, toward Christianity." This was written, of course, long after Gregory had become a Christian, and, indeed, about the very time that the Contra Celsum would be in progress. Not a little, therefore, in the work which would seem to beg the question, as against an enemy, becomes an eloquent development, as toward those who already believed. And this remark will be found not unimportant in explaining more passages than one.
The attack of Celsus is that of a clever, well-informed, travelled man. It is to be feared that we cannot call him a well-meaning one. The extra-ordinary impudence of one or two of the leading sophisms and a general tone of rancor and rabidness, very different from the politeness of Numenius and Porphyry, seem to force the conclusion that we are dealing with a man who ought to have known better but whose heart had been hardened by the world and the flesh. He goes over a large variety of topics, is not at all remarkable for order (as his opponent complains), and repeats himself more than once. Several German writers have published accurate accounts of his philosophic tenets, as far as they can be ascertained. For the present, in order to arrive at some definite knowledge of the sort of people who opposed Christianity from the time of S. Clement to the Decian persecution, we shall present Celsus in a few of the chief characters that he assumes in his onslaught on Christianity. For he is very many-sided in his anxiety to get at all the vulnerable points of his enemy, and perhaps it might be said that his memory is not so good as a polemic's memory ought to be, and that he contradicts himself once or twice. At any rate he acts with some success more parts than one.
The Scoffer was a character in which Celsus had the advantage of a few recent traditions. Perhaps the thorough pagan scoffer, who really laughed at Christianity because he believed it deserved to be laughed at, was rather out of date. But Lucian (and he may have known Lucian) could have let him see how a man of genius may scoff impartially at religion in all its shapes. Celsus was not a scoffer of this latter sort. Either he was really too conscientious, or else he instinctively hated Christ more than Zeus, and therefore tried to ridicule and crush the former, while he waived hostilities against the latter. The scoffer, as impersonated by him, is a decent, lawfearing citizen, who is quietly engaged in doing his duty to society and making what he can out of the queer problem called Life, when suddenly a man that calls himself a Christian bursts in upon his calm existence with the intelligence that he must believe in a person called Christ, or expect to burn everlastingly. Of course, the first thing the amazed Gentile does is to think the man mad. His second, and more charitable idea, which is the result of some little inquiry and of a comparison of notes with other amazed acquaintances at the bath and the theatre, is, that the obtrusive person is an adherent of a new and peculiar sect of philosophers. He, therefore, resolves to examine the tenets of these philosophers with the serene impartiality of one who sets small store by any tenets of philosophy. He finds that their doctrines are not new, but most of them quite old—the immortality of the soul and a future life, a rather strait-laced verbal morality, and so on; ideas which many respectable philosophers have held, and do hold. But is there any reason in the world for making such a parade, and noise, merely because another philosopher, called Christ, has chosen to teach them also? How impertinent, absurd, and unpleasant it is for these people, instead of keeping their doctrines to the schools, to force them with threats upon practical men! Of course, practical men and good citizens do not regard them. If the gods do interfere in the concerns of the earth [{783}] (a doctrine which Celsus, in his character of scoffer, is inclined to waive rather than to admit), why all this indispensable dogmatism about a Son of God? Let it be enough that we do admit that there is a God, who in some way is supreme; as sensible people you can demand nothing more. We call him Zeus; you call him the Most High, Sabaoth, Adonai, or what else you please, just as the Egyptians call him Ammon, and the Scythians, Pappaeus. Doubtless you talk of miracles; so do all these new-fangled sects, but they mean in reality Egyptian magic. You appeal, moreover, to your intellectual teaching; we know about that also: no sect is good for much in these days which does not hang on to the skirts of Plato. Besides, what is this we hear about disputes among yourselves? This makes the absurdity of the thing better still! The Jews say the Messiah is to come; the Christians declare he has come. Pray, which are we to believe? On what side are we solemnly to arrange ourselves in this momentous dispute about a donkey's shadow? Why, here we have a squadron of bats—or an army of ants swarming from their nest—or a congress of frogs in solemn session on the banks of their ditch—or a knot of worms assembled in full ecclesia in a corner of their native mud, in hot controversy which of the lot are the wickedest. We are the ones, they keep saying, to whom God has foreshown and announced all things; he has left the whole universe, the broad heavens, and the earth, to look after themselves, and makes his laws for us alone; to us alone he sends his heralds, and us he will never cease to prompt and to provide for, that we may be united with him for ever. He is God; and we are next to him, as being his sons and like him in all things. We are lords of all things, earth, water, air, and stars; on our account is everything, and all is ordained to minister to us. If some of us sin, God will come, or he will send the Son, to burn up the wicked, that the rest may live with him eternally. One could listen to worms and frogs going on in this fashion with more composure than to you Jews and Christians.
It is not Origen's object to prove directly the importance of Christianity. He says that it was no barbarous system of doctrine, and challenges any philosopher, fresh from the teachings and the schools of Greece, to come and examine it. "He will not only pronounce it true," he says, "but he will work it up into a logical system, and will be able to supply it with a complete demonstration, even to a Greek. But I must also add this: our doctrine has a certain method of demonstration peculiar to itself, and far more divine than any that the Greeks have in their schools. It is that which the apostle calls the demonstration of spirit and of power; of spirit, that is, by prophecies, which abundantly prove our whole system, especially those parts of it which concern Christ; of power, by the miracles which can be shown to have taken place among us, and traces of which still remain among those who live according to the will of the Word." And as Christianity was now well known to the whole world, to scoff at it either for its insignificance or its absurdity seemed very foolish: it was a standing fact, and challenged examination. This is partly taken for granted partly incidentally expressed throughout the reply. But the impudent scurrility of the passage about the bats, frogs, and worms, rouses Origen's indignation. "The Jews and the Christians," he says, "because they hold dogmas which Celsus does not approve, and which he does not seem to be very well acquainted with, are worms and ants, are they? The peculiar opinions in which the Jews and Christians differ from other men, are not unknown to the world. If a man, therefore, feels inclined to call a part of his fellow-men worms and ants, I will show him whom to call so. The men who have lost the true knowledge of God, whose religion is all a sham—the worshipping [{784}] brute beasts and graven stocks, and lifeless matter—creatures whose beauty should have led them to glorify and adore their Creator—these are the worms and ants. But those who, led on by reason, have risen above stocks and stones, above silver and gold, and everything material; who have risen above this whole created universe unto him that made all things; who have confided themselves wholly to him; who recognize him almighty over every creature, seeing every thought and hearing every prayer; who send up their prayers to him only, doing all that they do as though he saw it, and speaking all their words that none may be displeasing to him who heareth them all—these, surely, are men; nay, if it were possible, more than men. They may have, been worms once, but shall not such religion
as this, that no trials can shake, no danger, not even death itself, destroy, no persuasiveness of words overcome, be their shelter against such jibes for the future? What! shall they who restrain the appetites that make men soft and yielding as wax—and restrain them because they know that by continence alone they can obtain familiarity with God [Footnote 208]—shall they be called the brothers of worms and the kindred of ants and the near neighbors of frogs? Forbid it Justice! glorious Justice, that gives social rights to fellow-men, that guards the equitable, the humane, and the kind—forbid that such men as these should be likened to birds of night! Call those worms of the slime, who wallow in lust—the common herd of men, who do evil and call it right—but surely not those who have been taught that their bodies, inhabited by the light of reason and the grace of the omnipotent Lord, are the temples of the God whom they adore.'" It is a subject that warms him, and he pursues it at some length. He does not imitate the scurrility and abusiveness of his adversary, though he must have been sorely tempted sometimes, to say some plain things about paganism. Celsus shows all the liveliness of language of a man who carries on a personal quarrel. He is not above calling his enemies "drunken" and "blear-eyed;" he hardly takes the trouble to mention that they are irrational fools; and for a specimen of his more fanciful bad language the passage quoted above will suffice. Origen sometimes complains of this, as well he may. He says that Celsus "scolds like an old woman," that he shouts calumny like the lowest of a street-mob, and, as a sort of climax, that he reminds him of a couple of "women slanging each other in the street." But the scoffer and the reviler is after all not our philosopher's favorite rôle. Perhaps he will show better as the man of intellect.
[Footnote 208: The expression of the contemporary Platonists.]
The man of intellect has a face of severely classic mould, whereon sits normally a thoughtful frown, as though he were ever asking himself the reason of things, varied by a pitying smile when he finds it necessary to recognize the existence of a non-intellectual being. His hands are very white, his pallium neat, his hair scented, and his whole appearance bespeaks him to be on the most distant terms with the profane multitude. When Christianity first had the bad taste to talk to him of penance and hell-fire, he did not deign to speak, but only scowled disgust; but in a century or two he began to see he must say something for his own credit. He therefore began to utter lofty sentences and to employ his smile of pity, though the early look of disgust was so very deeply printed on his countenance that it never afterward left him. This is the sum of his case:—"This foolish system called Christianity makes some little noise, it is true. But a philosopher has only to glance at it, to despise it. I have read and examined the books and writings of the sect; I have conversed with its learned men, and I find that it is essentially low, grovelling, and vulgar. It repudiates wisdom altogether; it formally forbids the educated, the learned, and the wise to be numbered among its [{785}] members. On the other hand, it energetically recruits its ranks from among the uneducated, the weak-headed, and the imbecile. These are the sort of men the Christian teachers declare to be most acceptable to their God, thus showing clearly that they have neither the ability nor the wish to make converts of any but the feeble-minded, common people, and country boors, slaves, women, and children. They are wary; they are like the quacks and cheap-jacks of the agora, who take care not to obtrude themselves upon those who could find them out, but show off before the children in the streets and the loitering house-slaves and an admiring mob of any fools they can collect. They are mean and underhand. You shall see, in a private house, your slave, your weaver, your sandal-maker, or your cloth-carder—a fellow wholly without education or manners, and silent enough before his master and his betters—the moment he finds himself alone with the children and the women, beginning to hold forth in marvellous style. Parents and preceptors are no longer to be obeyed, but he is to be believed implicitly; they are mad and doting, immersed in fatuous trifles, and incapable of seeing or doing what is really good, he alone can impart the secret of virtue; let the children believe him, and they will be happy themselves and bring a blessing on the house. Meanwhile, let father or tutor make his appearance, he mostly gets frightened and stops; but if he be a determined one, he just whispers in parting, that children of spirit should not submit to parental tyranny; that he has much to explain which the presence of others will not allow him to utter; that he cannot bear the sight of the folly and ignorance of such corrupted and lost men, who moreover are seeking every pretext for punishing him; finally, that if the dear children want to hear more, they must come, with the women and as many of their companions as they know of, into the women's apartment, or into the carding-room or the leather-shop—and so he contrives to get hold of them."
Perhaps there was nothing in Christianity that disgusted the philosophers so much as the fact that it went out after the poor, the lowly, and the sinful, and offered them a share in all that it could teach or promise. That the common herd had no need and no right to philosophy was an accepted tenet with the new Platonists. The passage just quoted is interesting; through its transparent misrepresentation we can see the poor man and the slave, in the second century, in the actual process not only of having the gospel preached to them, but also actively preaching it as well as they could to others. The sophism of Celsus, that Christians prefer fools and sinners for converts, therefore they must be all a foolish and wicked set, must have been stale, we may hope, by the time Origen undertook to answer it. He enters into the whole accusation, however, and refutes, almost word for word, the whole of what we have just given and more to the same purpose.