25. And lest any one should suppose that we, through distrust in our reply, invest the gods with the gifts of serenity, that we assign to them minds free from resentment, and far removed from all excitement, let us allow, since it is pleasing to you, that they put forth their passion upon us, that they thirst for our blood, and that now for a long time they are eager to remove us from the generations of men. But if it is not troublesome to you, if it is not offensive, if it is a matter of common duty to discuss the points of this argument not on grounds of partiality, but on those of truth, we demand to hear from you what is the explanation of this, what the cause, why, on the one hand, the gods exercise cruelty on us alone, and why, on the other, men burn against us with exasperation. You follow, our opponents say, profane religious systems, and you practise rites unheard of throughout the entire world. What do you, O men, endowed with reason, dare to assert? What do you dare to prate of? What do you try to bring forward in the recklessness of unguarded speech? To adore God as the highest existence, as the Lord of all things that be, as occupying the highest place among all exalted ones, to pray to Him with respectful submission in our distresses, to cling to Him with all our senses, so to speak, to love Him, to look up to Him with faith,—is this an execrable and unhallowed religion,39    A beautiful appeal, and one sufficient to show that our author was no longer among catechumens.] full of impiety and of sacrilege, polluting by the superstition of its own novelty ceremonies instituted of old?

XXV. Ac ne quis nos tamen diffidentia responsionis, tranquillitatis existimet Deos donare muneribus, innoxias affingere his mentes, atque ab omni perturbatione dimotas, concedamus, sicut libitum vobis est, intendere in nos iras, sanguinem illos sitire nostrum, 0745B et jamdudum nos cupere mortalium submovere de saeculis. Sed si non est molestum, non grave, si communis officii res est, non ex gratia, sed ex vero disceptationis hujus disceptare momenta, audire a vobis 0746A exposcimus, quaenam sit haec ratio, quae causa, propter quam in nos tantum et dii saeviant superi, et asperati homines inardescant. Religiones, inquiunt, impias, atque inauditos cultus terrarum in orbe tractatis. Quid, o participes rationis, audetis, homines proloqui, quid effutire, quid promere temerariae vocis desperatione tentatis? Deum principem, rerum cunctarum quaecumque sunt dominum, summitatem omnium summorum obtinentem, adorare, obsequio venerabili invocare, in rebus fessis totis, ut ita dixerim, sensibus amplexari, amare, suspicere, execrabilis religio est et infausta, impietatis et sacrilegii plena, caerimonias antiquitus institutas novitatis suae superstitione contaminans?