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| Chapter XL
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Chapter XL.
Next to the remarks of Celsus on which we have
already commented, come others which he addresses to all Christians,
but which, if applicable to any, ought to be addressed to persons whose
doctrines differ entirely from those taught by Jesus. For it is
the Ophians who, as we have before shown,4778
| 4778 See book vi. cap.
xxx., etc. |
have utterly renounced Jesus, and perhaps some others of similar
opinions who are “the impostors and jugglers, leading men away to
idols and phantoms;” and it is they who with miserable pains
learn off the names of the heavenly doorkeepers. These words are
therefore quite inappropriate as addressed to Christians:
“If you seek one to be your guide along this way, you must shun
all deceivers and jugglers, who will introduce you to
phantoms.” And, as though quite unaware that these
impostors entirely agree with him, and are not behind him in speaking
ill of Jesus and His religion, he thus continues, confounding us with
them: “otherwise you will be acting the most ridiculous
part, if, whilst you pronounce imprecations upon those other recognised
gods, treating them as idols, you yet do homage to a more wretched idol
than any of these, which indeed is not even an idol or a phantom, but a
dead man, and you seek a father like to himself.” That he
is ignorant of the wide difference between our opinions and those of
the inventors of these fables, and that he imagines the charges which
he makes against them applicable to us, is evident from the following
passage: “For the sake of such a monstrous delusion, and in
support of those wonderful advisers, and those wonderful words which
you address to the lion, to the amphibious creature, to the creature in
the form of an ass, and to others, for the sake of those divine
doorkeepers whose names you commit to memory with such pains, in such a
cause as this you suffer cruel tortures, and perish at the
stake.” Surely, then, he is unaware that none of those who
regard beings in the form of an ass, a lion, or an amphibious animal,
as the doorkeepers or guides on the way to heaven, ever expose
themselves to death in defence of that which they think the
truth. That excess of zeal, if it may be so called, which leads
us for the sake of religion to submit to every kind of death, and to
perish at the stake, is ascribed by Celsus to those who endure no such
sufferings; and he reproaches us who suffer crucifixion for our faith,
with believing in fabulous creatures—in the lion, the amphibious
animal, and other such monsters. If we reject all these fables,
it is not out of deference to Celsus, for we have never at any time
held any such fancies; but it is in accordance with the teaching of
Jesus that we oppose all such notions, and will not allow to Michael,
or to any others that have been referred to, a form and figure of that
sort.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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