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| Chapter XXIII
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Chapter
XXIII.
After this, Celsus next asserts that “Those
herdsmen and shepherds who followed Moses as their leader, had their
minds deluded by vulgar deceits, and so supposed that there was one
God.” Let him show, then, how, after this irrational
departure, as he regards it, of the herdsmen and shepherds from the
worship of many gods, he himself is able to establish the multiplicity
of deities that are found amongst the Greeks, or among those other
nations that are called Barbarian. Let him establish, therefore,
the existence of Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses by Zeus; or of
Themis, the parent of the Hours; or let him prove that the ever naked
Graces can have a real, substantial existence. But he will not be
able to show, from any actions of theirs, that these fictitious
representations3114
of the Greeks,
which have the appearance of being invested with bodies, are (really)
gods. And why should the fables of the Greeks regarding the gods
be true, any more than those of the Egyptians for example, who in their
language know nothing of a Mnemosyne, mother of the nine Muses; nor of
a Themis, parent of the Hours; nor of a Euphrosyne, one of the Graces;
nor of any other of these names? How much more manifest (and how
much better than all these inventions!) is it that, convinced by what
we see, in the admirable order of the world, we should worship the
Maker of it as the one Author of one effect, and which, as being wholly
in harmony with itself, cannot on that account have been the work of
many makers; and that we should believe that the whole heaven is not
held together by the movements of many souls, for one is enough, which
bears the whole of the non-wandering3115
sphere from
east to west, and embraces within it all things which the world
requires, and which are not self-existing! For all are parts of
the world, while God is no part of the whole. But God cannot be
imperfect, as a part is imperfect. And perhaps profounder consideration will show,
that as God is not a part, so neither is He properly the whole, since
the whole is composed of parts; and reason will not allow us to believe
that the God who is over all is composed of parts, each one of which
cannot do what all the other parts can.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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