Chapter LXIX.

After this, Celsus, confusing together the Christian doctrine and the opinions of some heretical sect, and bringing them forward as charges that were applicable to all who believe in the divine word, says:  “Such a body as yours could not 428have belonged to God.”  Now, in answer to this, we have to say that Jesus, on entering into the world, assumed, as one born of a woman, a human body, and one which was capable of suffering a natural death.  For which reason, in addition to others, we say that He was also a great wrestler;^32073207    μέγαν ἀγωνιστήν. having, on account of His human body, been tempted in all respects like other men, but no longer as men, with sin as a consequence, but being altogether without sin.  For it is distinctly clear to us that “He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; and as one who knew no sin,”^32083208    [1 Pet. ii. 22; 2 Cor. v. 21.  S.] God delivered Him up as pure for all who had sinned.  Then Celsus says:  “The body of god would not have been so generated as you, O Jesus, were.”  He saw, besides, that if, as it is written, it had been born, His body somehow might be even more divine than that of the multitude, and in a certain sense a body of god.  But he disbelieves the accounts of His conception by the Holy Ghost, and believes that He was begotten by one Panthera, who corrupted the Virgin, “because a god’s body would not have been so generated as you were.”  But we have spoken of these matters at greater length in the preceding pages.