 He acknowledges that these practitioners existed in Athens (and thus presumably in other Greek cities), and they had to be reckoned with and controlled by laws; but one should not be afraid of them, their powers are real, but they themselves represent a rather low order of humanity.An early Christian analogy is found in the 1st century CE writings of the Apostle Paul.Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians conceptualizes the idea of a limitation of spiritual gifts.