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

...had ceased, and that great disturbance of the empire, which Origen mentions, seems to designate the rebellion of Decius, which, as Zosimus testifies in his first book, was preceded by another rebellion of Jotapianus in Syria, and another of Marinus in Pannonia.

3. Eusebius, in his book against Hierocles—who had composed another work under this title: Philalethes Logos Lover of Truth Discourse, in which he had compared Apollonius of Tyana to Jesus Christ using Philostratus’s history—asserts that such a work had already been anticipated and refuted by Origen in the eight books against Celsus: "It has already been overturned in its power even before its own writing, and has been dismantled in the whole eight books written by Origen against the one who—being more arrogant than the one who titled his work Lover of Truth—wrote the True Discourse of Celsus. The aforementioned author, having brought forward without omission the defenses in all the points we have mentioned, has preemptively dissolved everything that has been or will be said by anyone on the same subject. To these, we send those who are able to discern our affairs with accuracy and a love for truth; for the present, let us only examine the comparison made by this 'Lover of Truth' regarding our Lord Jesus Christ." Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus also esteemed the work against Celsus so highly that they constructed almost the entire Philocalia from fragments taken from it. Jerome, in Epistle 83 (otherwise 84), says: "Celsus and Porphyry wrote against us: Origen answered the former, and Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris answered the latter most strongly. Of these, Origen wrote eight books; Methodius proceeded to ten thousand lines; Eusebius and Apollinaris composed twenty-five and thirty volumes. Read them, and you will find us to be the most unskilled by comparison with them, and after such a long time of leisure, we recall what we learned as boys almost as if in a dream." It would be too long to present the judgments of more recent writers regarding the books against Celsus. It suffices to observe that the most distinguished Huet, in Book III of his Origeniana, second section, number V, asserts that...