Chapter XVIII.—Answer to the Egyptians.

“Wherefore answer them thus:  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.  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.  And with diverse judgments, one reverences one and another of the limbs of the same animal.  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.  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.  For it is not necessary to apply a plaster to a whole part of the body, but to a diseased part.  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.