| 1 Or someone else, taking ship to cross the wild waves, loudly invokes a piece of wood frailer than thevessel that bears him. |
| 2 Agreed, the ship is the product of a craving for gain, its building embodies the wisdom of theshipwright; |
| 3 but your providence, Father, is what steers it, you having opened a pathway even through the sea, anda safe way over the waves, |
| 4 showing that you can save, whatever happens, so that, even without experience, someone may put tosea. |
| 5 It is not your will that the works of your Wisdom should be sterile, so people entrust their lives to thesmal est piece of wood, cross the waves on a raft, yet are kept safe and sound. |
| 6 Why, in the beginning, when the proud giants were perishing, the hope of the world took refuge on araft and, steered by your hand, preserved the seed of a new generation for the ages to come. |
| 7 For blessed is the wood which serves the cause of uprightness |
| 8 but accursed the man-made idol, yes, it and its maker, he for having made it, and it because, though perishable, it has been called god. |
| 9 For God holds the godless and his godlessness in equal hatred; |
| 10 both work and workman wil alike be punished. |
| 11 Hence even the idols of the nations wil have a visitation since, in God's creation, they have becomean abomination, a scandal for human souls, a snare for the feet of the foolish. |
| 12 The idea of making idols was the origin of fornication, their discovery corrupted life. |
| 13 They did not exist at the beginning, they will not exist for ever; |
| 14 human vanity brought them into the world, and a quick end is therefore reserved for them. |
| 15 A father afflicted by untimely mourning has an image made of his child so soon carried off, and nowpays divine honours to what yesterday was only a corpse, handing on mysteries and ceremonies to his people; |
| 16 time passes, the custom hardens and is observed as law. |
| 17 Rulers were the ones who ordered that statues should be worshipped: people who could not honourthem in person, because they lived too far away, would have a portrait made of their distant countenance, tohave an image that they could see of the king whom they honoured; meaning, by such zeal, to flatter the absentas if he were present. |
| 18 Even people who did not know him were stimulated into spreading his cult by the artist's enthusiasm; |
| 19 for the latter, doubtless wishing to please his ruler, exerted all his skill to surpass the reality, |
| 20 and the crowd, attracted by the beauty of the work, mistook for a god someone whom recently theyhad honoured as a man. |
| 21 And this became a snare for life: that people, whether enslaved by misfortune or by tyranny, shouldhave conferred the ineffable Name on sticks and stones. |
| 22 It is not enough, however, for them to have such misconceptions about God; for, living in the fiercewarfare of ignorance, they call these terrible evils peace. |
| 23 With their child-murdering rites, their occult mysteries, or their frenzied orgies with outlandishcustoms, |
| 24 they no longer retain any purity in their lives or their marriages, one treacherously murdering anotheror wronging him by adultery. |
| 25 Everywhere a welter of blood and murder, theft and fraud, corruption, treachery, riot, perjury, |
| 26 disturbance of decent people, forgetfulness of favours, pol ution of souls, sins against nature,disorder in marriage, adultery and debauchery. |
| 27 For the worship of idols with no name is the beginning, cause, and end of every evil. |
| 28 For these people either carry their merrymaking to the point of frenzy, or they prophesy what is nottrue, or they live wicked lives, or they perjure themselves without hesitation; |
| 29 since they put their trust in lifeless idols they do not reckon their false oaths can harm them. |
| 30 But they wil be justly punished for this double crime: for degrading the concept of God by adhering toidols; and for wickedly perjuring themselves in contempt for what is holy. |
| 31 For it is not the power of the things by which they swear but the punishment reserved for sinners thatalways fol ows the offences of wicked people. |