a male or female wanderer, prefigured Artemis the huntress, and the drunken Dionysus and the much-toiling Heracles, and a promiscuous person, Zeus and 103.4 Apollo. And why should I speak of the multitudes, when there are countless passions among men? But more than all, the Egyptians, having gone astray, not only venerated their own passions, but also birds and quadrupeds, land and water animals, and certain untamed beasts, and those that had been given over to them as slaves 103.5 by the holy God in their order, they "exchanged"; and being beast-like in their mind, they are exceedingly impious, deifying the animals among them and not being ashamed, the dog, the barking one; the cat, the reptile-eater; the goat, the licentious one; the sheep, the bleating one; the crocodile, the many-cleft and most unsmiling one; the ibis, the venom-eating one; and the kite and the hawk and the raven, the most slavish things; and the serpent, the crooked and 103.6 most unpleasant one. And in a word, O the great shame of those who neither perceive their own refutation with their sight, nor receive perception with their hearing, nor understand with their mind * the things that are done vainly among them. 103.7 For they are struck by an evil fate, neither being enlightened by their own philosophers, nor becoming fellow spectators with the encyclopedists 103.8 of the truth. For do they not hear of Diagoras, who, because of a lack of firewood, burned his own wooden Heracles and said to it mockingly: "Come now, Heracles, come and perform your thirteenth labor, to boil the stew for us"; which indeed he took and chopped up, laughing at his own god as non-existent, and joking, he fed himself on the meal set before him. 104.1 And another, Heraclitus, says to the Egyptians: if they are gods, why do you lament them?