A Plea for the Christians 15

But suppose they do recognize the same gods. What then? Because the many, unable to distinguish what is matter and what is God, and how great the gulf between them is, approach idols made of matter, must we too, for their sake, approach and worship the statues? We who distinguish and separate the uncreated and the created, what is and what is not, the intelligible and the perceptible, and give each its proper name? If matter and God are the same, two names for one thing, then we are impious for not considering stones and wood, gold and silver, to be gods. But if they are very far apart from each other, as far as the craftsman is from the material of his craft, why are we accused? For as the potter is to the clay (the clay is the material, the potter the craftsman), so God is the Creator, and matter obeys him to serve his art. And just as the clay by itself cannot become vessels without art, so matter, which receives all things, would not have received distinction, shape, and order without God the Creator. We do not value the pottery more than the one who made it, nor the bowls and gold vessels more than the smith; if there is anything skillful about them we praise the craftsman, and it is he who reaps the glory for the vessels. So too with matter and God: for the arrangement of what has been ordered it is not matter that deserves the glory and honor, but God its Creator. If, then, we were to hold the forms of matter to be gods, we would seem to have no sense of the true God, putting things that can be dissolved and perish on a level with the eternal.