And, accordingly, the first foreigners who arrived in Egypt were quite worn out with laughing at and ridiculing these superstitions, till their minds had become impregnated with the conceit of the natives; but all those who have tasted of right instruction, are amazed and struck with consternation, at their system of ennobling things which are not noble, and pity those who give into it, thinking the men, as is natural, more miserable than even the objects which they honour, since they in their souls are changed into those very animals, so as to appear to be merely brutes in human form, now returning to their original nature. This was one of the things which especially excited the ridicule of the Romans. Juvenal says, Sat. xv. 1— Quis nescit, Volusi Bithynice, qualia demens Aegyptus portenta colat? Crocodilon adorat Pars haec: illa pavet saturam serpentibus Ibim, Effigies sacri nitet aurea cercopitheci, Dimidio magice resonant ubi Memnone chorda, Atque vetus Thebe centum jacet obruta portis. Illic coeruleow, hic piscem fluminis, illic Oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam. Or, as it is translated by Gifford, "Who knows not to what monstrous gods, my friend,The mad inhabitants of Egypt bend?The snake devouring ibis, these enshrineThose think the crocodile alone divine;Others, where Thebes’ vast ruins strew the groundAnd shattered Memnon yields a magic sound,Set up a glittering brute of uncouth shape,And bow before the image of an ape!Thousands regard the hound with holy fear,Not one Diana,"

Therefore, God, removing out of his sacred legislation all such impious deification of undeserving objects, has invited men to the honour of the one true and living God; not indeed that he has any need himself to be honoured; for being all-sufficient for himself, he has no need of any one else; but he has done so, because he wished to lead the race of mankind, hitherto wandering about in trackless deserts, into a road from which they should not stray, that so by following nature it might find the best end of all things, namely, the knowledge of the true and living God, who is the first and most perfect of all good things; from whom, as from a fountain, all particular blessings are showered upon the world, and upon the things are people in it.