22. If the Philosophers are not to be blamed for doing this, let us see whether Christians do not more than they, and to better purpose, endeavour to win multitudes to the love of the beautiful and good. The Philosophers who discourse in public make no distinctions in their choice of hearers; any one who likes stands and listens. But Christian teachers, so far as they can, first make trial of the souls of those who wish to hear them, and rejoice over them in private; then, when the hearers appear sufficiently earnest in their desire to lead a good life, they introduce them to the public assembly, having made a private list of those who are novices and catechumens, and have not as yet received the Sacrament of their cleansing, and another list of those who, as far as possible, show their determination to adopt Christianity to the exclusion of all else; and with these are associated certain officers appointed to inquire carefully into the lives and conduct of the candidates, so that they may prevent such as are guilty of infamous practices from coming to the public assembly, but may heartily welcome such as are different from these, and may day by day do them good. And they have a similar method in dealing with those who fall into sin, particularly such as are licentious, whom they, who, according to Celsus, resemble the market-place orators parading their infamous opinions, expel from the public assembly. The venerable school of the Pythagoreans used to set up kenotaphs to those who abandoned that philosophy, reckoning them as dead. But our Christian teachers |106 lament as dead, inasmuch as they are lost and dead to God, those who have been overcome by lasciviousness, or some other disgusting wickedness; and regarding them as risen from the dead if they manifest a considerable change, they afterwards receive them, though a longer interval is required than in the case of catechumens; they choose, however, to no office and administration in the Church of God those who soon lapsed after submitting to the Gospel.