Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Even if no law of God had forbidden us to make idols, and no voice of the Holy Spirit threatened the makers of idols no less than their worshippers, we would still work out from our own sacrament that arts of this kind are hostile to our faith. In what sense, then, did we abandon the devil along with his angel-host, if we turn around and fashion them ourselves? What separation have we declared from those — I will not say with whom, but for whose sake — we make our living? What grievance have we lodged against beings to whom our own craft binds us in gratitude? Can your tongue deny what your hand admits? Can a single word tear down what a whole day's labor built? Do you announce one God, yet manufacture a crowd of them? Do you proclaim the genuine deity while shaping counterfeit ones with your own hands? "I only make them," someone protests, "I do not bow down to them" — as though his refusal to kneel had any different root than his willingness to carve, when both acts alike wound God. No: the making is itself the worship, for it is what enables the bowing-down of others. And your worship is offered not through a puff of cheap incense-smoke but through your own labored breath; not at the price of some animal's throat but of your own days. To these things you sacrifice your craft, to these you pour out your sweat like an offering, to these you devote your very skill. Beyond any priest you serve them, because it is your hands that supply the priest his object; your careful workmanship is the source of their godhood. Do you deny that what you make, you worship? But they do not deny it — the gods for whom you slaughter this fatter, more gilded, greater victim every single day: your own salvation.
VII.