Against Celsus 6.40

After this he seems to me to do something like those who, out of great hatred of Christians, assure people who know nothing of Christian teaching that they have found out by experience that Christians eat the flesh of children and freely have intercourse with the women among them. For just as these charges are now condemned, even by the many who are wholly strangers to our religion, as slanders against Christians, so these statements of Celsus too would be found to be slanderous, where he said that he had seen among certain presbyters of our faith barbarous books containing names of demons and marvels; and he said that these men (so-called presbyters of our faith) promise nothing good but everything for the harm of men. I wish that everything Celsus says against Christians were of this sort, so that it might be refuted by most people, who have learned by experience that such things are false, since they have lived among very many Christians and have never even heard anything of the kind about them.