Against Celsus 8.52

For we too, primarily because of the many and countless things that have persuaded us to live according to Christianity, wish as far as we can to win all men to the whole teaching of Christians; but where we find people prejudiced by the slander against Christians, so that they do not even lend their ears to those who profess to teach the things of the divine Word, imagining that Christians are not even pious, there, out of love for mankind, we take our stand as far as we can, so that at least by establishing the doctrines about eternal punishment for the impious we may make even those unwilling to be Christians accept that teaching. So too about those who have lived well we wish to produce conviction, seeing that even those alien to the faith say much the same as we do about many things belonging to a sound life; for one would not find anyone who has entirely lost the common notions of what is noble and shameful, just and unjust. Let all men, then, seeing the world and the ordered motion in it of the heaven and of the stars in the fixed sphere, and the order of those called planets that move contrary to the motion of the world; seeing also the tempering of the air for the benefit of animals and especially of men, and the abundance of what has been created for the sake of men, beware of doing anything displeasing to the Creator of the universe and of their souls and of the mind in them; and let them be persuaded that they will be punished for their sins, and brought, in proportion to their good deeds or duties duly performed, by him who administers each according to desert, to rewards proportionate to their good deeds or duties duly performed; and let all men be persuaded that the good will fare well for their better deeds, while the wicked will be handed over to pains and torments for their injustices, their licentiousness, and their intemperance, and further for their cowardice and faint-heartedness, and for all their folly.