haracter of the
Christians of his time:(144) viz. their worship of "the crucified
sophist," who was their adorable Lord; their guilelessness; their
brotherly love; their strict discipline; their common meals; their union;
their benevolence; their joy in death. The points which he depicts in his
satire are, their credulity in giving way to Peregrinus; their
unintelligent belief in Christ and in immortality; their factiousness in
aiding Peregrinus when in prison; their pompous vanity in martyrdom, and
possibly their tendency to believe legends respecting a martyr's death.
His satire is contempt, not anger, nor dread. It is the humour of a
thorough sceptic, which discharged itself on all religions alike; and
indicates one type of opposition to Christianity; viz. the contempt of
those who thought it folly.

Very unlike to him was his well-known contemporary Celsus. If the one
represents the scoffer, the other represents the philosopher. Not
despising Christianity with scorn like Tacitus, nor jeering at it with
humour like Lucian, Celsus had the wisdom to apprehend danger to
heathenism, measuring Christianity in its mental and not its material
relations; and about the reign of Marcus Aurelius wrote against it a work
entitled {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, which was considered of such importance, that
Origen towards the close of his own life(145) wrote a large and elaborate
reply to it.

We know nothing of Celsus's life.(146) There is even an uncertainty as to
the school of philosophy to which he belonged. External evidence seems to
testify that he was an Epicurean; but internal would lead us to classify
him with the Platonic. Unscrupulous in argument, confounding canonical
gospels with apocryphal, and Christians with heretical sects, delighting
in searching for contradictions, incapable of understanding the deeper
aspects of Christianity, he has united in his attack all known objections,
making use of minute criticism, philosophical theory, piquant sarcasm, and
eloquent invective, as the vehicle of his passionate assault.

It is impossible to recover a continuous account of the work of Celsus
from the treati