1 All men are truly vain by nature, who have not had knowledge of God, who have not been able to know the Eternal out of visible perfections, and who have not known the Author when they look at works,

2 And they revered as gods who ruled the world, either fire, or wind, or moving air, or the circle of stars, or stormy waters, or heavenly bodies.

3 If, being captivated by their beauty, they esteemed them gods, they ought to know how much better their Lord is, for He, the Author of beauty, created them.

4 And if they were amazed at their power and effect, they ought to know from them how much more powerful is He who created them;

5 for by the greatness of the beauty of creatures the Author of their existence is comparatively known.

6 Yet they are less to blame, for they err, perhaps seeking God and desiring to find him:

7 for turning to his works, they search, and are convinced by their sight that all things that are seen are beautiful.

8 But even they are inexcusable:

9 If they could understand so much that they were able to search the temporal world, why did they not immediately find its Lord?

10 But more miserable are they, and their hopes are in the soulless, who call gods the works of human hands, gold and silver, works of art, images of animals, or worthless stone, the work of an old hand.

11 Or a certain woodworker, having cut down a good tree, skilfully stripped off all the bark from it, and having worked it beautifully, made of it a vessel useful for the use of life,

12 And the scraps of work he used for cooking, and he was satisfied;

13 And one of the cuttings, good for nothing, a crooked and knotty tree, he took it, and carefully rounded it in his leisure, and having worked it with the experience of a connoisseur, likened it to the image of a man,

14 Or he made it like a lowly animal, and smeared it with meerk, and covered the surface thereof with paint, and painted over every defect in it,