THE TESTIMONY OF PAGAN UNBELIEVERS IN THE SECOND CENTURY.

SECTION FIRST.

THEIR WRITINGS.

211. Tue first enemies of Christianity, in order to find subjects of accusation, applied themselves to the study of the Scriptures, boasting that they should thus “destroy it with its own weapons;” and by this attempt they have supplied us, even in their most violent writings, with a splendid acknowledgment of our collection, and of the authority, already established, which it enjoyed in their time throughout all the churches. “All these things, which we object to you,” said the Jew of Celsus, ὁ Κέλσου, (a Jewish opponent whom Celsus brings forward as speaker in his famous book against Christianity,)¹ — “all these things we take from your own Scriptures, (ταῦτα μὲν οὗν ἐκ τῶν ὑμετέρων συγγραμάτων;) and, fortified by these quotations, we have no need of any witnesses against you but yourselves; for you will thus fall into your own snare, (αὐτοὶ γὰρ ἑαυτοῖς περιπίπτετε.)”

The writings of these ancient adversaries exist no longer; but many of the works composed to refute them having come down to us furnish an unanswerable testimony; and, under this form, we may say that the ancient defenders of the gospel have, perhaps, been of more service to it by their quotations than by their arguments. In this way almost all the objections of Celsus are reproduced by Origen; many of those of Amelius by Eusebius; and of those of Porphyry by Jerome and Chrysostom.

As Amelius and Porphyry belong rather to the third century, we shall speak here only of Celsus, who flourished in the first half of the second century, under the reign of Hadrian — that is to say, from 117 to 138.

SECTION SECOND.

TESTIMONY OF CELSUS.

212. Celsus (or rather Kelsos) was an Epicurean philosopher, full of burning hatred against the Christians. He knew how to wield with much vigour and ability all the weapons of argument and ridicule to disparage their leader, their doctrine, and their Scriptures. Origen, in his eight books against Celsus,² has made us acquainted with his writings without informing us of his exact _ age, or the place of his residence. We only know that he was more ancient than the famous unbeliever, Lucian of Samosata, who lived under the Antonines, and who dedicated to him one of his dialogues. Kirchhofer,³ depending on a passage in which Celsus seems to him to speak of Marcion,⁴ would place him later in the second century than we have done; but it is a mere conjecture on his part. Marcion is not named in the passage.

213. The testimony which Celsus bears to the canon of the Gospels is of very great weight from its remote age. Chrysostom, fifteen hundred years ago, directed the attention of the men of his times to the homage paid by this unbeliever to our sacred books. “Admire,” he says, in his sixth homily on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, “how early the gospel has been propagated in all parts of the habitable globe; for Celsus, and after ‘him, Porphyry, who have spoken so much against us, are sufficient _ witnesses of the antiquity of our sacred, books, (ἱκανοί . . . . τὴν ἀρχαιότητα μαρτυρῆσαι τοῖς βιβλίοις.)”

Thus it came to pass that this opponent, at the beginning of the second century, like Voltaire and the English Deists in the eighteenth, through his hatred of the Scriptures, set himself to study in a certain manner their character and contents. The way in which he has spoken of our four Gospels, and of no other, evidently shews, Kirchhofer⁵ observes, that he not only knew them under this title, but attributed them to the disciples of Jesus, and that, in his time, they were used universally in the Christian churches. He never makes an objection to their authenticity; and we may be sure that, however little it would have been possible to call it in question in his time, had there been the slightest ground for so doing, such a man would not have failed to seize with both hands so powerful a weapon. But it never entered his thoughts. On the contrary, as we have said, he boasts of quoting them “to beat the Christians with their own weapons.” In a word, the whole group of fragments preserved by Origen renders it in the highest degree probable that Celsus had read the collection of our four Gospels, and even that he had read no others. Thus not only Christians, but pagans themselves attest the universal dissemination of the sacred collection of the Gospels in the second century.

214. Celsus, in order to depreciate the character of Jesus, brings forward with great copiousness almost all the facts of His life; and the greater number of His words. The mere collection of these passages in Kirchhofer’s work fills twenty-three pages; and you may recognise there, by turns and exclusively, each of our four evangelists, as well as many passages of Paul’s epistles. And when he has cited all these facts of the birth, the life, the miracles, the discourses, the sufferings, the death, and resurrection of our Lord, he declares that he had taken them from the writings of the disciples of Jesus, (τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν μαθητῶν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ γραφεῖσιν.)⁶ “IT have taken them,” he says elsewhere, “from your own writings, (ἐκ τῶν ὑμετέρων συγγραμμάτων καθ’ ἁ καὶ ὑμεῖςσυγγεγράφατε.)”⁷

For example, he represents Jesus as being, according to our Scriptures, the pretended son of a virgin, announced by angels, adored by the Magi, flying into Egypt, baptized by John, beholding a dove descend at His baptism, &c., &e. He reproaches Him with having said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. of God;” with having said, “Behold the lilies of the field;” “behold the fowls of the air, they toil not, they spin not;” with having said, “If any one say to you, Christ is here, or he is there, believe him not;” with having said, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, we have cast out demons in thy name, and in thy name have done wonderful works,” &.; “but I shall say unto them, Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” “O Light, O Truth,” he exclaims, “hear Himself, — your own writings attest. it, — hear Him with His own voice, informing us that others, although wicked, will perform the same miracles!”

But more than this, Celsus, in order to disparage our Gospels and set them in contradiction to one another, evidently points out those of Matthew and Luke as opposed to one another in their genealogies;⁸ and elsewhere evidently alludes to the Gospel of John, describing how Christ shewed His disciples the scars in His hands and in His feet,⁹ — speaking of the blood that flowed from His side,¹⁰ of the earthquake and the darkness, reproaching Christians with calling Jesus the Son and Word of God, (ἐν τῷ λέγειν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ εἶναι αὐτολόγον,) and Christ with saying to His disciples,¹¹ “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you;” and again, “If ye are persecuted in one city, flee you to another.” “Wherefore didst thou flee hither and thither with thy disciples?” said the Jew of Celsus to Jesus. “Why, since a good general is never betrayed by his soldiers, nor even a brigand by the wretches of whom he is the chief — why did not Jesus gain from His disciples the same attachment?”¹² “Why did Jesus so bewail Himself in those words, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me”¹³ “Why did He suffer so much from thirst, which often men of no account endure?”¹⁴ “Why, when they offered Him gall and vinegar, did He swallow it with avidity?” “Why was He so ready to threaten and exclaim, ‘Woe to you! — I say unto you?’” “Why, O Jesus, hadst thou need in thy infancy of being warned by an angel, and carried into Egypt for fear of being killed?”

Lastly, Celsus marks equally all the four evangelists, when he opposes those who make one angel appear at the sepulchre (as - Mark and Matthew) to those who (as Luke and John) make two appear at it, (ὑπό τινῶν μὲν δύο, ὑπό τινῶν δὲ εἶς.)¹⁵ He even reproaches the Christians with making use of four; “for some of you believers,” he says, “like drunken men who strike themselves with their own hands, have out of the first writing (or scripture) recarved, and remodelled the Gospel three times, four times, and many times, that they may be able to refute arguments by denials.¹⁶

215. But yet Celsus has not confined his accusations to our four Gospels. He has extended them even to Paul’s epistles. He has spoken, for example, of the prophecies which, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians and in the first to Timothy, refer to the great apostasy of the last days. “I think,” says Origen, “that in these passages he has ill understood the apostolic language,” (on 1 Tim. iv. 2.)

Moreover, he reproaches Christians with injuring one another, while they are heard saying, “The world is crucified to me, and I unto the world,” (Gal. vi 14.) “Celsus,” says Origen,¹⁷ “cannot bring forward these words but as a remembrance from Paul’s epistles, (τοῦτο γὰρ μόνον ἀπὸ τοῦ Παύλου ἔοικε μεμνημονεοκέναι ὁ Κέλσος.)” “But I pass,” Origen says elsewhere,¹⁸ “to another accusation of Celsus, where, misunderstanding the Scriptures, he reproaches us with saying that what is wisdom among men is folly before God; while Paul has simply said, (1 Cor. iii. 19,) ‘The wisdom of this world is folly before God.ʼ” And in another place, making an allusion to 1 Cor. viii. 11, he reproaches Christians for their conduct in reference to meats offered to idols. “Hear,” says Origen,¹⁹ “these words of Celsus. See his dilemma: ‘Tf these idols are nothing, what is there so terrible (τὶ δεινόν) in taking part at our public festivals? And if there are really certain demons, then they are evidently demons of God, to whom you ought to give faith and homage according to the laws, and whom you ought to invoke to render them propitious.” “It will be useful,” Origin adds, “to explain here the whole of the passage in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians on things sacrificed to idols.”

SECTION THIRD.

FORCE OF THIS TESTIMONY.

216. Let us stop here to consider carefully the whole force of the testimony rendered so near the death of St John to the canon of our sacred books. Observe, then, how this Voltaire of the second century confutes, without intending it, the men who attempt in the nineteenth to raise doubts against the existence of the canon in the second. Observe how he shews these doubts to be absurd, since he employs against the Christians their own weapons — these “Scriptures” — “Scriptures composed,” he affirms, “by the disciples of Jesus” — those which all the world received as such, and on which the whole edifice of their faith was built — those of which no one, either among friends or foes, ever called in doubt the apostolic authenticity — those which were read every Sunday in all the churches throughout the world. Let any one only read the scriptural quotations of Celsus, all taken only from Origen’s “Refutation.” He will be struck with the irresistible power of this involuntary testimony, and tempted to say in his turn to these enemies of the Christians, (οὐδενός ἄλλον μάρτυρος κρήζομεν) “We need no witness against you, O Celsus, but yourself!” And we have no need of other witnesses against your unbelieving brethren of the nineteenth century than yourself at the beginning of the second!

These quotations of Celsus, which might be easily multiplied, will suffice,²⁰ then, to prove abundantly the universal reception and authority of our sacred books in the first years of the second century, and, of course, their promulgation at a much earlier period; for Celsus everywhere assumes this anteriority. Our sacred books are represented to be as old as the Christian Church. Celsus indicates not the slightest suspicion that it could be otherwise. The idea of calling in question their authority in the Christian Church, and their universally acknowledged authenticity, does not occur to his thoughts, for it could not then have entered any one’s mind; and his hatred has recourse to very different accusations. Here are your Scriptures, on the contrary, he said in other words, you cannot deny them; the very disciples of your Master are their writers; but if I admit with you their apostolic authenticity, I shall proceed to point out to you their contradictions, their immoral sentiments, their notions borrowed from Plato, and their impossibilities. We see, then, that Celsus stoutly repudiates the whole modern system of attack by unbelievers against our canon: he shews them that it is destitute of all historic value, and that they must change it. And mark well, it would have been a more potent weapon for Celsus than all others against Christianity in its infancy and in its future, could he have raised the slightest doubt of the authenticity of our books; it would have overturned our religion from its foundation. But this weapon could not by any possibility be then used. The idea of employing it never occurred to Porphyry, to Amelius, or to Julian. And yet this thought of calling in question the authenticity of our sacred books, and the agreement of all the churches in the world to receive them, would have offered itself so much better to the hatred of Celsus, than if the twenty-two homologowmena were everywhere and always uncontroverted from the apostolic times. This was not the case with the five short late epistles, for the question respecting these books was not entirely decided, and the Christian teachers still studied it in a spirit of mutual respect, forbearance and peace. It does not signify. You find in no part of the Church a trace of doubt as to the first canon — its origin — its authority — the universal confidence it obtained — the continual use made of it by the churches in all their assemblies for worship. Certainly, then, it must be affirmed, if we had only the True Discourse (Λιγος Ἀληθής) of Celsus, or, rather, the fragments preserved by Origen, we should still be obliged to conclude from it that, at the beginning of the second century, the Christians had long been in possession of a sacred collection of books, attributed to the apostles by their enemies themselves, and already made in all their churches the standard of their faith and the rule of their life.

We now pass on to the heretics — their testimony will be still more explicit; and this proof will be so ample that it will appear to surpass even that of the fathers, and that furnished by the enemies of the Church, fer we shall listen to witnesses more ancient than either Justin Martyr or Celsus.

1) His Λόγος Ἀληθής. The book has been lost, but copious citations are to be found in Origen’s “Refutation of Celsus.”

2) The best edition is Spencer’s; Cambridge, 1658; 4to. We generally quote from the Benedictine edition of Origen’s works; 4 vols. folio, 1733-1759.

3) Quellensammlung, &c., p. 331.

4) Origen against Celsus, book ii., ch, xxvii., (Opp., tom. i.)

5) Quellensammlung, &c., pp. 330, 333, 349.

6) Origen, Contra Celsum, ii., 74

7) II., 49, 74.

8) II., 32

9) II., 55.

10) II., 36-59.

11) I., 70.

12) II., 12.

13) II., 24.

14) II., 37.

15) V., 56.

16) II., 27, Μεταχαράττειν ἐκ τῆς πρώτης γραφῆς τὸ Ε’ΥΑΓΓΕΆΙΟΝ τριχῆ καὶ τετραχῆ καὶ πολλαχῆ καὶ μεταπλάττειν, ἱν’ ἐχοιεν πρὸς τοῖς ἐλέγχοις ἀρνεῖσθαι.

17) V., 64.

18) VI., 12.

19) VII., 24,

20) See Celsus himself in the collection of the Benedictines, p. 71, note 1.