Against Celsus 8.20

Some of the righteous, then, are carbuncle, others sapphire, others jasper, others crystal; and so the righteous are every kind of choice and precious stone. The meaning concerning the stones and the account of their nature, and to what kind of souls the name of each precious stone can be applied, it is not the present occasion to explain; we needed only to recall briefly the meaning of our temples and of the one temple of God made of precious stones. For just as, if people prided themselves over others on what are considered temples in their respective cities, those who thought highly of the more precious temples would mention the special features of their own to refute the inferior ones; so, against those who accuse us because we do not think the divine must be worshipped in senseless temples, we set our temples beside theirs and show, at least to those who are not senseless nor like their senseless gods, that there is no comparison between our images and the images of the nations, nor between our altars and what we may call our incense and their altars and their savour of fat and blood; nor between the temples we have described and the temples of senseless gods, admired by senseless men who have not even imagined the divine sense by which one perceives God and his images, temples, and altars fitting for God. It is not, then, as a token of a secret and forbidden association, nor as any such token, that we avoid setting up altars, images, and temples, but because, having found through the teaching of Jesus the way of piety toward the divine, we avoid what, by a semblance of piety, makes impious those who have strayed from the piety that comes through Jesus Christ; who alone is the “way” of piety, truly saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”