The Gods Taught Their Worshipers Vice

In the old days, for example, women used to sit out in the temples of Phoenicia, dedicating to the gods there the wages of their bodies. They thought they won their goddess’s favor by sexual immorality, and that this would gain them her goodwill. Men, denying their nature and no longer wishing to be male, took on the appearance of women, believing that by this they were pleasing and honoring the Mother of their so-called gods. But all of them live alongside the basest, and compete with the worst among themselves. As Paul, the holy minister of Christ, said: “For their women changed the natural use into what is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men with men committing what is shameful.” [a]

But by acting in these and similar ways, they admit and prove that the life of their so-called gods was of the same kind. For from Zeus they have learned the corruption of youths, and adultery; from Aphrodite, sexual immorality; from Rhea, debauchery; from Ares, murders; and from other gods other such things, which the laws punish and which every sober man turns away from. Is it still fitting, then, to count as gods those who do such things, instead of reckoning them, for the debauchery of their ways, more unreasoning than the animals? Is it fitting to count their worshipers as human beings, instead of pitying them as more unreasoning than the animals and more soulless than lifeless things? For if they had considered the thinking part of their souls, they would not have plunged headlong into these things, nor have denied the true God, the Father of Christ.