Psalms 95:4

The whole family of God, most high and most true, has therefore a consolation of its own, a consolation which cannot deceive, and which has in it a surer hope than the tottering and falling affairs of earth can afford. They will not refuse the discipline of this temporal life, in which they are schooled for life eternal; nor will they lament their experience of it, for the good things of earth they use as pilgrims who are not detained by them, and its ills either prove or improve them. As for those who insult over them in their trials, and when ills befall them say, “Where is thy God?” we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or maintain they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is furnished with its reply: our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. …

For if he had only said, without mentioning the cause, that his forefathers had discovered the art of making gods, it would have been our duty, if we paid any regard to what is right and pious, to consider and to see that they could never have attained to this art if they had not erred from the truth, if they had believed those things which are worthy of God, if they had attended to divine worship and service. However, if we alone should say that the causes of this art were to be found in the great error and incredulity of men, and aversion of the mind erring from and unfaithful to divine religion, the impudence of those who resist the truth were in some way to be borne with; but when he who admires in man, above all other things, this power which it has been granted him to practise, and sorrows because a time is coming when all those figments of gods invented by men shall even be comman …

2. But then who are those gods, or where are they, of whom God is the true God? Another Psalm saith, “God hath stood in the synagogue of gods, but in the midst He judgeth gods.” As yet we know not whether perchance any gods be congregated in heaven, and in their congregation, for this is “in the synagogue,” God hath stood to judge. See in the same Psalm those to whom he saith, “I have said, Ye are gods, and children of the Highest all; but ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” It is evident then, that He hath called men gods, that are deified of His Grace, not born of His Substance. For He doth justify, who is just through His own self, and not of another; and He doth deify who is God through Himself, not by the partaking of another. But He that justifieth doth Himself deify, in that by justifying He doth make sons of God. …

4. “For the Lord is great, and cannot worthily be praised” ( ver. 4 ). What Lord, except Jesus Christ, “is great, and cannot worthily be praised”? Ye know surely that He appeared as a Man: ye know surely that He was conceived in a woman’s womb, ye know that He was born from the womb, that He was suckled, that He was carried in arms, circumcised, that a victim was offered for Him, that He grew; lastly, ye know that He was buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, was crucified, died, was pierced with a spear; ye know that He suffered all these things: “He is great, and cannot worthily be praised.” Despise not what is little, understand what is great. …

3. But it is asked, If men are called gods to whom the word of the Lord came, are the Angels to be called gods, when the greatest reward which is promised to just and holy men is the being equal to Angels? In the Scriptures I know not whether it can, at least easily, be found, that the Angels are openly called gods; but when it had been said of the Lord God, “He is terrible, above all gods,” he adds, as by way of exposition why he says this, “for the gods of the heathen are devils,” that we might understand what had been expressed in the Hebrew, “the gods of the Gentiles are idols,” meaning rather the devils which dwell in the idols. …