Chapter 7.—The Useless Bondage of the Gentiles.

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,150    Claudian. 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.151    Luke xv. 16.  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.

CAPUT VII. Servitus gentium sub signis inutilibus.

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Et si quando aliqui eorum illa tanquam signa interpretari conabantur, ad creaturam colendam venerandamque referebant. Quid enim mihi prodest simulacrum, verbi gratia, Neptuni non ipsum habendum Deum, sed eo significari universum mare, vel etiam omnes aquas caeteras, quae fontibus proruunt? sicut a quodam poeta illorum describitur, si bene recolo, ita dicente: Tu, Neptune pater, cui tempora cana crepanti Cincta salo resonant, magnus cui perpete mento Profluit oceanus, et flumina crinibus errant.Haec siliqua intra dulce tectorium sonantes lapillos quatit^a non est autem hominum, sed porcorum cibus. Novit quid dicam, qui Evangelium novit (Luc. XV, 16). Quid ergo mihi prodest quod Neptuni simulacrum ad illam significationem refertur, nisi forte ut neutrum colam? tam enim mihi statua quaelibet, quam mare universum, non est Deus. Fateor tamen altius demersos esse, qui opera hominum deos putant, quam qui opera Dei; sed nobis unus diligendus et colendus Deus praecipitur (Deut. VI, 5), qui fecit haec omnia, quorum illi simulacra venerantur, vel tanquam deos, vel tanquam signa et imagines deorum. Si ergo signum utiliter institutum pro ipsa re sequi, cui significandae institutum est, carnalis est servitus; quanto magis inutilium rerum signa instituta pro rebus accipere? Quae si retuleris ad ea ipsa quae his significantur, eisque colendis animum obligaveris, nihilominus servili carnalique onere atque velamine non carebis.