Chap. III. HISTORY OF CHRIST.

The attack of Celsus, upon the History of Christ, maybe arranged under the three divisions, of his birth; his life; his death.

In adverting to the birth of Christ, Celsus introduces a Jew, charging Christ with being privately born [19a] in a little village of Judea, his mother being driven out by the Carpenter, to whom she was betrothed, because convicted of adultery [19b] with a soldier named Panther. He imputes to him that he was privately educated, and went to earn his livelihood in Egypt.

It is enough to say of all this, that it is mere assertion; that no proof of it is either established or offered. Origen, however, justly asks, if it be probable, that a person, the purity of whose life and doctrine is so remarkably opposite to the imputation laid against his birth, [20a] should have been born and educated by a profligate parent. Perhaps, even the idolatrous worship of the Virgin Mary, in the Church of Rome, of which the first elements are discernible at a very early period, may in a measure serve, (the only good purpose it ever served) to vindicate her moral character. [20b]

Against the Life of Christ, no charge is brought by Celsus; [20c] except that he did not answer to his conception [20d] of the appearance of a Deity on earth. It is obvious that this objection is founded on a misconception of the object of his advent. Celsus believed that other gods had descended [20e] from heaven to earth, and framed his notion of the appearance of deity, upon the model with which the fictions of heathen poetry and history supplied him. To satisfy his perverted imagination, [21a] God must descend in showers of gold, [21b] or armed with celestial thunders. And indeed had Jesus Christ appeared, like the gods of heathenism, to gratify lust, or decide the fate of empires; the ensigns of pomp and power would have been adapted to his commission. But when it is remembered, that he came to establish a spiritual religion, [21c] to wean men from the world, [21d] to live with the poor, [21e] and above all to die for the guilty; [21f] then it is evident, that the character which became him, was that of a “Man of Sorrows.” [21g] Moral grandeur was the only grandeur with which he could invest himself, righteousness his sceptre, [21h] and his throne a cross. Had Celsus indeed been disposed to examine, or enabled to appreciate, the moral dignity of his character, he would have shrunk with disgust from the fabled descents of Jupiter. He would have seen that this Pillar of Cloud [22a] had a bright side; that if he was a man in suffering, in the grandeur with which he suffered he was truly God.

Celsus states, even to minuteness, the facts recorded by the Sacred Historians, as to the Death of Christ. He says, that he was “betrayed,” [22b] “bound,” “scourged,” “stretched upon the Cross;” [22c] that he “drank vinegar;” [22d] that after his death, he was “said to have appeared twice,” [22e] but that “he did not appear to his enemies.” [22f] To the objection conveyed in the last clause it is an obvious reply, that his appearance to his enemies cannot be claimed, except by those who contend that God is bound to increase evidence to the persons who shut their eyes against it. Those who, after the evidence of the miracles of Jesus Christ, could continue to doubt, would not have believed, though he “had risen from the dead” [23] in their view.

The objections of Celsus to the character of Christ being thus dismissed, and they are really unworthy even of the scanty space here bestowed upon them, it is plain that all the facts admitted by him are so much to be added to the scale of evidence. It is thus proved, that, either influenced by universal persuasion, or borne down by overwhelming testimony, men, who desired to be infidels, were compelled to admit the facts of Christianity. It is also proved, that nothing can be charged against the life of Christ, except that he most accurately maintained the character in which he condescended to appear.