Against Celsus 4.59

For it is absurd that stones should be thought purer or more defiled than stones, and buildings than buildings, according as they have been built for the honor of the divine or to receive the most dishonorable and accursed bodies, while bodies should not differ from bodies according as their inhabitants are rational or irrational, and, among rational ones, according as they are the better people or the worst of men. Such a view has led some to dare to deify the bodies of eminent men as having received a good soul, and to cast out or dishonor those of the worst; not that such a thing has always been done soundly, but that it had its origin in a sound notion. Or will the wise man, after the death of Anytus and Socrates, care alike for the burial of the body of Socrates and that of Anytus, and build a similar monument or tomb for both? And we have said these things because of the phrase “of which none is the work of God,” the “of which” referring to the body of a man, or the serpents that come from the body, and to that of an ox, or the bees that come from the body of an ox, and to that of a horse or donkey, and the wasps from a horse and beetles from a donkey; on account of which we were compelled to take up again the statement, “The soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different.”