Celsus, after having adduced, from the writings of the heathens, instances of those who contended for the antiquity of their race, such as the Athenians, Egyptians, Arcadians, and Phrygians, and also of those who have asserted that some among them were aborigines, says, that "the Jews being concealed in a corner of Palestine, men perfectly in-erudite, and who never had previously heard the same things celebrated by Hesiod and innumerable ...Epistle I. of Pope's Essay on Man, in which Pride is represented as saying: "For me kind nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew The juice nectarious and the balmy dew. For me the mine a thousand treasures brings: For me health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise, My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." {27} other divine men, composed a most incredible and inelegant narration, that a certain man was fashioned by the hands of God, and inspired by him with the breath of life; that a woman was taken from the side of the man; that precepts were given to them by God; and that a serpent was adverse to these precepts. Lastly, they make the serpent to frustrate the commands of God: in all this, narrating a certain fable worthy only of being told by old women, and which most impiously makes God to be from the first imbecile, and incapable of persuading one man fashioned by himself to act in a way conformable to his will. "The Christians are most impiously deceived and involved in error, through the greatest ignorance of the meaning of divine enigmas. For they make a certain being whom they call the Devil, and who in the Hebrew tongue is denominated Satan, hostile to God. It is therefore perfectly stupid and unholy to assert that the greatest God, wishing to benefit mankind, was incapable of accomplishing what he wished, through having one that opposed him, and acted contrary to his will. The son of God, therefore, was vanquished by the devil; and being punished by him, teaches us also to despise the punishments inflicted by him; Christ at the same time predicting that Satan would appear on {28}