inate affections, forasmuch as he gave other men
divine honor, through either loving or revering them too much. This
cause is assigned (Wis. 14:15): "A father being afflicted with bitter
grief, made to himself the image of his son, who was quickly taken
away: and him who then had died as a man he began to worship as a
god." The same passage goes on to say (Wis. 14:21) that "men serving
either their affection, or their kings, gave the incommunicable name
[Vulg.: 'names']," i.e. of the Godhead, "to stones and wood."
Secondly, because man takes a natural pleasure in representations, as
the Philosopher observes (Poet. iv), wherefore as soon as the
uncultured man saw human images skillfully fashioned by the diligence
of the craftsman, he gave them divine worship; hence it is written
(Wis. 13:11-17): "If an artist, a carpenter, hath cut down a tree,
proper for his use, in the wood . . . and by the skill of his art
fashioneth it, and maketh it like the image of a man . . . and then
maketh prayer to it, inquiring concerning his substance, and his
children, or his marriage." Thirdly, on account of their ignorance of
the true God, inasmuch as through failing to consider His excellence
men gave divine worship to certain creatures, on account of their
beauty or power, wherefore it is written (Wis. 13:1, 2): "All
men . . . neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was
the workman, but have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the
swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun
and the moon, to be the gods that rule the world."

The other cause of idolatry was completive, and this was on the part
of the demons, who offered themselves to be worshipped by men, by
giving answers in the idols, and doing things which to men seemed
marvelous. Hence it is written (Ps. 95:5): "All the gods of the
Gentiles are devils."

Reply Obj. 1: The dispositive cause of idolatry was, on the part of
man, a defect of nature, either through ignorance in his intellect,
or disorder in his affections, as stated above; and this pertains to
guilt. Again, idolatry is stated to be the cause, beginning and end
of all sin, because there is no kind of sin that idolatry does not
produce at some time, either through leading expressly to that sin by
causing it, or through being an occasion thereof, either as a
beginning or as an end, in so far as certain sins were employed in
the worship of idols; such as homicides, mutilations