Against Celsus 1.10

Next, since they make much of what concerns faith, we must say that we, accepting it as useful for the many, admit that we teach those who cannot leave everything and pursue the examination of reason to believe even without reason; but they, while not admitting this, do it in practice. For who, when urged toward philosophy and throwing himself at random into some school of philosophers, or because he has found such-and-such a teacher, comes to it in any other way than by believing that that school is better? For he does not wait to hear the arguments of all the philosophers and of the different schools, and the refutation of these and the establishment of others, and then choose to be a Stoic, a Platonist, a Peripatetic, an Epicurean, or of any school of philosophers whatever. Rather, by some irrational impulse, even if they do not wish to admit it, they come to practice, say, the Stoic teaching, leaving the rest: despising the Platonic as humbler than the others, or the Peripatetic as most human and as admitting, more candidly than the other schools, the goods of human life. And some, disturbed at first encounter with the argument about providence by what happens on earth to the wicked and the good, have too hastily assented to the view that there is no providence at all, and have chosen the teaching of Epicurus and Celsus.