Against Celsus 4.28

And since he has made the Christians, whom he regards as worms, say that “God, abandoning the heavenly motion and disregarding the vast earth, governs for us alone, and makes proclamations to us, and does not cease sending and seeking how we may be with him forever,” it must be said that he attributes to us what we do not say, we who read and know that God loves all things that exist and abhors nothing that he has made; for he would not have fashioned anything if he hated it. We have read too: “You spare all things, for they are yours, O lover of souls; for your incorruptible Spirit is in all things. Therefore you correct little by little those who fall, and admonish them by reminding them of the things in which they sin.” How can we say that God, abandoning the heavenly motion and the whole world and disregarding the vast earth, governs for us alone, we who have found that in our prayers we must say, with understanding, that “the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,” and that “the mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh,” and that God, being good, “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust,” urging us to similar things so that we may become his sons, and teaching us to extend our good deeds to all men as far as we can? For he himself is called “Savior of all men, especially of believers,” and his Christ is said to be “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” Perhaps some of the Jews might say, not the things Celsus recorded, but some other unlearned things; but not the Christians, who have been taught that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” And yet “one will scarcely die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone might even dare to die.” But now Jesus, who by a custom traditional in these Scriptures is also called the Christ of God, is proclaimed to have come for sinners everywhere, so that they may leave sin and entrust themselves to God.