On the Vanity of Idols: Showing that the Idols are Not Gods, and that God is One, and that Through Christ Salvation is Given to Believers.1
Argument.--This Heading Embraces the Three Leading Divisions of This Treatise. The Writer First of All Shows that They in Whose Honour Temples Were Founded, Statues Modelled, Victims Sacrificed, and Festal Days Celebrated, Were Kings and Men and Not Gods; And Therefore that Their Worship Could Be of No Avail Either to Strangers or to Romans, and that the Power of the Roman Empire Was to Attributed to Fate Rather Than to Them, Inasmuch as It Had Arisen by a Certain Good Fortune, and Was Ashamed of Its Own Origin. 2
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[Written a.d. 247. Compare vol. ii. pp. 79, 136, 184, etc.] ↩
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Moreover, that it was manifest from their deceitful results, that nothing could be referred to auspices or auguries; nay, even those who acknowledged both one God and the demons, allowed that these illusions were the work of the demons, according to the testimony of the poets themselves, and Socrates, Plato, Trismegistus, and Hostanes. The second point, that God is one, he makes evident in a few words, as well from the greater dignity of a monarchy than of other forms of government, as from the very expressions of the heathen and of the common people--"O God!" and the like. Finally, he treats of Christ more at large, from the Jewish prophets and from the evangelical history. ↩
