Against Celsus 3.63

Then, not understanding in what sense it is said, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,” and not having been taught even by Plato that the noble and good man walks “humble and well ordered,” and not knowing either that we say, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time,” he says: “Men who rightly preside over justice stop those who lament their crimes from making pitiful speeches, so that they may not judge from pity rather than from truth; but God, it seems, judges not by truth but by flattery.” What flattery, and what pitiful speech, is there in the divine Scriptures, when the sinner says in his prayers to God, “I made known my sin, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, I will confess my iniquity against myself to the Lord,” and so on? Can he show that such a thing does not turn sinners back when they humble themselves before God in their prayers? And confused by his eagerness to accuse, he contradicts himself: in one place showing that he knows of a sinless and righteous man who looks up to God with virtue from the beginning, in another accepting what we say, “What man is perfectly righteous, or who is without sin?” For he says as if accepting it: “This is fairly true, that the human race is somehow naturally inclined to sin.” Then, as though not all were called by the word, he says: “Then they ought simply to call all, if indeed all sin.” But in what precedes we showed that Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” All men, then, because of the nature of sin, “laboring and heavy laden,” are called to the rest with the Word of God; for God “sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions.”