Against Celsus 3.59

Then after this Celsus, perceiving that he had reviled us rather bitterly, says something like this, as if defending himself: “That I make no more bitter charge than the truth compels, let anyone judge from the following. Those who invite people to the other mysteries proclaim beforehand: ‘Whoever has clean hands and wise speech’; and others again: ‘Whoever is pure from all defilement, and whose soul is conscious of no evil, and who has lived well and justly.’ And those who promise purifications from sins proclaim these things. But let us hear whom these people invite. ‘Whoever is a sinner,’ they say, ‘whoever is without understanding, whoever is a child,’ and, to put it simply, ‘whoever is wretched, him the kingdom of God will receive.’ Do you not mean by the sinner the unjust man, the thief, the housebreaker, the poisoner, the temple-robber, the grave-robber? Whom else would a robber invite by proclamation?” To this we say: it is not the same thing to call those sick in soul to healing and to call the healthy to the knowledge and understanding of more divine things. And we, knowing both these things, at first, inviting people to be healed, exhort sinners to come to the teachings that teach them not to sin, those without understanding to the teachings that produce understanding, children to rise in mind to manhood, and the simply wretched to happiness, or, to speak more properly, to blessedness. But when those of the exhorted who make progress show that they have been purified by the word and, as far as they can, have lived better, then we call them to our mysteries; “for we speak wisdom among the perfect.”