1. In this sixth book which we are beginning in reply to Celsus' attack on Christianity it is not our intention, pious Ambrose, to wrestle in it against the opinions he expresses which are derived from philosophy, as some one might perhaps suppose. For Celsus has quoted several passages especially from Plato, comparing them with extracts from the holy scriptures such as could impress an intelligent person, saying that these ideas have been better expressed among the Greeks, who refrained from making exalted claims and from asserting that they had been announced by a god or the son of a god. We say that it is the task of those who teach the true doctrines to help as many people as they can, and as far as it is in their power to win everyone over to the truth by their love to mankind—not only the intelligent, but also the stupid, and again not just the Greeks without including the barbarians as well. It is a very excellent thing if someone is able to convert even the most stupid and uneducated yokels. Obviously, therefore, when such teachers speak they have to take pains to use a type of vocabulary that will help everybody and can command a hearing with anyone. On the other hand, all those who have abandoned the uneducated as being low-class and incapable of appreciating the smoothness of a literary style and an orderly description, and who pay attention only to people educated in learning and scholarship, confine what should be of benefit to the community to a very narrow and limited circle.