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| Chapter LXVI
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Chapter
LXVI.
Now here Celsus appears to me to have committed a
great error, in refusing to those who are sinners by nature, and also
by habit, the possibility of a complete transformation, alleging that
they cannot be cured even by punishment. For it clearly appears
that all men are inclined to sin by nature,3638
| 3638 [Let us note this in
passing, as balancing some other expressions which could not have been
used after the Pelagian controversy.] |
and some not only by nature but by practice, while not all men are
incapable of an entire transformation. For there are found in
every philosophical sect, and in the word of God, persons who are
related to have undergone so great a change that they may be proposed
as a model of excellence of life. Among the names of the heroic
age some mention Hercules and Ulysses, among those of later times,
Socrates, and of those who have lived very recently, Musonius.3639
| 3639 He is said to
have been either a Babylonian or Tyrrhenian, and to have lived in the
reign of Nero. Cf. Philostratus, iv. 12.—Ruæus. | Not only against us, then, did Celsus
utter the calumny, when he said that “it was manifest to every
one that those who were given to sin by nature and habit could not by
any means—even by punishments—be completely changed for the
better,” but also against the noblest names in philosophy, who
have not denied that the recovery of virtue was a possible thing for
men. But although he did not express his meaning with exactness,
we shall nevertheless, though giving his words a more favourable
construction, convict him of unsound reasoning. For his words
were: “Those who are inclined to sin by nature and habit,
no one could completely reform even by chastisement;” and his
words, as we understood them, we refuted to the best of our
ability.3640
| 3640 καὶ τὸ
ἐξακουόμενον
ἀπὸ τῆς
λέξεως ὡς
δυνατὸν ἡμῖν,
ἀνετρέψαμεν. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
