The Epistle to Diogentus
Choose a text
id="mobileReaderAuthor" class="mobile-reader-author" href="/authors/pseudo-justinus-martyr" aria-label="More works by Pseudo Justinus Martyr">
—
⋯
Original / primary: Perseus Eng1
3.1
3.1
In the next place I think that you are especially anxious to hear why the Christians do not
3.1
1
3.1
worship in the same way as the Jews.
3.2
3.2
The Jews indeed, by abstaining from the religion already discussed, may rightly claim that they worship the one God of the Universe, and regard him as master, but in offering service to him in like manner to those already dealt with they are quite wrong.
3.3
3.3
For just as the Greeks give a proof of foolishness by making offerings to senseless and deaf images, so the Jews ought rather to consider that they are showing foolishness, not reverence, by regarding God as in need of these things.
3.4
3.4
For He who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, and bestows on all of us that which we need, would not himself have need of any of these things which he himself supplies to those who think that they are giving them.
3.5
3.5
For after all, those who think that they are consecrating sacrifices to him by blood and burnt fat, and whole burnt offerings, and that they are reverencing him by these honours, seem to me to be in no way better than those who show the same respect to deaf images. For it seems that the one offer to those who cannot partake of the honour, the others to him who is in need of nothing.