Chapter XXXIV.—Whence men attributed to
God human form.
And if
any person investigates the subject of images, and inquires on what
ground those who first fashioned your gods conceived that they had the
forms of men, he will find that this also was derived from the divine
history. For seeing that Moses history, speaking in the person of God,
says, “Let Us make man in our image and likeness,” these
persons, under the impression that this meant that men were like God in
form, began thus to fashion their gods, supposing they would make a
likeness from a likeness. But why, ye men of Greece, am I now induced to
recount these things? That ye may know that it is not possible to learn
the true religion from those who were unable, even on those subjects by
which they won the admiration of the heathen,25842584 to write anything original, but merely propounded by some
allegorical device in their own writings what they had learned from Moses
and the other prophets.
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