Homilies on the Statues

^4. Really then, as I said, this point is apparent from what has already taken place; but it will be made no less clear from what yet remains to be stated. For if while we are fettered with such necessities of the body; and while it is the lot of all men to die, to suffer corruption, to moulder in the sight of all, and to dissolve into dust, so that the Gentile philosophers made one and the same comprehensive definition of the human race (for when asked what man was, they answered, he is an animal, rational and mortal); if, forsooth, while all admitted this, there were some who dared in the opinion of the multitude to immortalize themselves; and notwithstanding that the very sense of sight bore witness to their mortality, were ambitious to be called gods, and were honoured as such; to what a length of impiety would not many men have proceeded, if death had not gone on teaching all men the mortality and corruptibility of our nature? Hear, for instance, what the prophet says of a barbarian king, when seized with this frenzy. “I will exalt,” says he, “my throne above the stars of heaven; and I will be like the Most High.” Afterwards, deriding him, and speaking of his death, he says, “Corruption is under you, and the worm is your covering;” but his meaning is, “Do you dare, O man, whom such an end is awaiting, to entertain such imaginations?” Again, of another, I mean the king of the Tyrians, when he conceived the like aims, and was ambitious to be considered as a God, he says, “You are not a God, but a man, and they that pierce you shall say so.” Thus God, in making this body of ours as it is, has from the beginning utterly taken away all occasion of idolatry.