Exhortation to the Greeks 10.92

… to the nest. Then again, dogs that have gone astray have tracked down their master by following the scent, and horses that have thrown their rider have obeyed their master at a single whistle. “The ox,” it says, “knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger; but Israel has not known me.” What then does the Lord do? He bears no grudge; he still has mercy; he still asks for repentance. I want to ask you whether it does not seem absurd to you that you human beings, who are God's creatures, who received your soul from him, and who belong wholly to God, should serve another master, and moreover serve the tyrant instead of the king, and the evil one instead of the good. For who, in the name of truth, who is in his right mind, leaves the good and keeps company with wickedness? Who flees from God to live with daemons? Who, when he could be a son of God, delights in being a slave? Or who, when he could be a citizen of heaven, pursues darkness, when he could cultivate paradise, walk about heaven, and share in the living and pure spring, treading the air in the track of that bright cloud, like Elijah, and gazing on the rain of salvation? But others, like worms, rolling about in marshes and mud, the streams of pleasure, feed on useless and senseless luxuries, swinish men. For pigs, it says, “delight in mud” more than in clean water, and “go mad over filth,” as Democritus says. Let us not, then, let us not be enslaved or become swinish, but as true “children of light,” let us look up and gaze at the light, lest the Lord prove us bastards, as the sun does eagles.