The Epistle to Diogentus

Pseudo-Justinus Martyr

The Epistle to Diogentus. The Apostolic Fathers with an English translation by Kirsopp Lake. In Two Volumes. Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1913

Come then, clear yourself of all the prejudice[*](Discussion of the Gods of the heathen) which occupies your mind, and throw aside the custom which deceives you, and become as it were

a new man from the beginning, as one, as you yourself also admitted, who is about to listen to a new story. Look, not only with your eyes, but also with your intelligence, what substance or form they chance to have whom you call gods and regard as such.

Is not one a stone, like that on which we walk, another bronze, no better than the vessels which have been forged for our use, another wood already rotten, another silver, needing a man to guard it against theft, another iron, eaten by rust, another earthenware, not a whit more comely than that which is supplied for the most ordinary service?

Are not all these of perishable material? Were they not forged by iron and fire? Did not the wood-carver make one, the brass-founder another, the silversmith another, the potter another. Before they were moulded by their arts, into the shapes which they have, was it not possible and does it not still remain possible, for each of them to have been given a different shape? Might not vessels made out of the same material, if they met with the same artificers, be still made similar to such as they?[*](The meaning is that, given the requisite workers, the material used for ordinary vessels of wood or brass or silver might at any moment be turned into a god.)

Again, would it not be possible, for these, which are now worshipped by you, to be made by men into vessels like any others? Are they not all dumb? Are they not blind? Are they not without souls? Are they not without feeling? Are they not without movement? Are not they all rotting? Are they not all decaying?

Do you call these things gods? Are these what you serve? Are these what you worship and in the end become like them?