Exhortation to the Greeks 7.75

For even if the Greeks, having received certain sparks of the divine Word, uttered a few words of truth, they bear witness that its power is not hidden, but they convict themselves of weakness, since they did not reach the goal. For by now, I think, it has become clear to everyone that those who do or say anything without the Word of truth are like those who try to walk without feet. Let the exposures of your gods also shame you into salvation, which the poets, compelled by the truth, bring on as comedy. Menander the comic poet, for example, in his play The Charioteer, says: “No god pleases me who walks about out of doors with an old woman, nor one who comes into houses on a board,” a begging priest of the Mother; for such are the begging priests of the Mother. Hence Antisthenes rightly said to them when they begged: “I do not support the Mother of the gods, whom the gods support.” Again, the same comic poet, in his play The Priestess, angry at the custom, tries to expose the godless vanity of error, saying sensibly: “For if a man draws the god wherever he wants with cymbals, the one who does this is greater than the god; but these are instruments of daring and violence, invented for human beings.”