Against Celsus 5.1

Not pursuing the forbidden wordiness, from which one cannot escape "sin," we now begin a fifth book against Celsus's treatise, holy Ambrose, but trying as far as we can to let nothing he said pass unexamined, and especially those points where some might think he has accused us or the Jews shrewdly. And if it were possible to enter with our argument into the conscience of each and every reader of his treatise, and draw out every arrow that wounds one not fully protected by the whole armour of God, and apply a rational remedy to heal the wound from Celsus, which makes those who attend to his words not "sound in the faith," we would have done so. But since this is God's work, to come invisibly by his own Spirit, with the Spirit of Christ, to those to whom he judges he must come, while it is set before us, who try to make people believers through words and writings, to do everything in order to be called workmen who need not be ashamed, "rightly handling the word of truth," and one of these things seems to us to be to refute Celsus's plausible arguments as best we can, faithfully doing what you have commanded: come, let us set out what follows the words of Celsus that we have already answered (the reader will judge whether we have also overturned them), and add our reply to them. May God grant that we do not come to the task with a mind and word bare and stripped of divinity, "so that the faith" of those we pray may be helped "may not rest on the wisdom of men," but that, receiving "the mind of Christ" from his Father, who alone gives it, and helped toward sharing in the Word of God, we may pull down "every high thing raised up against the knowledge of God," and also the conceit of Celsus, raised up against us and against our Jesus, and further against Moses and the prophets; so that, as the one who gives "a word to those who proclaim the good news with great power" supplies it to us too and grants the great power, faith may come to those who will read, in the word and power of God.