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| Chapter LXIII
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Chapter
LXIII.
And since Celsus has termed the apostles of Jesus
men of infamous notoriety, saying that they were tax-gatherers and
sailors of the vilest character, we have to remark, with respect to
this charge, that he seems, in order to bring an accusation against
Christianity, to believe the Gospel accounts only where he pleases, and
to express his disbelief of them, in order that he may not be forced to
admit the manifestations of Divinity related in these same books;
whereas one who sees the spirit of truth by which the writers are
influenced, ought, from their narration of things of inferior
importance, to believe also the account of divine things. Now in
the general Epistle of Barnabas, from which perhaps Celsus took the
statement that the apostles were notoriously wicked men, it is recorded
that “Jesus selected His own apostles, as persons who were more
guilty of sin than all other evildoers.”3193
And in the Gospel according to Luke,
Peter says to Jesus, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful
man.”3194
Moreover,
Paul, who himself also at a later time became an apostle
of Jesus, says in his Epistle
to Timothy, “This is a faithful saying, that Jesus Christ came
into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.”3195
And I do not know how Celsus should
have forgotten or not have thought of saying something about Paul, the
founder, after Jesus, of the Churches that are in Christ. He saw,
probably, that anything he might say about that apostle would require
to be explained, in consistency with the fact that, after being a
persecutor of the Church of God, and a bitter opponent of believers,
who went so far even as to deliver over the disciples of Jesus to
death, so great a change afterwards passed over him, that he preached
the Gospel of Jesus from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, and was
ambitious to carry the glad tidings where he needed not to build upon
another man’s foundation, but to places where the Gospel of God
in Christ had not been proclaimed at all. What absurdity,
therefore, is there, if Jesus, desiring to manifest to the human race
the power which He possesses to heal souls, should have selected
notorious and wicked men, and should have raised them to such a degree
of moral excellence, that they became a pattern of the purest virtue to
all who were converted by their instrumentality to the Gospel of
Christ?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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