But after this, Celsus, having a suspicion that the great works
performed by Jesus, of which we have named a few out of a great number,
would be brought forward to view, affects to grant that those statements
may be true which are made regarding His cures, or His resurrection, or
the feeding of a multitude with a few loaves, from which many fragments
remained over, or those other stories which Celsus thinks the disciples
have recorded as of a marvellous nature; and he adds: “Well, let us
believe that these were actually wrought by you.” But then he
immediately compares them to the tricks of jugglers, who profess to do
more wonderful things, and to the feats performed by those who have been
taught by Egyptians, who in the middle of the market-place, in return
for a few obols, will impart the knowledge of their most venerated arts,
and will expel demons from men, and dispel diseases, and invoke the
souls of heroes, and exhibit expensive banquets, and tables, and dishes,
and dainties having no real existence, and who will put in motion, as if
alive, what are not really living animals, but which have only the
appearance of life. And he asks, “Since, then, these persons can perform
such feats, shall we of necessity conclude that they are ‘sons of God,’
or must we admit that they are the proceedings of wicked men under the
influence of an evil spirit?” You see that by these expressions he
allows, as it were, the existence of magic. I do not know, however, if
he is the same who wrote several books against it. But, as it helped his
purpose, he compares the [miracles] related of Jesus to the results
produced by magic. There would indeed be a resemblance between them, if
Jesus, like the dealers in magical arts, had performed His works only
for show; but now there is not a single juggler who, by means of his
proceedings, invites his spectators to reform their manners, or trains
those to the fear of God who are amazed at what they see, nor who tries
to persuade them so to live as men who are to be justified[1249] by God.
And jugglers do none of these things, because they have neither the
power nor the will, nor any desire to busy themselves about the
reformation of men, inasmuch as their own lives are full of the grossest
and most notorious sins. But how should not He who, by the miracles
which He did, induced those who beheld the excellent results to
undertake the reformation of their characters, manifest Himself not only
to His genuine disciples, but also to others as a pattern of most
virtuous life, in order that His disciples might devote themselves to
the work of instructing men in the will of God, and that the others,
after being more fully instructed by His word and character than by His
miracles, as to how they were to direct their lives, might in all their
conduct have a constant reference to the good pleasure of the universal
God? And if such were the life of Jesus, how could any one with reason
compare Him with the sect of impostors, and not, on the contrary,
believe, according to the promise, that He was God, who appeared in
human form to do good to our race?
Footnote 1249:
ὡς δικαιωθησομένους.