-" When Orpheus revealed the sacred ceremonies to unknown men, he demanded nothing else from those he initiated at the first threshold except the necessity of silence, and he insisted with terrible authority of religion that the religions discovered and composed should not be revealed to profane ears. Moreover, the Platonists often met frequently with me, believing that my continuous discourse was sometimes to be imparted to the unlearned regarding the reverend commentary of secret discussions. For all these things endure loss when they are imposed upon lost and desperate souls. Pythagoras and our Porphyry also believe that our soul is consecrated to silence in a religious way. "
" Therefore, I, having pursued the law of these men, gather you by oath, O our glory of Mauortus, through the maker of the world, God, who has cultivated all necessities of everlasting existence, who formed the Sun and the Moon, who arranged the courses and orders of all stars, who confined the waves of the sea within certain land boundaries, who ignites fire for the eternal substance of divine perpetuity, who supports the land located in the middle with equal moderation, who has composed all humans, wild beasts, birds, and all kinds of living creatures with the majesty of divine art, who waters the earth through perennial springs, who causes the breath of winds to vary with a certain moderation of necessity, who, for the creation of all four elements, perfected everything with a diversity composed of opposites and conflicts, and by the descent and ascent of the soul, through the immortal order of eternal perpetuity, has established the motion of the earth's rising and setting."
" Let not these revered writings be imparted to profane or unlearned ears, but to those whom an incorruptible spirit has initiated into the true order of living, protected by a chaste and modest mind; whose unblemished faith, whose hands are separated from all crime and wickedness, who are pure, modest, sober, and adorned with the bright splendor of a clear mind, so that the integrity of knowledge and divination may insinuate itself. Therefore, receive all that has been collected with careful reasoning, and since we have made this agreement under the solemnity of an oath, receive what we have sent to you with the greatest trepidation of spirit. "
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