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| Chapter XLVIII
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Chapter
XLVIII.
Celsus, moreover, unable to resist the miracles
which Jesus is recorded to have performed, has already on several
occasions spoken of them slanderously as works of sorcery; and we also
on several occasions have, to the best of our ability, replied to his
statements. And now he represents us as saying that “we
deemed Jesus to be the Son of God, because he healed the lame and the
blind.” And he adds: “Moreover, as you assert,
he raised the dead.” That He healed the lame and the blind,
and that therefore we hold Him to be the Christ and the Son of God, is
manifest to us from what is contained in the prophecies:
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the
deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man leap as an
hart.”3318
And that He
also raised the dead, and that it is no fiction of those who composed
the Gospels, is shown by this, that if it had been a fiction,
many individuals would have been represented as having risen
from the dead, and these, too, such as had been many years in their
graves. But as it is no fiction, they are very easily counted of
whom this is related to have happened; viz., the daughter of the ruler
of the synagogue (of whom I know not why He said, “She is not
dead, but sleepeth,” stating regarding her something which does
not apply to all who die); and the only son of the widow, on whom He
took compassion and raised him up, making the bearers of the corpse to
stand still; and the third instance, that of Lazarus, who had been four
days in the grave. Now, regarding these cases we would say to all
persons of candid mind, and especially to the Jew, that as
there were many lepers in the
days of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was healed save Naaman the
Syrian, and many widows in the days of Elijah the prophet, to none of
whom was Elijah sent save to Sarepta in Sidonia (for the widow there
had been deemed worthy by a divine decree of the miracle which was
wrought by the prophet in the matter of the bread); so also there were
many dead in the days of Jesus, but those only rose from the grave whom
the Logos knew to be fitted for a resurrection, in order that the works
done by the Lord might not be merely symbols of certain things, but
that by the very acts themselves He might gain over many to the
marvellous doctrine of the Gospel. I would say, moreover, that,
agreeably to the promise of Jesus, His disciples performed even greater
works than these miracles of Jesus, which were perceptible only to the
senses.3319
| 3319 ὧν
᾽Ιησοῦς
αἰσθητῶν. | For the eyes
of those who are blind in soul are ever opened; and the ears of those
who were deaf to virtuous words, listen readily to the doctrine of God,
and of the blessed life with Him; and many, too, who were lame in the
feet of the “inner man,” as Scripture calls it, having now
been healed by the word, do not simply leap, but leap as the hart,
which is an animal hostile to serpents, and stronger than all the
poison of vipers. And these lame who have been healed, receive
from Jesus power to trample, with those feet in which they were
formerly lame, upon the serpents and scorpions of wickedness, and
generally upon all the power of the enemy; and though they tread upon
it, they sustain no injury, for they also have become stronger than the
poison of all evil and of demons.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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