Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily X/Chapter 21

Chapter XXI.&#8212;Idols Not Animated by the Divine Spirit.

&#8220;For many say, We do not worship the gold or the silver, the wood or the stone, of the objects of our worship.&#160; For we also know that these are nothing but lifeless matter, and the art of mortal man.&#160; But the spirit that dwells in them, that we call God.&#160; Behold the immorality of those who speak thus!&#160; For when that which appears is easily proved to be nothing, they have recourse to the invisible, as not being able to be convicted in respect of what is non-apparent.&#160; However, they agree with us in part, that one half of their images is not God, but senseless matter.&#160; It remains for them to show how we are to believe that these images have a divine spirit.&#160; But they cannot prove to us that it is so, for it is not so; and we do not believe them when they say that they have seen it.&#160; We shall afford them proofs that they have not a divine spirit, that lovers of truth, hearing the refutation of the thought that they are animated, may turn away from the hurtful delusion.