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Translated from the Greek original by Frederick Crombie.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 79
Chapter IV.
Notwithstanding, those who have written in this manner regarding the "chief good" will go down to the Piraeus and offer prayer to Artemis, as if she were God, and will look (with approval) upon the solemn assembly held by ignorant men; and after giving utterance to philosophical remarks of such profundity regarding the soul, and describing its passage (to a happier world) after a virtuous life, they pass from those great topics which God has revealed to them, and adopt mean and trifling thoughts, and offer a cock to Aesculapius! [4291] And although they had been enabled to form representations both of the "invisible things" of God and of the "archetypal forms" of things from the creation of the world, and from (the contemplation of) sensible things, from which they ascend to those objects which are comprehended by the understanding alone,--and although they had no mean glimpses of His "eternal power and Godhead," [4292] they nevertheless became "foolish in their imaginations," and their "foolish heart" was involved in darkness and ignorance as to the (true) worship of God. Moreover, we may see those who greatly pride themselves upon their wisdom and theology worshipping the image of a corruptible man, in honour, they say, of Him, and sometimes even descending, with the Egyptians, to the worship of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things!
[4291] Cf. Plato, Phaedo
[4292] kai ta aorata tou Theou, kai tas ideas phantasthentes apo tes ktiseos tou kosmou, kai ton aistheton, aph' hon anabainousin epi ta nooumena; ten te aidion autou dunamin kai theioteta ouk agennos idontes, etc.
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/contra-celsum-3.asp?pg=79
