Against Celsus 3.56

See, then, in these words too, how he disparages those among us who teach the word and try in every way to raise the soul to the Creator of the universe, showing that we must despise all things of sense, temporary and visible, and do everything to attain communion with God and the contemplation of intelligible and invisible things, and a blessed life with God and with those who belong to God; he compares them to wool-workers in houses, cobblers, fullers, and the most boorish of men, who summon mere infant children and silly women to base things, so that they may leave father and teachers and follow them. From what sober-minded father, or from what teachers who teach more holy things, do we draw away children and women? Let Celsus show it, and let him compare, in the case of the children and women who come to our teaching, whether any of the teachings they heard were better than ours, and in what way we draw children and women away from beautiful and holy studies and summon them to worse. But he will not be able to show such a thing against us. On the contrary, we draw women away from licentiousness and from the perversion that comes from their companions, and from all mania for the theater and for dancing, and from superstition; and we bring to self-control boys just reaching puberty and swelling with sexual desires, setting before them not only the shamefulness of such sins but also the state in which the soul of the wicked will be because of such things, what penalties it will pay, and how it will be punished.