Closing words to Ambrose

With this, holy Ambrose, you have the completion of what you charged us to do, carried out with the power that we have and that was given to us. In eight books we have set down everything that we thought it fitting to dictate in answer to Celsus’s book entitled The True Doctrine. It is for the one who reads his treatise, and what we dictated against it, to judge which of the two breathes more of the true God, of the way of piety toward Him, and of the truth that reaches to men, the truth of sound doctrines that urge them on to the best life.

Know, however, that Celsus announces that he will write another treatise after this one, in which he promised to teach how those who wish to follow him, and are able to, ought to live. If, then, he did not write the second book, though he promised it, it would be well for us to be content with the eight books dictated in answer to his treatise. But if he began that one too and completed it, search for the work and send it, so that, dictating in answer to it also whatever the Father of truth may give us, we may overturn the false belief it contains, and, if something true is said anywhere, may bear witness to it without contention as something well said.