Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 4

We are not atheists; I will answer each charge so that it does not become laughable for our accusers to leave us unrefuted. The Athenians reasonably charged Diagoras with atheism, not only because he publicly recited the Orphic account, plundered the mysteries of Eleusis and the Cabiri, and chopped up a wooden statue of Heracles to boil his gourds, but also because he declared outright that no god exists at all. Yet we distinguish God from matter, showing that matter is one thing and God another, with a great gulf between them: the divine is uncreated and eternal, perceived only by mind and reason, while matter is created and perishable. Is it not unreasonable, then, for them to pin the label of atheism on us? If we thought like Diagoras, despite possessing such abundant pledges of piety — the world's order, its universal harmony, its size, color, shape, and disposition — it would be fitting for the charge of impiety and the cause of our contempt to stick. But our reason presents one God as the maker of this entire universe, a God who has not come into being (since what truly exists does not become, but what does not exist does), and who made all things through the reason that proceeds from him. For this we suffer unreasonably, are slandered, and are persecuted.