Against Celsus 3.39

We must consider what Celsus says next, in which he says that faith, having taken possession of our soul beforehand, produces in us such assent concerning Jesus. It is true that faith produces such assent in us; but see whether faith itself does not at once show what is praiseworthy, when we entrust ourselves to the God over all, giving thanks to the one who guides us to such faith and saying that he did not dare and accomplish so great a thing without God. And we trust also the intentions of those who wrote the Gospels, judging from their piety and conscience, which show in their writings, which have nothing spurious, gambling, fabricated, or crafty. For it is evident to us that souls which had not learned such things as are taught by the crafty sophistry among the Greeks, with its great plausibility and sharpness, and by the rhetoric that rolls about the law courts, could not have invented things able of themselves to lead to faith and to a life in keeping with that faith. I think that Jesus wished to use such men as teachers of his doctrine for this reason: so that no suspicion of plausible sophisms should have any room, but it should be brilliantly evident to those able to understand that the guilelessness of the writers' intention, which had much, so to speak, simplicity, was deemed worthy of a more divine power, which achieves much more than elaborate speech, composition of phrases, and a chain of argument with divisions and Greek technical rules seem able to achieve.