The following is the view of Celsus and the Epicureans: “Moses having,”
he says, “learned the doctrine which is to be found existing among wise
nations and eloquent men, obtained the reputation of divinity.” Now, in
answer to this we have to say, that it may be allowed him that Moses did
indeed hear a somewhat ancient doctrine, and transmitted the same to the
Hebrews; that if the doctrine which he heard was false, and neither
pious nor venerable, and if notwithstanding, he received it and handed
it down to those under his authority, he is liable to censure; but if,
as you assert, he gave his adherence to opinions that were wise and
true, and educated his people by means of them, what, pray, has he done
deserving of condemnation? Would, indeed, that not only Epicurus, but
Aristotle, whose sentiments regarding providence are not so impious [as
those of the former], and the Stoics, who assert that God is a body, had
heard such a doctrine! Then the world would not have been filled with
opinions which either disallow or enfeeble the action of providence, or
introduce a corrupt corporeal principle, according to which the god of
the Stoics is a body, with respect to whom they are not afraid to say
that he is capable of change, and may be altered and transformed in all
his parts, and, generally, that he is capable of corruption, if there be
any one to corrupt him, but that he has the good fortune to escape
corruption, because there is none to corrupt. Whereas the doctrine of
the Jews and Christians, which preserves the immutability and
unalterableness of the divine nature, is stigmatized as impious, because
it does not partake of the profanity of those whose notions of God are
marked by impiety, but because it says in the supplication addressed to
the Divinity, “Thou art the same,”[1161] it being, moreover, an article
of faith that God has said, “I change not.”[1162]
Footnote 1161:
Ps. cii. 27.
Footnote 1162:
Mal. iii. 6.