Miscellanies 7.6.34

Now land animals and birds are nourished by breathing the same air as our souls, since they possess a soul akin to the air. But fish, they say, do not even breathe this air, but the air that was mixed into the water directly at its first creation, as it was into the other elements too, which is also evidence of the permanence of matter. One must, then, “offer to God sacrifices not costly but dear to God.” And that compound incense in the law is the one composed of many tongues and voices in prayer, or rather the one prepared from different nations and natures, by the gift given in the covenants, “into the unity of the faith,” and gathered together in hymns of praise, with a pure mind and a righteous and upright way of life, from holy deeds and righteous prayer. For, to borrow the poet's grace, “Who is so foolish, and so utterly credulous among men, as to hope that the gods, all of them, delight in fleshless bones and burnt gall, which not even hungry dogs would eat, and receive this as their prize, and repay the favor to those who offer it, even if they happen to be pirates, robbers, or tyrants?” But we say that fire sanctifies not flesh but sinful souls, meaning not the all-devouring fire of the workshop but the wise fire, which “penetrates through the soul” that passes through the fire.