Second Apology 13

For I myself too, when I learned that the evil demons had thrown a wicked disguise over the divine teachings of the Christians to turn other people away from them, laughed both at those who told these lies and at the disguise and at the opinion of the crowd. I confess that I both pray and strive with all my might to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are foreign to Christ's, but because they are not in every way the same, as neither are those of the others, the Stoics and poets and historians. For each of them, seeing what was akin to it by a part of the seminal divine Word, spoke well; but those who have contradicted themselves on the more important points evidently did not have the knowledge that cannot fail and the understanding that cannot be refuted. Whatever things, then, have been rightly said among all people belong to us Christians. For next to God we worship and love the Word who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since he also became man for our sake, so that by sharing in our sufferings he might also bring about their healing. For all the writers were able to see the realities dimly through the seed of the Word implanted in them. For the seed and imitation of something, given according to one's capacity, is one thing, and the thing itself, of which the participation and imitation come about according to the grace that is from him, is another.