TRANSLATION OF THE MOTTO. "Celsus [who may be regarded as the representative of the Modern Infidels] says,—' If they [the Christians] think proper to answer me, not as an inquirer, FOR I KNOW ALL, but as one who is as well skilled in every thing as themselves; it very well.' In Egypt [says Origen] the wise men philosophize largely, according to the learning of the country, upon the subjects regarded among them as divine, whilst the common people, if they only catch hold of some of their mystical relations without knowing any thing of their meaning, think themselves very wise: Celsus then here appears to me to behave like a person who should take a journey to that country, and who should boast on his return that he knew all the wisdom of the Egyptians, because he had learned what these ignorant people could teach him; though he had never been in company with one of the priests, nor been admitted by any of them to a knowledge of the hidden meaning of the Egyptian arcana." Origen's Answer to Celsus, p. 11, Ed. Spencer. Celsus was a heathen phi Origen, a celebrated Christian writer, and advocate for the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, was born in 185, and died in 254. losopher, who wrote the first regular attempted about the year 130, refutation of Christianity, |