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De Spectaculis, II. Against Marcion, I, 17. Ibid., V, 16. This is to justify his doctrine of the punishment of the heathen. Scapula, II. Against Celsus, I, 23. Plea for the Christians, XV, XVI. I, 5 and 6. Exhortation to the Heathen, X. Divine Institutes, III, 20. Chap. Treatise on the Anger of God, X. E.g., Stirling: Philosophy and Theology, p. 179. Trypho, III, IV. Stromata, V, 14.
Celsus could never have spoken it as a physician, had he not been a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one of the great precepts of health and lasting, that a man do vary, and interchange contraries, but with an inclination to the more benign extreme: use fasting and full eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like.
The Christian faith is assailed not only with scoffs of old as Celsus and Julian, but also with the keenest intellectual criticism of Divine revelation, the opposition of alleged scientific facts, and a Corinthian worldliness whose motto is "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." In many places Christian homes are dying out.
Six others Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Celsus are heretical or infidel writers whom we only know through notices or scraps of their works in the writings of the Christian Fathers who refuted them. The Epistle of the Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons is only in part preserved in the pages of Eusebius. The Canon of Muratori is a mutilated fragment of uncertain date.
Likewise, when in answer to the question as to what I should consider the most desirable discovery of the coming year in my department, I answered the discovery of the Sermo Verus of Celsus; this, too, appeared to be a work so little known, that the editors considered it necessary to add that Celsus was a renowned philosopher of the second century, who first subjected the ever spreading system of Christianity to a thorough criticism in a work entitled Sermo Verus.
Jerom speaking of the different manner which writers found themselves obliged to use, in their controversial, and dogmatical writings, intimates, that in controversy whose end was victory, rather than truth, it was allowable to employ every artifice which would best serve to conquer an adversary; in proof of which "Origen, says he, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, have written many thousands of lines against Celsus, and Porphyry: consider with what arguments and what slippery problems they baffle what was contrived against them by the spirit of the devil: and because they are sometimes forced to speak, they speak not what they think, but what is necessary against those who are called Gentiles.
Of the catastrophes which from time to time have visited our planet, and of the belief which has come to be entertained by ecclesiastics that the earth will be destroyed by fire, Celsus writes: "The belief has spread among them, from a misunderstanding of the accounts of these occurrences, that after lengthened cycles of time, and the returns and conjunctions of planets, conflagrations, and floods are wont to happen, and because after the last flood, which took place in the time of Deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude of all things, requires a conflagration; and this made them give utterance to the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing fire like a torturer."
12 If, after making his will, a testator alienates property which he has therein given away as a legacy, Celsus is of opinion that the legatee may still claim it unless the testator's intention was thereby to revoke the bequest, and there is a rescript of the Emperors Severus and Antoninus to this effect, as well as another which decides that if, after making his will, a testator pledges land which he had therein given as a legacy, the part which has not been alienated can in any case be claimed, and the alienated part as well if the alienator's intention was not to revoke the legacy.
On the other hand, Celsus is probably right in his account of the origin of rational medicine. "Some of the sick on account of their eagerness took food on the first day, some on account of loathing abstained; and the disease in those who refrained was more relieved. Some ate during a fever, some a little before it, others after it had subsided, and those who had waited to the end did best.
Celsus, fleeing from the terror of Nero, landed not far away to the east at Albaro, bringing with them the new religion. A lane leading down to the sea still bears the name of one of them, and, strangely as we may think, a ruined church marks the spot crowning the rock above the place, where a Temple of Venus once stood.
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