"
(Tertul. Apolos. p. 20; ed. Priorii, Par. 1675.)
Next in the catalogue of professed apologists we may place Origen, who,
it is well known, published a formal defence of Christianity, in answer
to Celsus, a heathen, who had written a discourse against it. I know no
expressions by which a plainer or more positive appeal to the Christian
miracles can be made, than the expressions used by Origen; "Undoubtedly
we do think him to be the Christ, and the Son of God, because he healed
the lame and the blind; and we are the more confirmed in this persuasion
by what is written in the prophecies: 'Then shall the eyes of the blind
be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the lame man shall
leap as a hart.' But that he also raised the dead, and that it is not a
fiction of those who wrote the Gospels, is evident from hence, that if
it had been a fiction, there would have been many recorded to be raised
up, and such as had been a long time in their graves. But, it not being
a fiction, few have been recorded: for instance, the daughter of the
ruler of a synagogue, of whom I do not know why he said, She is not
dead, but sleepeth, expressing something peculiar to her, not common to
all dead persons: and the only son of a widow, on whom he had
compassion, and raised him to life, after he had bid the bearers of the
corpse to stop; and the third, Lazarus, who had been buried four days.
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