John Calvin on the Foolishness of Idols

"'Their idols are silver and gold, the works of men's hands' (Pss 115:4; 135:15).  From the materials of which they are made, [the psalmist] infers that they are not gods, taking for granted that every human device concerning God is a dull fiction.  He mentions silver and gold rather than clay or stone, that neither splendor nor cost may procure reverence to idols.  He then draws a general conclusion, that nothing is more unlikely than that gods should be formed of any kind of inanimate matter.  Man is forced to confess that he is but the creature of a day, and yet would have the metal which he has deified to be regarded as God.  Whence had idols their origin, but from the will of man?  There was ground, therefore, for the sarcasm of the heathen poet (Horace, Satirae I.8), 'I was once the trunk of a fig-tree, a useless log, when the tradesman, uncertain whether he should make me a stool, etc., chose rather that I should be a god.'  In other words, an earth-born creature, who breathes out his life almost every moment, is able by his own device to confer the name and honor of deity on a lifeless trunk.  But as that Epicurean poet, in indulging his wit, had no regard for religion, without attending to his jeers or those of his fellows, let the rebuke of the prophet sting, no, cut us to the heart, when he speaks of the extreme infatuation of those who take a piece of wood to kindle a fire to warm themselves, bake bread, roast or boil flesh, and out of the residue make a God, before which they prostrate themselves as [pleaders or beggars] (Isa 44:16).  Hence, the same prophet, in another place not only charges idolaters as guilty in the eye of the Law, but upbraids them for not learning from the foundations of the earth, nothing being more [inappropriate] than to reduce the immense and incomprehensible Deity to the stature of a few feet" (Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin).