To one converted from the Christian religion to the servitude of idols. When I saw you once again enslaved to diverse and empty rites and held fast in your old error, I was astonished and stirred. Because you have always loved songs, replying in song I hastened to write these lines, that I might rebuke you for preferring darkness to light. For who could endure that you believe the Great Mother can be called a goddess, and again think she must be worshipped, whose devotees a foul infamy brands? For her priests, in women's tunics, confess by their outward dress the same inward vice, and think permitted what is not permitted; whence through the city they walk daintily, speaking in softened voice, and hold their slackened loins with thumb outstretched, and by a notorious crime change their very sex.
And when they celebrate their rites, they claim that on these days they are chaste; so that, if only then they are chaste, as they assert, then for the rest of the time what are they? But because they are compelled to be modest at least once, they rage in mind, they tear their bodies and pour out blood. What kind of sacred thing is that, where what is offered truly bears the name of blood? Now too I have learned that it was not age that made you bald, but your religion; and that, your soldier's boot removed, a Gallic sandal is on your feet, bound with soft papyrus: a thing astonishing enough, and cast down from the highest peak. If a consul should step forth into the world from the rites of Isis, the world would laugh; but who would not laugh at you, who were a consul, now to be a minister of Isis?
And what is shameful the first time, you are not ashamed to be a second time, and to condemn your own talent with base hymns, while the crowd responds to you and the senate tears at you; and that you, once painted in your own house with the fasces before you, now also bear a dog's face with the sistrum. This is your humility, and the image of humility! Those monuments will remain forever in your house. A public rumor has reached even our ears that you said: 'Goddess, I have erred; forgive me, I have returned.' Tell me, if you can: when you so often asked such things and begged pardon, what words did she speak with you? Truly you are out of your mind, you who follow those out of their minds. You repeat these things again and do not perceive that you are sinning: consider what you deserve. Perhaps you would be less to be censured, if you only knew this and remained in this error;
but when you have entered the doors of the truth-revering Law, and the knowledge of God came to you within a few years, why do you keep what should be left, or why do you abandon what should be kept? And you worship nothing, while you worship everything; nor do you weigh in your heart how the true differs from the false, how light is distant from shadow. You play the philosopher, while opinion sways you: for if a popular anger stirs your bile, you will even be a Jew, and you are driven about wholly uncertain. Bear with my words: lofty wisdom does not please you. Everything that is excessive falls to its opposite. Heat and cold work one same effect; thus this, thus that, burns; thus darkness, thus the contrary sun, takes away sight, and a tepid and a scorching bath alike do harm. By food the body is nourished, by food the body is corrupted, and it lessens its own strength if anything is stretched too far.
In short, if you sit down, there is great rest from labor; if you sit too long, it becomes labor; for the poet Maro set it as a punishment: 'There sits, and forever shall sit, unhappy Theseus.' What is useful always harms when prolonged: long meals harm, long fasts weary. So too excessive wisdom makes one foolish. 'A wicked sect,' you say; 'thus the goddess taught me; she spoke of lovable moderation.' But you care neither for the sect nor for moderation. Yet a steadfast mind is overturned by no tide, and simplicity itself never devises any evil. Hence sincere faith will enjoy an eternal dwelling, while deceit, on the contrary, will be tortured in long-lasting fire. Choose what you will, that you may escape the punishments you deserve. Yet in such a way may the believer obtain this pardon, I say:
as it will be a light fault if you are unwilling to know the truth, it will be no light fault if you abandon the truth once known. But perhaps ripe old age, when you are corrected and sated with these errors, will recall you to better things; for time changes things, time disperses all evils. Then therefore, when considered age has brought you back, learn to keep faith with God, lest perchance you fall twice into the one and the same lapse; for that saying is truly spoken: he who does not know how to avoid a second time the stone on which his foot has stumbled, and incautiously injures his limbs again, let him blame himself, and not blame any chance. Correct your fault by faith, correct your mind; it was enough to sin once. Cease to fear: he will not be in fault who repents of having been so before.