18. Nor was it this only, but they also built seminaries of the precepts of ungodliness both among the (country) people, and in the cities³¹. Instead of the precepts of righteousness, and those which were advantageous to the world ; and, instead of the doctrine which was pure, and the love of God; they received into the memory,—through the impious babblings of the poets, in which there were

corrupt recitations, and stories about their male and female deities,—passions filled with every thing shameful, as well as hard sufferings³², differing in nothing from (those of) mortal nature; (I say), through the instruction and study of the lying writings of the Dramatists, both tragic and comic, these things, corrupting and injurious (as they were) of life, they first sowed in their own souls, and afterwards in those of the young. And accordingly, (through) the iniquity, which was the first and last of every other,—which was, at once and entirely, that of all men, of Princes and Subjects, of the Sovereigns of nations, of Lawgivers, of Armies, of the Inhabitants both of villages and cities, among both Greeks and Barbarians;—the praise which was due, and was suitable to Him alone who is King of all, they perversely gave to that which was adverse (to Him), and called the demons that had corrupted them, (their) Gods ! They sang hymns moreover, to earthly and wicked spirits, to the inanimate elements, and to the sensible portions of the universe ! And (thus), the companies of the rational animals which were on the earth, rendered not the praise of the officiating priest; nor, with their brethren who are in heaven, the holy Angels and Divine Spirits,— those who praise the King of all,—did they render praise, the praise (I say) which is proper for such : but, on the contrary, they sang, both in their feasts and festivals, that which was foreign to propriety, and was unsuitable, to those seducing Spirits which had led the world astray ! To them, too they gave the honour of worship; insomuch,

that henceforth, the whole element of the earth, uniformly with all nations throughout the whole of creation, became nothing better than the vessel in the storm, whose entire and violent wreck in the extreme depths of perdition, is momentarily threatened!