jeremiah

As we allege, however, that he has fallen into confusion in consequence of false notions which he has imbibed, come and let us point them out to the best of our ability, and show that although Celsus considers it to be a Jewish custom to bow down to the heaven and the angels in it, such a practice is not at all Jewish, but is in violation of Judaism, as it also is to do obeisance to sun, moon, and stars, as well as images. You will find at least in the book of Jeremiah the words of God censuring by the mouth of the prophet the Jewish people for doing obeisance to such objects, and for sacrificing to the queen of heaven, and to all the host of heaven. The writings of the Christians, moreover, show, in censuring the sins committed among the Jews, that when God abandoned that people on account of certain sins, these sins [of idol-worship] also were committed by them. For it is related in the Acts of the Apostles regarding the Jews, that “God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which you made to worship them.” And in the writings of Paul, who was carefully trained in Jewish customs, and converted afterwards to Christianity by a miraculous appearance of Jesus, the following words may be read in the Epistle to the Colossians: “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind; and not holding the head, from which all the body by joint and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.” But Celsus, having neither read these verses, nor having learned their contents from any other source, has represented, I know not how, the Jews as not transgressing their law in bowing down to the heavens, and to the angels therein.

In regard to the prophets among the Jews, some of them were wise men before they became divinely inspired prophets, while others became wise by the illumination which their minds received when divinely inspired. They were selected by Divine Providence to receive the Divine Spirit, and to be the depositaries of His holy oracles, on the ground of their leading a life of almost unapproachable excellence, intrepid, noble, unmoved by danger or death. For reason teaches that such ought to be the character of the prophets of the Most High, in comparison with which the firmness of Antisthenes, Crates, and Diogenes will seem but as child’s play. It was therefore for their firm adherence to truth, and their faithfulness in the reproof of the wicked, that they were “stoned; they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth, of whom the world was not worthy:” for they looked always to God and to His blessings, which, being invisible, and not to be perceived by the senses, are eternal. We have the history of the life of each of the prophets; but it will be enough at present to direct attention to the life of Moses, whose prophecies are contained in the law; to that of Jeremiah, as it is given in the book which bears his name; to that of Isaiah, who with unexampled austerity walked naked and barefooted for the space of three years. Read and consider the severe life of those children, Daniel and his companions, how they abstained from flesh, and lived on water and pulse. Or if you will go back to more remote times, think of the life of Noah, who prophesied; and of Isaac, who gave his son a prophetic blessing; or of Jacob, who addressed each of his twelve sons, beginning with “Come, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days.” These, and a multitude of others, prophesying on behalf of God, foretold events relating to Jesus Christ. We therefore for this reason set at nought the oracles of the Pythian priestess, or those delivered at Dodona, at Clarus, at Branchidæ, at the temple of Jupiter Ammon, or by a multitude of other so-called prophets; whilst we regard with reverent awe the Jewish prophets: for we see that the noble, earnest, and devout lives of these men were worthy of the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, whose wonderful effects were widely different from the divination of demons.

Celsus then extracts from the Gospel the precept, “To him who strikes thee once, thou shalt offer thyself to be struck again,” although without giving any passage from the Old Testament which he considers opposed to it. On the one hand, we know that “it was said to them in old time, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;” and on the other, we have read, “I say unto you, Whoever shall smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also.” But as there is reason to believe that Celsus produces the objections which he has heard from those who wish to make a difference between the God of the gospel and the God of the law, we must say in reply, that this precept, “Whosoever shall strike thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other,” is not unknown to the older Scriptures. For thus, in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, it is said, “It is good for a man that he beareth the yoke in his youth: he sitteth alone, and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him: he giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him; he is filled full with reproach.” There is no discrepancy, then, between the God of the gospel and the God of the law, even when we take literally the precept regarding the blow on the face. So, then, we infer that neither “Jesus nor Moses has taught falsely.” The Father in sending Jesus did not “forget the commands which He had given to Moses:” He did not “change His mind, condemn His own laws, and send by His messenger counter instructions.”

And we do not ask the question, “How shall we go to God?” as though we thought that God existed in some place. God is of too excellent a nature for any place: He holds all things in His power, and is Himself not confined by anything whatever. The precept, therefore, “Thou shalt walk after the Lord thy God,” does not command a bodily approach to God; neither does the prophet refer to physical nearness to God, when he says in his prayer, “My soul followeth hard after Thee.” Celsus therefore misrepresents us, when he says that we expect to see God with our bodily eyes, to hear Him with our ears, and to touch Him sensibly with our hands. We know that the holy Scriptures make mention of eyes, of ears, and of hands, which have nothing but the name in common with the bodily organs; and what is more wonderful, they speak of a diviner sense, which is very different from the senses as commonly spoken of. For when the prophet says, “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law,” or, “The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes,” or, “Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,” no one is so foolish as to suppose that the eyes of the body behold the wonders of the divine law, or that the law of the Lord gives light to the bodily eyes, or that the sleep of death falls on the eyes of the body. When our Saviour says, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” any one will understand that the ears spoken of are of a diviner kind. When it is said that the word of the Lord was “in the hand” of Jeremiah or of some other prophet; or when the expression is used, “the law by the hand of Moses,” or, “I sought the Lord with my hands, and was not deceived,”—no one is so foolish as not to see that the word “hands” is taken figuratively, as when John says, “Our hands have handled the Word of life.” And if you wish further to learn from the sacred writings that there is a diviner sense than the senses of the body, you have only to hear what Solomon says, “Thou shalt find a divine sense.”

When Celsus adds, “We must therefore believe that men are entrusted to certain beings who are the keepers of this prison-house,” our answer is, that the souls of those who are called by Jeremiah “prisoners of the earth,” when eager in the pursuit of virtue, are even in this life delivered from the bondage of evil; for Jesus declared this, as was foretold long before His advent by the prophet Isaiah, when he said that “the prisoners would go forth, and they that were in darkness would show themselves.” And Jesus Himself, as Isaiah also foretold of Him, arose as “a light to them that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,” so that we may therefore say, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast their cords from us.” If Celsus, and those who like him are opposed to us, had been able to sound the depths of the gospel narratives, they would not have counselled us to put our confidence in those beings whom they call “the keepers of the prison-house.” It is written in the Gospel that a woman was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus beheld her, and perceived from what cause she was bowed together, he said, “Ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, lo, these eighteen years, to be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” And how many others are still bowed down and bound by Satan, who hinders them from looking up at all, and who would have us to look down also! And no one can raise them up, except the Word, that came by Jesus Christ, and that aforetime inspired the prophets. And Jesus came to release those who were under the dominion of the devil; and, speaking of him, He said with that depth of meaning which characterized His words, “Now is the prince of this world judged.” We are, then, indulging in no baseless calumnies against demons, but are condemning their agency upon earth as destructive to mankind, and show that, under cover of oracles and bodily cures, and such other means, they are seeking to separate from God the soul which has descended to this “body of humiliation;” and those who feel this humiliation exclaim, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” It is not in vain, therefore, that we expose our bodies to be beaten and tortured; for surely it is not in vain for a man to submit to such sufferings, if by that means he may avoid bestowing the name of gods on those earthly spirits that unite with their worshippers to bring him to destruction. Indeed, we think it both reasonable in itself and well-pleasing to God, to suffer pain for the sake of virtue, to undergo torture for the sake of piety, and even to suffer death for the sake of holiness; for “precious in the sight of God is the death of His saints;” and we maintain that to overcome the love of life is to enjoy a great good. But when Celsus compares us to notorious criminals, who justly suffer punishment for their crimes, and does not shrink from placing so laudable a purpose as that which we set before us upon the same level with the obstinacy of criminals, he makes himself the brother and companion of those who accounted Jesus among criminals, fulfilling the Scripture, which saith, “He was numbered with transgressors.”