Against Celsus 8.32

The psalmist bears witness that the grimmer things are carried out by certain evil angels by divine judgment, in “He sent against them the anger of his wrath, wrath and anger and affliction, a sending by evil angels.” And if anything else besides these happens when the demons are permitted, since they always wish to do these things but are not always able because they are hindered, let whoever can examine it, imagining the divine judgment, as far as human nature can, concerning the sudden release of many souls from the body, when they take such roads as lead to a common death. For “great are the judgments of God,” and because of their greatness they cannot be grasped by a mind still bound to a mortal body; that is why they are also “hard to explain,” and to uneducated souls they cannot be contemplated even in part. That is why the rasher, through ignorance of these things and through the rashness with which they set themselves against the divine, increase the impious doctrines against providence. We do not, then, receive each of the things we need for life from demons, especially those of us who have learned to use them as we ought; nor do those who partake of bread and wine and fruits and water and air feast with demons, but rather with divine angels appointed over such things, who are as it were invited to the table of the pious man who has heard the Word teaching such things as: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” And again in another place it is written: “Whether you eat or drink,” do everything “in the name” of God. When, then, we eat and drink and breathe “to the glory of God,” and do everything according to the Word, we feast with none of the demons but with the divine angels. For “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” But it would not be “good,” nor could it be sanctified, if, as Celsus thinks, these things had been assigned to demons.