Dialogue Against the Marcionites, Exhortation to Martyrdom (Wettstein 1674)

2. Furthermore, they produce the letters written by Origen to Philip and his wife Severa: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 6, c. 35, and in his Chronicle under Philip, p. 70; Georgius Syncellus, Chronography, p. 362; Nicephorus Callistus, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 5, c. 19. Likewise, Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers in the entry for Origen, and Freculfus note that letters written to Emperor Philip and his mother existed in their own times. I think, however, that they lapsed in memory and substituted "mother" for "wife," unless it is to be understood regarding Philip the Younger, whom his father had made a partner in the empire. The words of Vincent of Lérins are in his book Against Heresies, c. 23: "But they also bear witness to the same epistles which he wrote with the authority of a Christian teacher to Emperor Philip, who was the first of the Roman princes to be a Christian." He speaks of Origen, that he was revered not only by private citizens but by the Empire itself, and he sufficiently implies that those letters were seen by him.

3. Moreover, they conclude the same from Decius’s fury against the Christians, Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 6, c. 39: Δέκι@, τῷ πρὸς Φίλιππον ἔχθρες ἕνεκα, διωγμὸν κτ̃ τ̃ ἐκκλησιῶν ἐγείρει. Decius, because of his hatred toward Philip, raised a persecution against the churches. He repeats the same in his Chronicle, p. 70, under Philip, and in his Chronicle Canons, p. 260; and Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers in the entry for Origen; as well as Bede, On the Six Ages, p. 186; Gregory Abulpharagius, History of Dynasties VII, p. 80.

I am well aware of what the illustrious Scaliger replies to these points, namely that they are all fabricated and mere inventions, since it is incredible that a man so wicked, a cruel murderer of his innocent predecessor, was imbued with Christian rites. But the ancients are accused unjustly. For this is that ὑπεροχὴ superiority and excellence of the Christian religion which Origen so often cast against Celsus: that it makes good men out of bad ones, and that it is not harmful to have been bad, but to have persisted in malice. For the Emperor would have in vain publicly lamented his sins had he not first given a public scandal to all good people by his crimes.