CHAPTER ONE. When I saw you again enslaved to sundry and empty rites, and held fast by your ancient error, I was astounded at the sight; and because you have always loved songs, answering you in song I hastened to write verses, that I might rebuke you for preferring darkness to light. For who could endure that you should believe the Great Mother can be called a goddess, and again should think she must be worshipped — she whose worshippers a foul infamy brands? For those same priests, in women's tunics, confess by their inner adornment their inner rite; and they think that lawful which is not lawful; whence throughout the world they walk mincingly, speaking with softened voice, and hold their loins loosened with outstretched thumb, and change their own sex by a crime made common. And when they celebrate their rites, on these days they recount themselves to be chaste;
but if only then, as they claim, they are chaste, what are they for the rest of the time? Yet because they are compelled to be chaste at least once, they rage in mind, they tear their body, and pour out gore. What sacred rite is that in truth, which is offered under the name of blood? CHAPTER TWO. Now too you say that it was not your age that made you do it. But your religion has made you bald, and, with the Gallic boot removed, your feet are wreathed round with soft papyrus. A thing wondrous enough, and cast down from the highest summit. If any Consul should proceed from the temple of Isis into the city, there will be laughter on every mouth. But who would not laugh at you, who were a Consul, now to be a minister of Isis? And what shames you in the first office does not shame you in the second; and to condemn your own genius through base hymns, while the crowd answers you and the Senate tears you.
And that you, painted in your own house before with the fasces, now also with the sistrum should bear a dog-faced countenance. This is not humility, but the image of humility. Those monuments will remain forever in your dwelling. A public rumour has come even to our ears, that you said: 'Goddess, I have erred, forgive me, I have returned.' Tell me, if you please, when you so often asked such things and begged pardon, what words did she speak with you? Truly you are out of your mind, who follow those who are out of their mind. These things you repeat again, nor do you perceive that you transgress. See what you deserve; perhaps you would be less to be marked, if you knew only this and remained in this error; but when you have entered the doors of the truth-worshipping law, and it has fallen to you within a few years to know God, why do you keep what must be left, or why do you leave what must be kept?
And you worship nothing while you worship all things; nor do you weigh in your heart what truths differ from falsehoods, what lights differ from shadows. You feign yourself a philosopher, while opinion sways you; for if the popular breeze but stirs your stomach, you will even be a Jew, and be held wholly uncertain. Indulge my words: lofty wisdom does not please you. Everything that is excessive falls out to the contrary; both heat and cold work one thing: thus this, thus that, burns; thus darkness takes away sight, thus the opposing sun; and equally the cold and the boiling bath do harm; food nourishes the body, food corrupts the body; and it lessens its own force, if anything is protracted beyond measure. In short, if you sit, rest is a great relief from labour: if you sit too long, it is labour. For the poet Maro set it down for a punishment:
'He sits, and forever will sit, the unhappy Theseus.' A useful thing, prolonged, always does harm; long feasts harm, long fastings weary. So to be over-wise makes a fool of one through a wicked sect. Thus the goddess taught me, she said, 'a lovable moderation.' But you care neither for the sect nor for the moderations. Yet a mind steadfast is overturned by no surge, and simplicity itself never devises any evils. Hence sincere faith shall enjoy eternal fidelity; and, on the contrary, guile shall be tortured by a long fire. Choose what you will, that you may shun worthy expiations. Yet let the Creditor, I say, deserve this pardon: that it will be a light crime if you are unwilling to know the truth; it will be no light crime if you forsake the truth once known. But perhaps ripe old age recalls you, corrected, to better things, sated with these errors:
for time changes evils, time disposes of all things. Then therefore, when considered age has led you back, learn to keep faith with God, lest perchance you incur one and the same fall twice; for that saying is truly spoken: he who, having stumbled his foot, knows not to avoid the stone a second time, and, incautious, has again bruised his limbs, let him impute it to himself, and not impute it to any chances. Correct your fault by trust, correct your mind. It has sufficed to sin once; cease to be afraid: he shall not be in guilt whom it repents to have been so before.