Chapter LXXI.
Celsus again, as is usual with him, gets confused, and
attributes to us things which none of us have ever written. His
words are: “Surely it is intolerable for you to say, that
if our present rulers, on embracing your opinions, are taken by
the enemy, you will still be able
to persuade those who rule after them; and after these have been taken
you will persuade their successors and so on, until at length, when all
who have yielded to your persuasion have been taken, some prudent ruler
shall arise, with a foresight of what is impending, and he will destroy
you all utterly before he himself perishes.” There is no
need of any answer to these allegations: for none of us says of our
present rulers, that if they embrace our opinions, and are taken by the
enemy, we shall be able to persuade their successors; and when these
are taken, those who come after them, and so on in succession. But on what does he ground the assertion, that when a succession of those who have yielded to our persuasion have been taken because they did not drive back the enemy, some prudent ruler shall arise, with a foresight of what is impending, who shall utterly destroy us? But here he seems to me to delight in inventing and uttering the wildest nonsense.