A Plea for the Christians 4

That we are not atheists (I will answer each of the charges in turn, so that it will not be ridiculous for us to leave our accusers unrefuted): The Athenians were right to charge Diagoras with atheism, since he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine and made public the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Heracles to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there is no god at all. But we distinguish God from matter, and show that matter is one thing and God another, and that the gulf between them is great (for the divine is unbegotten and eternal, contemplated by mind and reason alone, while matter is begotten and perishable). Is it not irrational, then, to apply the name of atheism to us? If we thought as Diagoras did, while having so many pledges that move us to piety (the good order, the universal harmony, the size, the color, the shape, and the arrangement of the world), then the reputation for impiety and the reason for our being persecuted might rightly be attached to us. But since our teaching acknowledges one God, the Maker of this universe, who did not himself come into being (for what is does not come into being, but what is not), but made all things through the Word that comes from him, we suffer both things irrationally: we are slandered and we are persecuted.