Epistle to Diognetus 3

1Next, I think you are especially eager to hear why they do not practice their religion in the same way as the Jews. The Jews, then, do well when they avoid the kind of worship described above and claim to reverence the one God of the universe and regard him as Master. But when they offer him worship by methods like those already mentioned, they are completely mistaken. For the Greeks display their foolishness by offering these things to senseless and deaf images. But the Jews, thinking that they are presenting them to God as though he needed them, should rightly consider this folly rather than religious worship. For he who made heaven and earth and everything in them, and who provides us all with what we need, cannot himself need any of the things that he supplies to those who imagine they are giving them to him. But those who think they can offer sacrifices to him with blood, fat, and whole burnt offerings, and honor him with such honors, seem to me no different from those who show the same respect toward deaf images. For the first group thinks it proper to make offerings to things unable to receive the honor, while the other makes offerings to one who needs nothing.