am_, &c., were most absurd, as
being their own workmanship; for as Seneca notes, _adorant ligneos deos, et
fabros interim qui fecerunt, contemnunt_, they adore work, contemn the
workman; and as Tertullian follows it, _Si homines non essent diis
propitii, non essent dii_, had it not been for men, they had never been
gods, but blocks, and stupid statues in which mice, swallows, birds make
their nests, spiders their webs, and in their very mouths laid their
excrements. Those images, I say, were all out as gross as the shapes in
which they did represent them: Jupiter with a ram's head, Mercury a dog's,
Pan like a goat, Heccate with three heads, one with a beard, another
without; see more in Carterius and [6517]Verdurius of their monstrous forms
and ugly pictures: and, which was absurder yet, they told them these images
came from heaven, as that of Minerva in her temple at Athens, _quod e coelo
cecidisse credebant accolae_, saith Pausanias. They formed some like
storks, apes, bulls, and yet seriously believed: and that which was impious
and abominable, they made their gods notorious whoremasters, incestuous
Sodomites (as commonly they were all, as well as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo,
Mercury, Neptune, &c.), thieves, slaves, drudges (for Apollo and Neptune
made tiles in Phrygia), kept sheep, Hercules emptied stables, Vulcan a
blacksmith, unfit to dwell upon the earth for their villainies, much less
in heaven, as [6518]Mornay well saith, and yet they gave them out to be
such; so weak and brutish, some to whine, lament, and roar, as Isis for her
son and Cenocephalus, as also all her weeping priests; Mars in Homer to be
wounded, vexed; Venus ran away crying, and the like; than which what can be
more ridiculous? _Nonne ridiculum lugere quod colas, vel colere quod
lugeas_? (which [6519]Minutius objects) _Si dii, cur plangitis? si mortui,
cur adoratis_? that it is no marvel if [6520]Lucian, that adamantine
persecutor of superstition, and Pliny could so scoff at them and their
horrible idolatry as they did; if Diagoras took Hercules' image, and put it
under his pot to seethe his pottage, which was, as he said, his 13th
labour. But see more of their fopperies in Cypr. _4. tract, de Idol.
varietat._ Chrysostom _advers. Gentil._ Arnobius _adv. Gentes._ Austin, _de
civ. dei._ Theodoret. _de curat. Graec. affect._ Clemens Alexandrinus,
Minutius Felix, Eusebius, Lactantius, Stuckius, &c. Lamentable, tragical,
and fearful those symptoms are, that t