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
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. (The
Philocalia of Origen [trans. George Lewis; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1911],
105-6, emphasis added)
