Exhortation to the Greeks 10.89

“But,” you say, “it is not reasonable to overturn a custom handed down to us from our fathers.” Then why do we not still use our first food, milk, to which our nurses accustomed us from birth? Why do we increase or diminish our father's property, instead of keeping it the same as we received it? Why do we no longer dribble on our fathers' laps, or still do the other things that made us laughed at when we were infants being brought up by our mothers? Have we not corrected ourselves, even if we did not happen to have good tutors? Then, in voyages, deviations from the course, though harmful and dangerous, somehow come as a pleasure; and in life shall we not abandon custom, which is wicked, passionate, and godless, even if our fathers are angry, and turn aside to the truth and seek him who is truly Father, thrusting custom away like a poisonous drug? This indeed is the finest part of my undertaking: to show you that it was from madness and from this thrice-wretched custom that godliness came to be hated. For so great a good, than which nothing greater has ever been given by God to the human race, would never have been hated or rejected, if you had not been carried away by custom, and then, stopping your ears against us, like stiff-necked horses throwing off the reins, biting on the bit, fled from our words, longing to throw us off, the charioteers of your life, and, carried by your folly toward the cliffs of destruction, you supposed the holy Word of God to be accursed.