Celsus
Kelsos or Celsus, as quoted in Origen’s Contra Celsum):
In private homes we see woolworkers, cobblers, handy workers and the most illiterate and bucolic yokels, who would not dare to say anything at all in front of their elders and more intelligent masters. But whenever they get hold of children in private and some stupid women with them, they let out some outstanding statements as, for example, that they must not pay any attention to their father and school teachers, but must obey them; they say that these talk nonsense and have no understanding, and that in reality they neither know, nor are able to do anything good, but are taken up with empty chatter. But they alone, they say, know the right way to live, and if the children would believe them, they would become happy and make their home happy as well. And if just as they are speaking they see one of the schoolteachers coming, or some intelligent person, or even the father himself, the more cautious of them flee in all directions; but the more reckless urge the children on to rebel. They whisper to them that in the presence of their father and their schoolmasters they do not feel able to explain anything to the children, since they do not want to have anything to do with the silly and abstruse teachers who are totally corrupted and far gone in wickedness and who inflict punishment on the children. But, if they like, they should leave father and their schoolmasters, and go along with the women who are their playfellows to the wooldresser’s shop, or the cobbler’s, or the washerwoman’s shop, that they may learn perfection. And by saying this they persuade them. [6]
Source: TW
Lafcadio Hearn
(Japan, 1893 — from Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, p. 104):
The missionary started in, of course, by giving money to children. Some children refused it with scorn. The papers published their names. And a merchant, reading the same in some distant city, sent to one of the children,—a little girl,—a pretty
silk handkerchief, and a letter full of commendations and of good advice.104 LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
Source: TW
The passage is also quoted in full in secondary articles discussing Japanese resistance to Christian missionaries (e.g., IndiaFacts.org, 2018).