15. For a father, afflicted with untimely mourning,made an image of the child so quickly taken from him,And now honored as a god what once was deadand handed down to his household mysteries and sacrifices.
16. Then, in the course of time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law,and graven things were worshiped by royal decrees.
17. People who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presencecopied the appearance of the distant kingAnd made a public image of him they wished to honor,out of zeal to flatter the absent one as though present.
18. And to promote this observance among those to whom it was strange,the artisan’s ambition provided a stimulus.
19. For he, perhaps in his determination to please the ruler,labored over the likeness to the best of his skill;
20. And the masses, drawn by the charm of the workmanship,soon took as an object of worship the one who shortly before was honored as a human being.
21. And this became a snare for the world,that people enslaved to either grief or tyrannyconferred the incommunicable Name on stones and wood.
22. Then it was not enough for them to err in their knowledge of God;but even though they live in a great war resulting from ignorance,they call such evils peace.
23. For while they practice either child sacrifices or occult mysteries,or frenzied carousing in exotic rites,
24. They no longer respect either lives or purity of marriage;but they either waylay and kill each other, or aggrieve each other by adultery.
25. And all is confusion—blood and murder, theft and guile,corruption, faithlessness, turmoil, perjury,
26. Disturbance of good people, neglect of gratitude,besmirching of souls, unnatural lust,disorder in marriage, adultery and shamelessness.