Against Celsus 5.43

And what need is there to say how reasonable it is, and unjust neither to master nor to slave, that one who starts from the same doctrines may not be kept a slave for more than six years? The Jews, then, would not maintain their own law on the same grounds as the other nations. For it is blameworthy of them, and brings a charge of insensibility to the superiority of their laws, if they were to think them written in the same way as the others among the nations. And even if Celsus does not wish it, the Jews know something wiser, not only than the many, but also than those who seem to philosophize; because the philosophers, after their venerable words in philosophy, fall down before idols and demons, while even the least of the Jews looks to the God over all alone. And in this respect they rightly pride themselves and turn away from fellowship with others as defiled and impious. And would that they had not sinned by breaking the law, and first killed "the prophets" and later plotted against Jesus too, so that we might have an example of the heavenly city, which Plato too sought to describe, though I do not know whether he was as able as Moses and those after him proved to be, who nurtured "a chosen race" and "a holy nation," dedicated to God, with words pure of all superstition.