Against Celsus 7.66

And not only is it foolish to pray “to images,” but also to pretend to pray “to images” by way of accommodation to the many, as do those who follow the philosophy of the Peripatetics and those who embrace the views of Epicurus or Democritus; for nothing spurious should be in the soul of one who is truly pious toward the divine. We do not honour the images also so that we may not, as far as it lies with us, fall into the notion that the images are other gods. That is why we charge Celsus and all who admit that these are not gods with the honour that those reputed wise are seen to pay the images; following it, the many not only sin in thinking that they worship them by way of accommodation, but also fall in their souls into thinking that these are gods, and cannot even bear to hear that the things they worship are not gods. Celsus says that they do not think them gods, but offerings to gods, without showing how they are not offerings of men but, as he called them, of the gods themselves. For it is clear that these are the offerings of men who have gone astray about the divine. But neither do we suppose that the images are images of the divine, since we do not depict a form of the invisible and incorporeal God. And since Celsus supposes that we fall into self-contradiction when we say that the divine is not of human form and when we believe that “God made man” his own “image” and made him in the image of God, we must say, as was said above too, that we hold that what is “according to the image of God” is preserved in the rational soul that is formed according to virtue. And here Celsus, not seeing the difference between the image of God and what is “according to the image of God,” says that we say that “God made man” his own “image,” and a form like himself; but this too we answered above.