Exhortation to the Greeks 10.91

Let any of you look at those who serve before the idols: their hair filthy, disgraced in dirty and torn clothing, utterly unacquainted with baths, made like wild beasts by the length of their nails, and many of them deprived of their private parts, showing in deed that the precincts of the idols are tombs or prisons. These seem to me to mourn the gods, not to worship them, having suffered things more deserving of pity than of reverence. And seeing these things, are you still blind, and will you not look up to the Master of all and Lord of the universe? Will you not escape from the prisons here and take refuge in the mercy from heaven? For God, out of his great love for humankind, holds fast to the human being, as a mother bird flies to her nestling when it falls out of the nest; and if a creeping beast gapes at the nestling, “the mother flutters around, lamenting her dear children.” But God, as Father, both seeks his creature and heals its fall, pursues the beast, and takes the nestling back again, urging it to fly up …