1But you, our God, are gracious and true, longsuffering, and governing all things with mercy.
2For even if we sin, we are yours, knowing your power; we will not sin, knowing that we are accounted as yours.
3For to know you is complete righteousness, and to know your power is the root of immortality.
4For we were not led astray by the evil-working invention of men, nor by the fruitless labor of painters—a form stained with varied colors.
5The sight of which becomes a longing for the foolish, and he desires the breathless form of a dead image.
6Lovers of evil things are worthy of such hopes—both those who make them, and those who long for them, and those who worship them.
7For a potter, laboriously kneading soft earth, molds each vessel for our service; yet from the same clay he fashions both the vessels that serve for clean uses and those for the opposite, all alike. But as for the use of each of these, the worker in clay is the judge.
8And with evil labor he molds a futile god from the same clay—he who, having been formed from earth a little while before, will shortly go back to that from which he was taken, when the debt of his soul is demanded back.
9But his concern is not that he is going to fall ill, nor that he has a short life; rather, he competes with goldsmiths and silversmiths, and he imitates bronzesmiths, and he considers it a glory that he molds counterfeit things.
10His heart is ash, his hope is cheaper than earth, and his life is more dishonorable than clay,
11because he was ignorant of the one who formed him, and who breathed into him an active soul, and infused a life-giving spirit.
12But he considered our life to be a plaything, and existence a festival for profit, for he says one must get gain from any source, even from evil.
13For this man knows better than all others that he is sinning, when he creates fragile vessels and carved images from earthy matter.
14But most foolish of all, and more wretched than the soul of an infant, are the enemies of your people who oppressed them.
15because they considered all the idols of the nations to be gods—which have no use of eyes for seeing, nor nostrils for drawing in air, nor ears to hear, nor fingers of hands for feeling, and their feet are useless for walking.
16For a man made them, and one who has borrowed his own spirit formed them. For no man is able to form a god like himself.
17But being mortal, he produces a dead thing with lawless hands. For he is better than the objects of his worship, since he has lived, but they never have.
18They even worship the most hateful animals, for in foolishness these are judged to be worse than all others.
19They are not beautiful, so as to be desired for their appearance as animals are; and they have escaped both the praise of God and his blessing.
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