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Hortatory Address to the Greeks
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Chapter 8: The Age, Inspiration, and Harmony of Christian Educators.
SINCE: therefore, it is impossible to learn anything true about religion from your teachers, who, by their mutual disagreement, have provided sufficient proof of their own ignorance, I consider it reasonable to turn to our ancestors, who have a great precedence in time over your teachers. They taught us nothing from their own personal ideas, nor did they disagree or try to undermine each other's positions. Instead, without arguing or contending, they received from God the knowledge that they passed on to us. It is neither by nature nor by human thought that people can know things so great and divine; it is by the gift that descended from above upon the holy men. These men had no need for rhetorical skill or for speaking contentiously, but only to present themselves pure to the energy of the Divine Spirit. Thus, the divine influence itself, coming from heaven and using righteous men as instruments like a harp or lyre, revealed to us the knowledge of divine and heavenly things. Therefore, as if with one mouth and one tongue, they have successively and harmoniously taught us about God, the creation of the world, the formation of man, the immortality of the human soul, the judgment after this life, and all things necessary for us to know, providing us with divine instruction at different times and places.