"
This is positively to assert the miracles of Christ, and it is also to
comment upon them, and that with a considerable degree of accuracy and
candour.
In another passage of the same author, we meet with the old solution of
magic applied to the miracles of Christ by the adversaries of the
religion. "Celsus," saith Origen, "well knowing what great works may be
alleged to have been done by Jesus, pretends to grant that the things
related of him are true; such as healing diseases, raising the dead,
feeding multitudes with a few leaves, of which large fragments were
left." (Orig. cont. Cels. lib. ii. sect. 48.) And then Celsus gives, it
seems, an answer to these proofs of our Lord's mission, which, as Origen
understood it, resolved the phenomena into magic; for Origen begins his
reply by observing, "You see that Celsus in a manner allows that there
is such a thing as magic." (Lardner's Jewish and Heath. Test, vol. ii.
p. 294, ed. 4to.)
It appears also from the testimony of St. Jerome, that Porphyry, the
most learned and able of the heathen writers against Christianity,
resorted to the same solution: "Unless," says he, speaking to
Vigilantius, "according to the manner of the Gentiles and the profane,
of Porphyry and Eunomius, you pretend that these are the tricks of
demons.
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