Arnobius

“ If we were disposed to be very scrupulous in dealing with your assertions, we might prove by your own authority that he was by no means divine who had been conceived and born from a woman’s womb, who had by yearly stages reached that term of life at which, as is related in your books, a thunderbolt drove him at once from life and light. ”

“ That Æsculapius, whom you extol, an excellent, a venerable god, the giver of health, the averter, preventer, destroyer of sickness, is contained within the form and outline of a serpent, crawling along the earth as worms are wont to do, which spring from mud ”