Against Celsus 6.20

For to those able to hear, he plainly presents sensible things, calling them “things that are seen,” and names the intelligible things, grasped by the mind alone, “things that are not seen.” He also knows that sensible and “seen” things are “temporary,” but intelligible and “unseen” things are “eternal”; and wishing to attain the contemplation of these, helped by his longing for them, he considered every affliction as nothing and light. Even in the very time “of affliction” and labours he was in no way weighed down by them, but made every hardship light through his contemplation of those things. For we too have “a great high priest,” great in the greatness of his power and his mind, “who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” who has promised to lead on to what is beyond the world those who have genuinely learned divine things and lived worthily of them; for he says: “that where I am going you also may be.” For this reason we hope, after the labours and struggles here, to come to the summits of the heavens, and, having received according to the teaching of Jesus springs “of water welling up to eternal life,” and having taken in rivers of contemplation, to be with the waters said to be “above the heavens,” which praise “the name of the Lord.” And as long as we praise him, we shall not be carried round by the revolution of the heaven, but shall always be engaged in the contemplation of the invisible things of God, no longer understood by us “from the creation of the world through the things that are made,” but, as the genuine disciple of Jesus put it when he said, “but then face to face,” and, “When the perfect comes, what is in part will be done away.”