Celsus to at least the early part of the third century, and to the reign of Septimius Severus. Celsus repeatedly accuses Christians, in it, of teaching their doctrines secretly and against the law, which seeks them out and punishes them with death,(1) and this indicates a period of persecution. Lardner, assuming the writer to be the Epicurean friend of Lucian, from this clue supposes that the persecution referred to must have been that under Marcus Aurelius (f 180), and practically rejecting the data of Origen himself, without advancing sufficient reasons of his own, dates Celsus a.d. 176.(2) As a Neo-Platonist, however, we are more accurately led to the period of persecution which, from embers never wholly extinct since the time of Marcus Aurelius, burst into fierce flame more especially in the tenth year of the reign of Severus(3) (a.d. 202), and continued for many years to afflict Christians. It is evident that the dates assigned by apologists are wholly arbitrary, and even if our argument for the later epoch were very much less conclusive than it is, the total absence of evidence for an earlier date would completely nullify any testimony derived from Celsus. It is sufficient for us to add that, whilst he refers to incidents of Gospel history and quotes some sayings which have pandlels, with more or less of variation, in our Gospels, Celsus nowhere mentions the name of any Christian book, unless we except the Book of Enoch;(4) and he accuses Christians, not without reason, of interpolating the books of the Sibyl, whose authority, he states, some of them acknowledged.(5) {235} 3.