Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book VII/Chapter LII

Chapter LII.

And let not Celsus be angry if we describe as lame and mutilated in soul those who run to the temples as to places having a real sacredness and who cannot see that no mere mechanical work of man can be truly sacred.&#160; Those whose piety is grounded on the teaching of Jesus also run until they come to the end of their course, when they can say in all truth and confidence:&#160; &#8220;I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.&#8221; &#160; And each of us runs &#8220;not as uncertain,&#8221; and he so fights with evil &#8220;not as one beating the air,&#8221; but as against those who are subject to &#8220;the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.&#8221; &#160; Celsus may indeed say of us that we &#8220;live with the body which is a dead thing;&#8221; but we have learnt, &#8220;If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye by the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live;&#8221; and, &#8220;If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.&#8221; &#160; Would that we might convince him by our actions that he did us wrong, when he said that we &#8220;live with the body which is dead!&#8221;