Against Celsus 3.68

But that the order, composition, and style of philosophical discourses should have produced such effects in the men named above, who had otherwise lived badly, is not very surprising. But when we consider the words which Celsus calls those of common people, filled with power as if they were incantations, and see these words exhorting multitudes all at once to pass from licentiousness to the most stable life, from injustice to goodness, and from cowardice or unmanliness to such steadfastness that they despise even death for the sake of the piety that has appeared in them, how shall we not justly marvel at the power in them? For “the word” of those who first proclaimed these things and labored to establish churches of God, and also their “preaching,” came with persuasiveness, yet not such persuasiveness as is found in those who profess the wisdom of Plato or of some other philosopher, who were men and had nothing but human nature. The demonstration in the apostles of Jesus, given by God, was persuasive by “the Spirit and power.” That is why their word, or rather the word of God, ran most swiftly and keenly, changing through them many of those by nature inclined and accustomed to sin, whom no man could have changed even by punishment; but the word transformed them, shaping and molding them according to its own will.