Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 4

We are not atheists. I will answer each accusation so that those who speak against us do not look ridiculous for failing to refute us. The Athenians reasonably charged Diagoras with atheism, not only because he published the Orphic story, divulged the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden image of Heracles to cook his gourds, but also because he declared outright that there is no god at all. But we separate God from matter and show 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. Do they not unreasonably call us atheists? If we thought like Diagoras, despite possessing so many pledges of piety—the order, the universal harmony, the size, the color, the shape, the disposition of the world—it would be reasonable for us also to have the reputation of impiety and to be despised. But since our reason leads to one God, the creator of this universe, who himself has not come into being (for what exists does not come into being, but what does not exist), and has made all things through his reason that is with him, we suffer unreasonably, and are spoken of badly, and are persecuted.