hat they are no gods. For
when these skill not to work their own salvation, how can they take
care of mankind? Nay, even the poets and philosophers among the
Chaldeans, Greeks and Egyptians, although by their poems and histories
they desired to glorify their people's gods, yet they rather revealed
and exposed their shame before all men. If the body of a man,
consisting of many parts, loseth not any of its proper members, but,
having an unbroken union with all its members, is in harmony with
itself, how in the nature of God shall there be such warfare and
discord? For if the nature of the gods were one, then ought not one god
to persecute, slay or injure another. But if the gods were persecuted
by other gods, and slain and plundered and killed with thunder-stones,
then is their nature no longer one, but their wills are divided, and
are all mischievous, so that not one among them is God. So it is
manifest, O king, that all this history of the nature of the gods is
error.

"Furthermore, how do the wise and eloquent among the Greeks fail to
perceive that law-givers themselves are judged by their own laws? For
if their laws are just, then are their gods assuredly unjust, in that
they have offended against law by murders, sorceries, adulteries,
thefts and unnatural crimes. But, if they did well in so doing, then
are their laws unjust, seeing that they have been framed in
condemnation of the gods. But now the laws are good and just, because
they encourage good and forbid evil; whereas the deeds of their gods
offend against law. Their gods then are offenders against law; and all
that introduce such gods as these are worthy of death and are ungodly.
If the stories of the gods be myths, then are the gods mere words: but
if the stories be natural, then are they that wrought or endured such
things no longer gods: if the stories be allegorical, then are the gods
myths and nothing else. Therefore it hath been proven, O king, that
all these idols, belonging to many gods, are works of error and
destruction. So it is not meet to call those gods that are seen, but
cannot see: but it is right to worship as God him who is unseen and is
the Maker of all mankind.

"Come we now, O king, to the Jews, that we may see what they also think
concerning God. The Jews are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, and went once to sojourn in Egypt. From thence God brought them
out with a mighty hand and stretched out arm by Moses the