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| Chapter XXXVIII
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Chapter
XXXVIII.
He next represents Christians as saying what he
never heard from any Christian; or if he did, it must have been from
one of the most ignorant and lawless of the people.
“Behold,” they are made to say, “I go up to a statue
of Jupiter or Apollo, or some other god: I revile it, and beat
it, yet it takes no vengeance on me.” He is not aware that
among the prohibitions of the divine law is this, “Thou shalt not
revile the gods,”4922
and this is
intended to prevent the formation of the habit of reviling any one
whatever; for we have been taught, “Bless, and curse
not,”4923
and it is said that
“revilers shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”4924
And who amongst us is so foolish as to
speak in the way Celsus describes, and to fail to see that such
contemptuous language can be of no avail for removing prevailing
notions about the gods? For it is matter of observation that
there are men who utterly deny the existence of a God or of an
overruling providence, and who by their impious and destructive
teaching have founded sects among those who are called philosophers,
and yet neither they themselves, nor those who have embraced their
opinions, have suffered any of those things which mankind generally
account evils: they are both strong in body and rich in
possessions. And yet if we ask what loss they have sustained, we
shall find that they have suffered the most certain injury. For
what greater injury can befall a man than that he should be unable
amidst the order of the world to see Him who has made it? and what
sorer affliction can come to any one than that blindness of mind which
prevents him from seeing the Creator and Father of every
soul?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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