Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily X/Chapter 18

Chapter XVIII.&#8212;Answer to the Egyptians.

&#8220;Wherefore answer them thus:&#160; You lie, for you do not worship these things in honour of the true God, for then all of you would worship every form; not as ye do.&#160; For those of you who suppose the onion to be the divinity, and those who worship rumblings in the stomach, contend with one another; and thus all in like manner preferring some one thing, revile those that are preferred by others.&#160; And with diverse judgments, one reverences one and another of the limbs of the same animal.&#160; Moreover, those of them who still have a breath of right reason, being ashamed of the manifest baseness, attempt to drive these things into allegories, wishing by another vagary to establish their deadly error.&#160; But we should confute the allegories, if we were there, the foolish passion for which has prevailed to such an extent as to constitute a great disease of the understanding.&#160; For it is not necessary to apply a plaster to a whole part of the body, but to a diseased part.&#160; Since then, you, by your laughing at the Egyptians, show that you are not affected with their disease, with respect to your own disease it were reasonable I should afford to you a present cure of your own malady.