Oration to the Greeks 29

Having seen these things, and having also taken part in mysteries and examined the religious rites of all peoples, performed by effeminates and hermaphrodites; having found that among the Romans their Latiarian Zeus delights in human gore and the blood of slaughtered men, and that Artemis, not far from the great city, has taken up the same kind of practices, and that one demon here and another there contrives outbreaks of evil; I withdrew into myself and sought how I might be able to discover the truth. While I was pondering what was worthwhile, I happened to come upon certain barbarian writings, too old to be compared with the teachings of the Greeks, too divine to be compared with their error. And I came to be persuaded by them because of the unpretentiousness of their language, the artlessness of their writers, the easy intelligibility of their account of how all things were made, their foreknowledge of the future, the excellence of their precepts, and their teaching that one rules over all things. My soul being taught by God, I understood that the pagan writings lead to condemnation, but that these put an end to the slavery that is in the world, and rescue us from many rulers and ten thousand tyrants; and they give us, not what we had never received, but what we had received and were prevented by error from keeping.