Against Celsus 1.67

After this Celsus's Jew says, like some Greek fond of learning and educated in Greek culture: "The ancient myths, which ascribed divine birth to Perseus, Amphion, Aeacus, and Minos (we did not believe even them), nevertheless showed great and wonderful deeds of theirs, truly beyond human power, so as not to seem unconvincing. But you—what fine or wonderful thing have you done in deed or word? You showed us nothing, though we challenged you in the temple to produce some clear sign that you were the son of God." To this we must say: let the Greeks show us, of those listed, some deed useful to life, splendid, extending to later generations, and so great as to make plausible the myth about them that says they were born of divine seed. But they will show nothing even a little less than what Jesus presented, concerning the men about whom they wrote—unless the Greeks take us back to myths and their stories, wishing us to believe them without reason and to disbelieve these even after much evidence. We say, then, that the whole inhabited world of human beings holds the work of Jesus, in which dwell the churches of God, through Jesus, made up of those who have turned from countless evils. And still the name of Jesus removes mental derangements from human beings, and demons, and diseases too, and produces a wonderful gentleness and restraint of character, love of humanity, kindness, and mildness in those who have not feigned for worldly reasons or some human needs but have genuinely accepted the teaching about God and Christ and the judgment to come.