Against Celsus 4.56

Further, since Celsus says, “The soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different; and in this respect the body of a bat, a worm, a frog, or a man will not differ, for the matter is the same and their corruptibility is alike,” it must be said to this argument of his too: if, because the same matter underlies the body of a bat, a worm, a frog, or a man, these bodies will not differ from one another, then clearly the bodies of these will not differ from the sun, moon, stars, heaven, or any other of what the Greeks call perceptible gods. For the same matter underlies all bodies, by its own nature without quality and without shape; and from whom it receives its qualities, according to Celsus, who does not want anything corruptible to be the work of God, I do not know. For by Celsus's own argument the corruptibility of everything whatever that has come from the same underlying matter must be alike. Unless, perhaps, Celsus, hard pressed here, will leap away from Plato, who makes the soul from a kind of mixing bowl, and take refuge with Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who say that the ether is immaterial and of a fifth nature besides the four elements; against which view both the Platonists and the Stoics have stood firm, not ignobly. And we too, whom Celsus despises, will stand firm, when asked to explain and establish what is said in the prophet thus: “The heavens will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed; but you are the same.” But this is enough against Celsus, who declared that “the soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different”; from whose argument it followed that the body of a bat, a worm, or a frog does not differ from the ethereal body.