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| Chapter XXXIV
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Chapter
XXXIV.
After finishing the foregoing, and those analogous
matters which we ourselves have added, Celsus continues as
follows: “They continue to heap together one thing after
another,—discourses of prophets, and circles upon circles, and
effluents4457
from an earthly
church, and from circumcision; and a power flowing from one Prunicos, a
virgin and a living soul; and a heaven slain in order to live, and an
earth slaughtered by the sword, and many put to death that they may
live, and death ceasing in the world, when the sin of the world is
dead; and, again, a narrow way, and gates that open
spontaneously. And in all their writings (is mention made) of the
tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh by means4458
of the ‘tree,’ because, I
imagine, their teacher was nailed to a cross, and was a carpenter by
craft; so that if he had chanced to have been cast from a precipice, or
thrust into a pit, or suffocated by hanging, or had been a
leather-cutter, or stone-cutter, or worker in iron, there would have
been (invented) a precipice of life beyond the heavens, or a pit of
resurrection, or a cord of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron
of love, or a sacred leather! Now what old woman would not be
ashamed to utter such things in a whisper, even when making stories to
lull an infant to sleep?” In using such language as this,
Celsus appears to me to confuse together matters which he has
imperfectly heard. For it seems likely that, even supposing that
he had heard a few words traceable to some existing heresy, he did not
clearly understand the meaning intended to be conveyed; but heaping the
words together, he wished to show before those who knew nothing either
of our opinions or of those of the heretics, that he was acquainted
with all the doctrines of the Christians. And this is evident
also from the foregoing words.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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