I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for a
theatrical prize, some wizard asked me what I would give him to win;
but I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered,
"Though the garland were of imperishable gold, I would not suffer a
fly to be killed to gain me it. " For he was to kill some living
creatures in his sacrifices, and by those honours to invite the devils
to favour me. But this ill also I rejected, not out of a pure love for
Thee, O God of my heart; for I knew not how to love Thee, who knew not
how to conceive aught beyond a material brightness. And doth not a
soul, sighing after such fictions, commit fornication against Thee,
trust in things unreal, and feed the wind? Still I would not
forsooth have sacrifices offered to devils for me, to whom I was
sacrificing myself by that superstition. For what else is it to feed
the wind, but to feed them, that is by going astray to become their
pleasure and derision?
Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted
without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to
pray to any spirit for their divinations: which art, however,
Christian and true piety consistently rejects and condemns.
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