"The particular favours conferred on your city by the Olympic gods were, in short, such as these. Many more, not to be prolix, I omit. But those blessings which the apparent gods bestow in common every day, not on one family, nor on a single city, but on the whole world, why do you not acknowledge? Are you alone insensible of the splendour that flows from the sun? Are you alone ignorant that summer and winter are produced by him, and that all things are alone vivified and alone germinate from him? Do you not, also, perceive the great advantages that accrue to your city from the moon, from him and by him the fabricator of all things? Yet you dare not worship either of these deities; but this Jesus, whom neither you nor your fathers have seen, you think must necessarily be God the word, while him, whom from eternity every generation of mankind has seen, and sees and venerates, and by venerating lives happily, I mean the mighty sun, a living, animated, intellectual, and beneficent image of the intelligible Father, you despise. If, however, you listen to my admonitions, you will by degrees return to truth. You will not wander from the right path, if you will be guided by him, who to the twentieth year of his age pursued that road, but has now worshiped the gods for near twelve years." {62} EXTRACTS FROM THE FRAGMENT OF AN ORATION OR EPISTLE ON THE DUTIES OF A PRIEST. "If any are detected behaving disorderly to their prince, they are immediately punished; but those who refuse to approach the gods, are possessed by a tribe of evil daemons, who driving many of the atheists [i. e. of the Christians] to distraction, make them think death desirable, that they may fly up into heaven, after having forcibly dislodged their souls. Some of them prefer deserts to towns; but man, being by nature a gentle and social animal, they also are abandoned to evil daemons, who urge them to this misanthropy; and many of them* have had recourse to chains and collars. Thus, on all sides, they are impelled by an evil daemons, to whom they have voluntarily surrendered themselves, by forsaking the eternal and saviour gods. "Statues and altars, and the preservation of the unextinguished fire, and in short all such particulars, have been established by our fathers, as symbols of the presence of the gods; not that we should believe that these symbols are gods, but that through these we should worship the gods. For since we are connected with body, it is also * i. e. The Cappadocian monks and hermits. {63}