Chapter XXIII.

But we, in proving the facts related of our Jesus from the prophetic Scriptures, and comparing afterwards His history with them, demonstrate that no dissoluteness on His part is recorded.  For even they who conspired against Him, and who sought false witnesses to aid them, did not find even any plausible grounds for advancing a false charge against Him, so as to accuse Him of licentiousness; but His death was indeed the result of a conspiracy, and bore no resemblance to the death of Æsculapius by lightning.  And what is there that is venerable in the madman Dionysus, and his female garments, that he should be worshipped as a god?  And if they who would defend such beings betake themselves to allegorical interpretations, we 473must examine each individual instance, and ascertain whether it is well founded,^34993499    εἰ τὸ ὑγιὲς ἔχουσιν. and also in each particular case, whether those beings can have a real existence, and are deserving of respect and worship who were torn by the Titans, and cast down from their heavenly throne.  Whereas our Jesus, who appeared to the members of His own troop^35003500    θιασώταις.—for I will take the word that Celsus employs—did really appear, and Celsus makes a false accusation against the Gospel in saying that what appeared was a shadow.  And let the statements of their histories and that of Jesus be carefully compared together.  Will Celsus have the former to be true, but the latter, although recorded by eye-witnesses who showed by their acts that they clearly understood the nature of what they had seen, and who manifested their state of mind by what they cheerfully underwent for the sake of His Gospel, to be inventions?  Now, who is there that, desiring to act always in conformity with right reason, would yield his assent at random^35013501    ἀποκληρωτικῶς. to what is related of the one, but would rush to the history of Jesus, and without examination refuse to believe what is recorded of Him?^35023502    εἰς δὲ τὰ περὶ τούτου ἀνεξετάστως ὁρμῶν ἀπιστήσαι τοῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ;