however, he has commenced and finished this work also, seek it and "send it in order that we may answer it also, and confute the false teaching in it," &C.(1) From this passage, and supported by other considerations, Volkmar and others assert that Celsus was really a contemporary of Origen.(2) To this, as we have seen, Tischendorf merely replies by pointing out that Origen in the preface says that Celsus was already dead, and that he was identical with the Epicurean Celsus who flourished under Hadrian and later. The former of these statements, however, was made under the impression that the latter was correct, and as it is generally agreed that Origen was mistaken in supposing that Celsus the Epicurean was the author of the [------],(3) and Tischendorf himself admits the fact, the two earlier statements, that Celsus flourished under Hadrian and consequently that he had long been dead, fall together, whilst the subsequent doubts regarding his identity not only stand, but {231} rise into assurance at the close of the work in the final request to Ambrosius.(1) There can be no doubt that the first statements and the closing paragraphs are contradictory, and whilst almost all critics pronounce against the accuracy of the former, the inferences from the latter retain full force, confirmed as they are by the intermediate doubts expressed by Origen himself. Even those who, like Tischendorf, in an arbitrary manner assign an early date to Celsus, although they do not support their conjectures by any satisfactory reasons of their own, all tacitly set aside these of Origen.(2) It is generally admitted by these, with Lardner(3) and Michaelis,(4) that the Epicurean Celsus to "whom Origen was at one time disposed to refer the work against Christianity, was the writer of that name to whom Lucian, his friend and contemporary, addressed his Alexander or Pseudomantis, and who really wrote against magic,(5) as Origen mentions.(6) But although on this account Lardner assigns to him the date of a.d. 176, the fact is that Lucian did not write his Pseudomantis, as Lardner is obliged to admit,(7) until the reign of the {232} Emperor Commodus (180--193), and even upon the supposition that this Celsus wrote against Christianity, of which there is not the slightest evidence, there would be no ground whatever for dating the work before a.d. 180. On the contrary, as Lucian does not in any way refer to such a writing by his friend, there would be strong reason for assigning the work, if it be supposed to be written by him, to a date subsequent to the Pseudo-mantis. It need not be remarked that the references of Celsus to the Marcionites,(1) and to the followers of Marcellina,(2) only so far bear upon the matter as to exclude an early date.(3)