For instance, the tragedy says:
Menelaus. “What disease, Orestes, is destroying thee?”
Orestes. “Conscience. For horrid deeds I know I’ve done.”[1224]
For in reality there is no other purity but abstinence from sins. Excellently then Epicharmus says:
“If a pure mind thou hast,
In thy whole body thou art pure.”
Now also we say that it is requisite to purify the soul from corrupt and bad doctrines by right reason; and so thereafter to the recollection of the principal heads of doctrine. Since also before the communication of the mysteries they think it right to apply certain purifications to those who are to be initiated; so it is requisite for men to abandon impious opinion, and thus turn to the true tradition.
CHAPTER V.
THE HOLY SOUL A MORE EXCELLENT TEMPLE THAN ANY EDIFICE BUILT BY MAN.
For is it not the case that rightly and truly we do not circumscribe in any place that which cannot be circumscribed; nor do we shut up in temples made with hands that which contains all things? What work of builders, and stonecutters, and mechanical art can be holy? Superior to these are not they who think that the air, and the enclosing space, or rather the whole world and the universe, are meet for the excellency of God?
It were indeed ridiculous, as the philosophers themselves say, for man, the plaything[1225] of God, to make God, and for God to be the plaything[1226] of art; since what is made is similar and the same to that of which it is made, as that which is made of ivory is ivory, and that which is made of gold golden. Now the images and temples constructed by mechanics are made of inert matter; so that they too are inert, and material, and profane; and if you perfect the art, they partake of mechanical coarseness. Works of art cannot then be sacred and divine.