Complete Works XVIII: Against Celsus I-IV (Lommatzsch)

or to test your own strength; or if you wish to honor Origen, who refutes him vigorously, with your own praises." Besides this book of Celsus which I have already mentioned, whose title is Alethes Logos True Discourse, he wrote another most erudite work against the much-vaunted arts of the Magicians: concerning which, hear Lucian in The False Prophet: "There are also many other things devised to this end, of which it is not necessary to remember all, lest I seem lacking in taste, and especially regarding those things which you have written against the Magicians, in writings at once most beautiful and most useful, and capable of rendering those who encounter them temperate, having set forth enough and many more than these." Our Origen agrees with this; he, in book 1 against Celsus, number 68, trusting much in his own conjectures, does not fear to assign a certain book written against magic to him: "You see how through these he almost admits that magic exists, I do not know if he is the same as the one who wrote several books against magic." In book 4, number 36, he doubts whether he was also the author of the two books which he says were written against the Christians: "But the Epicurean Celsus, who is better able to judge Plato (if indeed this is he who also composed two other books against the Christians), perhaps contending with us, called those divine whom he did not think were divine." Besides those already mentioned, he promised to give another on the precepts of living well: whether he himself completed it, or whether it was completed and lost, I plainly do not know. At the end of this work, you have Origen attesting in book 8, number 76: "Know, however, that Celsus promised to make another treatise after this, in which he promised to teach how those who wish and are able to be persuaded by him ought to live."