§9. The various developments of idolatry: worship of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead. The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors.

For now the understanding of mankind leaped

asunder from God; and going lower in their ideas and imaginations, they

gave the honour due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and

the stars, thinking them to be not only gods, but also the causes of

the other gods lower than themselves. Then, going yet

lower in their dark imaginations, they gave the name of gods to the

upper æther and the air and the things in the air. Next, advancing

further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the

principles of which bodies are composed, heat and cold and dryness and

wetness. 2. But just as they who have fallen flat creep in the slime

like land-snails, so the most impious of mankind, having fallen lower

and lower from the idea of God, then set up as gods men, and the forms

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IV/Against the Heathen/Contra Gentes. (Against the Heathen.)/Part I/Chapter 9