Against Celsus 1.21

for this is the view of Celsus and the Epicureans. "Moses," he says, "having heard this teaching that was current among the wise nations and eminent men, gained a name for divine inspiration." To this too we must say—granting him that Moses heard an older teaching and handed it on to the Hebrews—that if he heard a false teaching, neither wise nor venerable, and accepted it and handed it on to those under him, he is blameworthy; but if, as you say, he assented to wise and true doctrines and educated his own people by them, what has he done that deserves accusation? Would that Epicurus, and Aristotle, who is less impious than he about providence, and the Stoics, who said that God is a body, had heard this teaching! Then the world would not have been filled with a teaching that sets providence aside, or cuts it short, or introduces a corruptible, bodily first principle, according to which even God is a body for the Stoics, who are not ashamed to say that he is changeable, altered and transformed throughout, and in a word able to perish if there is something to destroy him, but fortunate enough not to perish because there is nothing to destroy him. But the teaching of Jews and Christians, which preserves the unchangeableness and unalterableness of God, is thought impious, because it does not join in impiety with those who hold impious views about God, saying in its prayers to the Divine: "But you are the same." And God is believed to have said: "I have not changed."