"these rituals . . . bring into play only the cosmic powers, themselves the first to have fallen from grace".

lmschairman.org

     "The fact is that these rituals, which, all of them, are the only really concrete reality of the mysteries, the rest being only insubstantial daydreams about them, bring into play only the cosmic powers, themselves the first to have fallen from grace, as the Gospels will say.  How, then, could the finest promise of these mysteries—the murmur, probably, of the pitiful priests of Attis:  'mystics, take courage, for if the god is saved, there is also an end to your pain'—how could this fail to appear derisory?  For only the Christian Mystery, its content attested to by the Word of the creative God coming down, not falling down, to our level to restore us, or rather to raise us up to his, only this could rescue us from the cosmic cycle of those rebirths, which only set travellers in motion again towards death, and open to us, once for all, the way to the only true immortality, that of the eternal God."

     Louis Bouyer, The Christian mystery:  from pagan myth to Christian mysticism, trans. Illtyd Trethowan (Edinburgh:  T & T Clark, 1990), chap. 5, p. 74.
     The quotation is (though Bouyer does not say so here) from Iulius Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum 22.1, and is translated by Bouyer (or Trethowan) with "if" rather than (as often elsewhere) "since":

     θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσμένου·
     ἔσται γὰρ ὑμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία.

CSEL 2, ed. C. Halm (1867), p. 112.  The variant readings present in CSEL 2 are ΘΑΡΡΙΤΕ ΜΙΣΤΕ and ΕΣΤΕ.  But check also the 1982 edition ed. R. Turcan.