1. It was attacked by the Apologists in its application to Greek mythology. With an inconsequence which is remarkable, though not singular, they found in it a weapon of both defence and offence. They used it in defence of Christianity, not only because it gave them the evidence of prediction, but also because it solved some of the difficulties which the Old Testament presented to philosophical minds. They used it, on the other hand, in their attack upon Greek religion. Allegories are an after-thought, they said sometimes, a mere pious gloss over unseemly fables.[133] Even if they were true, they said again, and the basis of Greek belief were as good as its interpreters alleged it to be, it was a work of wicked demons to wrap round it a veil of dishonourable fictions.[134] The myth and the god who is supposed to be behind it vanish together, says Tatian: if the myth be true, the gods are worthless demons; if the myth be not true, but only a symbol of the powers of nature, the godhead is gone, for the powers of nature are not gods since they constrain no worship.[135] In a similar way, in the fourth century, Eusebius treats it as a vain attempt of a younger generation to explain away (θεραπεῦσαι) the mistakes of their fathers.[136] 2. It was attacked by the Greek philosophers in its application to Christianity. There are some persons, says Porphyry,[137] who being anxious to find, not a way of being rid of the immorality of the Old Testament, but an explanation of it, have recourse to interpretations which do not hold together nor fit the words which they interpret, which serve not so much as a defence of Jewish doctrines as to bring approbation and credit for their own. It is a delusive evasion of your difficulties, said in effect Celsus;[138] you find in your sacred books narratives which shock your moral sense; you think that you get rid of the difficulty by having recourse to allegory; but you do not: in the first place, your scriptures do not admit of being so interpreted; in the second place, the explanation is often more difficult than the narrative which it explains. The answer of Origen is weak: it is partly a _Tu quoque_: Homer is worse than Genesis, and if allegory will not explain the latter, neither will it the former: it is partly that, if there had been no secret, the Psalmist would not have said, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may see the wondrous things of thy law.”