εἰκόνα θεσπίζουσιν ἐμὴν, ληφθεῖσαν ad’ ὕλης,
χειρί τε µορφώσαντες én’ εἰδώλοισιν ἀναύδοις
δοξάζουσι λιταῖς καὶ θρησκείαισιν ἀνάγνοις.
τὸν κτίστην προλιπόντες ἀσελγείαις ἐλάτρευσαν.
* * *


οὐ χρήζω θυσιῶν, οὐ σπονδῶν ὑμετεράων.
* * *
ταῦτα γὰρ, εἰς µνήµην βασιλήων ἠδὲ τυράννων,
δαίµοσι ποιήσουσι νεκροῖς, ὡς οὐρανίοισι.
When with these passages before us we read over again the
early sections of the Preaching and the parallels to them which I
have quoted from Aristides, we shall feel that we have here some-
thing more than ordinary commonplaces about the unity of God and
the folly of idolatry. Again, when we compare together the first
and second groups of passages from the Sibylline Books, we shall
be led to ask for a common basis which shall explain their resem-
blances. Neither seems to be a direct imitation of the other:
each presents us with words and phrases not found in the other,
but accounted for at once on the supposition that either the
Preaching of Peter or our own Apology lies in the background,
Thus in the first we have παντοκράτωρ, ἀγένητος, γαλᾶς, πετεηνὰ
καὶ ἑρπετά, ἃ δή κ᾿ αἰσχρὸν ἀγορεύειν. In the second, τοὔνομα,
λόγῳ ἔκτισε, ναοῖς...τηρεῖτε,

Moreover the mention of Creation by the Word guides us
to the Preaching, in preference to the Apology, in which this finds
no place: and the phrases which are found in the Apology, but not
in the Preaching, need not cause us difficulty when we remember
how very fragmentary is our knowledge of the latter document.
