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| Chapter XII.
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Chapter XII.
But I pass from these remarks, for I know and I am
going to show what your gods are not, by showing what they are. In
reference, then, to these, I see only names of dead men of ancient
times; I hear fabulous stories; I recognize sacred rites founded on
mere myths. As to the actual images, I regard them as simply
pieces of matter akin to the vessels and utensils in common use among
us, or even undergoing in their consecration a hapless change from
these useful articles at the hands of reckless art, which in the
transforming process treats them with utter contempt, nay, in the very
act commits sacrilege; so that it might be no slight solace to us in
all our punishments, suffering as we do because of these same gods,
that in their making they suffer as we do themselves. You put
Christians on crosses and stakes:89
| 89 [Inconsistent this
with Gibbon’s minimizing theory of the number of the
Christian martyrs.] Elucidation VIII. | what image is not
formed from the clay in the first instance, set on cross and
stake? The body of your god is first consecrated on the gibbet.
You tear the sides of Christians with your claws; but in the case of
your own gods, axes, and planes, and rasps are put to work more
vigorously on every member of the body. We lay our heads upon the
block; before the lead, and the glue, and the nails are put in
requisition, your deities are headless. We are cast to the wild beasts,
while you attach them to Bacchus, and Cybele, and Cælestis. We are
burned in the flames; so, too, are they in their original lump. We are
condemned to the mines; from these your gods originate. We are banished
to islands; in islands it is a common thing for your gods to have their
birth or die. If it is in this way a deity is made, it will follow that
as many as are punished are deified, and tortures will have to be
declared divinities. But plain it is these objects of your worship have
no sense of the injuries and disgraces of their consecrating, as they
are equally unconscious of the honours paid to them. O impious words! O
blasphemous reproaches! Gnash your teeth upon us—foam with
maddened rage against us—ye are the persons, no doubt, who
censured a certain Seneca speaking of your superstition at much greater
length and far more sharply! In a word, if we refuse our homage to
statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead
originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well
acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty, that we have
rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made
out to injure those who we
are certain are nonentities. What does not exist, is in its
nonexistence secure from suffering.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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