Disputing The Philosophers

Tibi liquebat quanto haec nostra, id est, pietatis veritatisque praecepta, illis philosophorum praecepti debeant. In illis namque eorum praeceptis, vel adumbrata virtus, vel falsa sapientia; in his vero consummata justitia, solida veritas continetur. Unde licet dicere philosophiae alios nomen usurpasse, nos vitam. Etenim qualia ab his dari possunt praecepta vivendi? Causam neciunt. Ignorantes enim Deum, et statim ab exordio justitae declinantes, consequenti in caetera feruntur errore. Sic fit postea ut studiorum talium finis sit vanitas Si qui apud illos honestiora deficiunt, huic jactantiae deserviunt, huic laborant: ita apud eos non est vacua vitiis abstinentia vitiorum. Hic itaque sunt, sicut scriptum est, qui terrena sapiunt. Unde manifeste ostenditur veram eos justitiam, veram sapientiam non videre. Anne aliquis ex illa Aristippi schola veritatem videbit, qui ingenio suo a suibus aut pecore nihil differt, cum beatitudinem in corporis volupatte constituat: cui Deus venter est, et gloria in pudendis eius? Hic honestum justumque praecipiet, apud quem prodigus, impudicus, adulter philosophatur? Sanctus Eucherius Lugdonensis, Epistola Paraenetica ad Valerianum Cognatum, de Contemptu Mundi Source: Migne PL 50.724a-c

To you it should quickly become clear how much more our precepts are more pious and true than the precepts of philosophers. For in their precepts is but a shadow of virtue or a false wisdom, and in ours perfect righteousness and real truth. Whence it is permitted to say they but usurp the name of philosophy and ours is the life. For what sort of precepts for living are they able to give? They are ignorant of the cause, not knowing God, and instantly from the outset deviating from righteousness they consequently err in all the rest. So it turns out that the end of such studies is vanity. If any happened to attain to more noble ends in their labours, these but serviced boastfulness, and so for them a reduction of error was not an absence of vice. Thus these are, as it has been written, 'those who know the things of the earth.' 1 It is manifest that neither true righteousness nor wisdom was revealed to them. Can any one of the school of Aristippus contemplate the truth, those who differing neither in mind nor heart from one another, established happiness in corporeal pleasures, whose God is the stomach, and whose glory is shame? Can he teach justice and nobility to whom the prodigal man, the shameless man and the adulterous man are teachers of philosophy? Saint Eucherius of Lyon, Letter Of Exhortation To His Kinsman Valerian, On Contempt For the World 1 Phil 3.19