Exhortation to the Greeks 2.27

These are the slippery and harmful deviations from the truth, which drag the human being down from heaven and tip him into the pit. I want to show you the gods themselves at close quarters, what they are like and whether they exist at all, so that at last you may cease from your error and run back again to heaven. “For we too were once children of wrath, like the rest; but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, when we were already dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” For the Word is living, and whoever has been buried with Christ is raised up with God. Those who are still unbelieving are called “children of wrath,” reared for wrath; but we are no longer the nurslings of wrath, since we have been torn away from error and are rushing toward the truth. So we, who were once sons of lawlessness, have now, through the Word's love for humankind, become sons of God. But to you your own poet, Empedocles of Acragas, says: “Therefore, distraught with grievous evils, you will never relieve your heart of wretched sorrows.” Most of what you say about the gods is myth and fiction; and what is supposed to have really happened is recorded about shameful men who lived licentiously. “You walk in conceit and madness; you have left the right and straight path and gone off by the way of thorns and stakes. Why do you wander, mortals? Stop, you fools; leave the darkness of night, and lay hold of the light.” So the prophetic and poetic Sibyl urges us; and so the truth urges us too, stripping the crowd of gods of these terrifying and bewildering masks, and exposing the reputations made for them by showing how many share the same names.