2. But we must consider what Celsus says next. Amongst other things he tells us that "we are already under the influence of faith when we thus submit to Jesus." And in truth faith does effect this submission. Observe, however, whether the very act of faith does not exhibit something praiseworthy when we submit ourselves to God Who is over all, confessing our gratitude to Him Who has guided us to such a faith, and saying that He did not without God's help undertake and accomplish such a difficult task. And we believe also in the intentions of those who wrote the Gospels, as we mark the caution and |111 conscientiousness shown in their writings, and how they admit nothing spurious, hazardous, invented, or unscrupulous. For it strikes us that souls which knew nothing of the strange devices taught by the unscrupulous sophistry of the Greeks, and by the rhetoric bandied in the law-courts, could not thus invent incidents able of themselves to lead men to faith and to a life in keeping with their faith. And I suppose this was why Jesus wished to employ such teachers of His doctrines, that there might be no room to suspect them of plausible sophisms, but that they who are capable of understanding may see clearly that the writers' purity of intention with its, if I may so speak, great simplicity, was deemed worthy of Divine help, which accomplishes far more than diction, and composition, and right construction with its refinements and rules of Grecian art seems able to accomplish.