3. But He did not permit men to make supplication to the lesser gods. Do you, then, know who are, or where are the lesser gods? Has mistrust of them, or the way in which they were mentioned, ever touched you, so that you are justly indignant that their worship has been done away with and deprived of all honour? But if haughtiness of mind and arrogance, as it is called by the Greeks, did not stand in your way and hinder you, you might long ago have been able to understand what He forbade to be done, or wherefore; within what limits He would have true religion lie; what danger arose to you from that which you thought obedience? or from what evils you would escape if you broke away from your dangerous delusion.
Reproduced in full. Translation: Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6 (Roberts and Donaldson, 1886), public domain (Public domain).