38 
SHORT STUDIES. 
they had erected a new superstition of their own, 
which they maintained by the arts of common 
charlatans, A belief, Celsus admitted, was not to 
be abandoned because the profession of it was 
ılangerous. A man with a soul in him longed 
necessarily for the truth, loved God above all things, 
and desired only to know what God was and what 
God willed. But he must take his intellect along 
with him, or he might fall into folly and extrava- 
yance; and Celsus complained that the Christians 
would neither reason nor listen to reason. ‘Inquire 
nothing, they said. ‘Believe, and your faith will 
save you. "Che world’s wisdom is evil, and the 
world’s foolishness is insight.’ 
Their origin, according to Celsus, was tolerably 
well known. "There were certain traditions common 
50 all nations respecting the creation of the world. 
These traditions Moses became acquainted with in 
Koypt. Moses, who was probably a magician, in- 
troduced into them variations of his own. From 
Egypt he borrowel various religious rites. A 
aumber of shepherds took him for their leader, and, 
ander his guidance, they professcd a belief in one 
God, whom they called ‘the Most High,’ or Adonai, 
or God of Sabaoth, or of Heaven. By these names 
ihey meant the Universe, or what the Greeks called