And whereas Celsus ought to have recognised the love of truth displayed
by the writers of sacred Scripture, who have not concealed even what is
to their discredit,[679] and thus been led to accept the other and more
marvellous accounts as true, he has done the reverse, and has
characterized the story of Lot and his daughters (without examining
either its literal or its figurative meaning) as “worse than the crimes
of Thyestes.” The figurative signification of that passage of history it
is not necessary at present to explain, nor what is meant by Sodom, and
by the words of the angels to him who was escaping thence, when they
said: “Look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the surrounding
district; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed;”[680] nor what
is intended by Lot and his wife, who became a pillar of salt because she
turned back; nor by his daughters intoxicating their father, that they
might become mothers by him. But let us in a few words soften down the
repulsive features of the history. The nature of actions—good, bad, and
indifferent—has been investigated by the Greeks; and the more successful
of such investigators[681] lay down the principle that intention alone
gives to actions the character of good or bad, and that all things which
are done without a purpose are, strictly speaking, indifferent; that
when the intention is directed to a becoming end, it is praiseworthy;
when the reverse, it is censurable. They have said, accordingly, in the
section relating to “things indifferent,” that, strictly speaking, for a
man to have sexual intercourse with his daughters is a thing
indifferent, although such a thing ought not to take place in
established communities. And for the sake of hypothesis, in order to
show that such an act belongs to the class of things indifferent, they
have assumed the case of a wise man being left with an only daughter,
the entire human race besides having perished; and they put the question
whether the father can fitly have intercourse with his daughter, in
order, agreeably to the supposition, to prevent the extermination of
mankind. Is this to be accounted sound reasoning among the Greeks, and
to be commended by the influential[682] sect of the Stoics; but when
young maidens, who had heard of the burning of the world, though without
comprehending [its full meaning], saw fire devastating their city and
country, and supposing that the only means left of rekindling the
flame[683] of human life lay in their father and themselves, should, on
such a supposition, conceive the desire that the world should continue,
shall their conduct be deemed worse than that of the wise man who,
according to the hypothesis of the Stoics, acts becomingly in having
intercourse with his daughters in the case already supposed, of all men
having been destroyed? I am not unaware, however, that some have taken
offence at the desire[684] of Lot’s daughters, and have regarded their
conduct as very wicked; and have said that two accursed nations—Moab and
Ammon—have sprung from that unhallowed intercourse. And yet truly sacred
Scripture is nowhere found distinctly approving of their conduct as
good, nor yet passing sentence upon it as blameworthy. Nevertheless,
whatever be the real state of the case, it admits not only of a
figurative meaning, but also of being defended on its own merits.[685]
Footnote 679:
τὰ ἀπεμφαίνοντα.
Footnote 680:
Gen. xix. 17.
Footnote 681:
οἱ ἐπιτυγχάνοντες γε αὐτῶν.
Footnote 682:
οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητος αὐτοῖς.
Footnote 683:
ζώπυρον.
Footnote 684:
βουλήματι.
Footnote 685:
ἔχει δέ τινα καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸ ἀπολογίαν.