Against Celsus 7.40

Next after what we have examined, Celsus addresses to all Christians a speech which it would have been fitting to address, if at all, to those who admit that they are wholly alien to the teaching of Jesus. For the Ophites, as we said above, who deny Jesus altogether, or any others who hold views like theirs, are the ones who pander to idols, the deceivers and sorcerers; and they are the ones who wretchedly learn by heart the names of the doorkeepers. It is in vain, then, that he says to Christians: “And if you seek a guide for this road, you must shun the deceivers and sorcerers and those who pander to idols.” And not even knowing that such people, no less than Celsus, being sorcerers, speak evil of Jesus along with him, and of all the worship of God he taught, he says, mixing us up with them in his speech: “So that you may not be utterly ridiculous, blaspheming the others, the gods that are displayed, as idols, while worshipping one more wretched than even real idols, not even an idol any longer but truly a corpse, and seeking a father like him.” That he does not know what Christians say and what those who invent such myths say, but thinks the charges brought against them belong to us and says these things to us though they do not apply to us, is clear from this: “Such deceit, and those wonderful counsellors, and the demonic words addressed to the lion, and the amphibian, and the ass-shaped one, and the others, and the divine doorkeepers, whose names you wretched people learn by heart to your misfortune, and so you are wickedly possessed and are impaled.” He did not see that none of those who think the lion-shaped, the ass-shaped, and the amphibian are doorkeepers of the ascent stands firm to the point of death, even for what seems to him the truth. But what we do out of piety, even, if I may say so, to excess, offering ourselves to every kind of death, including impalement, he attributes to those who suffer none of these things; and on us who are impaled for the sake of piety he heaps reproach for their mythmaking about the lion-shaped one, the amphibian, and the rest. It is not because of Celsus, then, that we shun the account of the lion-shaped one and the rest, for we never received anything of the kind in the first place; but following the teaching of Jesus we say the opposite of those people, and do not agree that Michael has such a face and some other of those previously listed has such another.