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character of a Jew, thus allows the reality of his works: "Let us grant that these things were wrought by thee.” "After making this concession, however, he proceeds," says Origen, class them with such wonders as were produced by the arts of magic; though," adds he, “this very Celsus, who here seems to allow the truth of the magical arts, wrote several books to prove their falsehood ;" an assertion which, though advanced with some hesitation, is confirmed by Lucian, who, in his Pseudomantis, compliments his Epicurean friend, as being the author of very elegant and useful commentaries against the magicians.*

Here, then, we see that Celsus had taken pains to shew that nothing truly miraculous could be produced by the influence of the magical arts; and yet he resolves the supernatural works of Jesus into those arts as their proper cause. But how are we to account for an inconsistence so glaring and disingenuous? We can account for it only in the following manner. The works of Christ were too notorious, and too generally believed, even in the age of Celsus, to be contradicted with effect.

Φερε πιςεύσωμεν είναι σοι ταύτα ειργασμένα

αρα επεί ταυτα ποιουσιν εκεινοί, δεήσει ἡμας αυτους ἡγεῖσθαι VIOUS EIVAL JEOU. Origen. Contra Cels. p. 53. See Lucian's Works, vol. ii. p. 229. or Pseudomantis, 21.

Celsus, therefore, allows them to be true: but in order to preclude the necessary conclusion, that the author was the messenger of heaven, or the Son of God, he admits what in other circumstances he had disproved, that the devotees of magic performed similar, and yet greater, wonders, and then puts this specious question, "Inasmuch as the magicians do the same things, are we to regard them too as sons of God?" The conduct. then of this base and artful enemy of the christian faith may be thus briefly stated-He allowed those artifices to be true, which he himself had demonstrated to be false, in order that he might be thence furnished with a specious plea for rejecting as false, those miracles which he well knew to be true. Celsus, we may well suppose, was not the first to have recourse to this argument. It must have been necessarily adopted by the enemies of the gospel in Egypt, when they first heard the signs, which our Saviour exhibited, attested by men who, in company with thousand others, had seen them with their own eyes the light of day. How was the testimony of credible eye-witnesses, to facts, which were universally believed, to be set aside, but by such artifices as that, to which Celsus, in after times, had recourse, and which is thus noticed by Philo. "Men of this sort, being unable to perceive the intellectual light, through the weakness of their

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understanding, the eye of which is necessarily dazzled by its excessive brightness, disbelieve (as if they lived in continual darkness) the things which have been seen in the clearest light, thinking them to be mere prodigies or appearances not unlike the wonders which jugglers perform, to excite astonishment."

4. Our eloquent apologist complains in the next place, that their adversaries branded as fugitives men who remained in the midst of society, acting the honorable part of citizens, and filling even the offices of magistrates and governors; they also stigmatized as slaves men, whose families for ages had been distinguished by rank, learning and fortune: on the other hand, they complimented as citizens such persons as were known to have been slaves, and not only that, but to have been persons that lay under the sentence of death in their respective countries, on account of their crimes. This is a remarkable fact, and is thus to be accounted for. In Rome and Alexandria the enemies of the gospel, from mere enmity, countenanced those who shewed most zeal and ability in opposing it. In this class stood conspicuously Simon the magician, Apion, and Helicon, who, though slaves, were men of learning, but who obtained their freedom, by prostituting their youth and their talents to the base desires of their opulent masters. The

people of Alexandria, leaving these circumstances in the shade, affected to extol as virtuous and honorable citizens the distinguished enemies of the new faith; while they endeavoured to bring, on the other side, to a level with slaves and vagabonds, those who were most eminent in the support of it. The indignant language of Philo shews how unfairly his adversaries acted, and how widely they deviated from justice and truth, in their attempts to degrade the Jews and their We have here, moreover, the testimony of a competent judge to a fact of great consequence to be known, namely, that all the Jews or Egyptians, who embraced the faith, were not led by mistaken notions, or forced by calumny and persecution to leave the respectable stations which they had previously filled; but that many of them continued at their posts, as Epaphroditus did in the court of Nero, discharging the most honorable functions of citizens and magistrates.

cause.

5. The gospel was a blessing, addressed in a peculiar manner to the poor, and it was embraced by a much greater proportion of the poor than of the rich and mighty and such of the rich as embraced it voluntarily became poor, having sold their property, and laid it at the feet of the apostles, or distributed it in charity to their more indigent brethren. For these reasons the Jewish converts were generally called EBIONITES, a

name first applied by their enemies, as expressive not of their peculiar opinions as a sect, but of their meanness in society. To the reproach which was thus attached to them, the apostle Paul alludes, when he enumerates the several ignominious points of light, in which he and his fellow labourers were placed by their enemies; " As unknown though well known; as deceivers yet true; as dying, and behold we live; as severely treated, yet not destroyed; as sullen, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet enriching many." 2 Cor. vi. 8, 9.

While the early believers were thus stigmatized for their poverty, many of them were charged with over-grown wealth. This charge, in some instances, was not without foundation : for certain impostors, assuming the mask of faith, entered the christian church in hopes to enrich themselves, by the unsuspecting generosity of its members; and what might be true, in regard to a few individuals, was indiscriminately alleged by their adversaries as a crime, of which all were guilty. These inconsistent charges Philo has noticed; and he repels them with that high toned eloquence and indignation, which a great and good man is apt to display when called, in a trying emergency, to plead the cause of suffering innocence. "Is it not," says he, "irrational and replete with impudence, or madness, or some

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