CHAPTER XXXVI

OTHER WORKS WRITTEN BY ORIGEN

THEN also, as was to be expected, our religion spreading more and more, and our brethren beginning to converse more freely with all, Origen, who they say was now more than sixty years of age, and who, from long practice, had acquired the greatest facility in discoursing, permitted his discourses to be taken down by ready writers, a thing which he had never allowed before. At this time, also, he composed, in eight books, a reply to that work written against us by Celsus the Epicurean, bearing the title, “The True Doctrine,” and the twenty-five books on Matthew’s gospel, those, also, on the twelve apostles, of which we have founds only twenty-five. There is also an epistle of his extant, addressed to the emperor Philip, and another to his wife Severa; several others also to different persons. Of these as many as we have been able to collect, scattered in the hands of different individuals, we have reduced to certain distinct books, in number exceeding one hundred. He also wrote to Fabianus, bishop of Rome, and to many others of the bishops of churches, respecting his orthodoxy; and of these you have the proofs in the sixth book of our Apology for the man.