Against Celsus 8.63

Celsus, then, I think, after all the arguments he gave about demons needing the savour of fat and blood, makes, as it were, a recantation for the worse, and says that “one should rather think that the demons need nothing and lack nothing, but rejoice in those who act piously toward them.” If he thought this was true, he should not have set down the former things, or should have erased them. But human nature is not altogether abandoned by God and the Truth that is his Only-begotten. That is why Celsus spoke the truth about the savour of fat and blood that demons need, but then by his own wickedness slid back into falsehoods and likens the demons to men who do what is just with perfect justice, even if no one is grateful to them, while doing good to those who repay them with gratitude. He seems to me to be confused here, at times having his ruling faculty disturbed by the demons, and at other times, recovering from the irrationality under them, to see a little of the truth. For again he adds: “God must not be abandoned anywhere at all, neither by day nor by night, neither in public nor in private, in every word and deed continually; but both with these and without them let the soul always be directed toward God.” I take “with these” to mean with public life, and with every deed, and with every word. Then again, as though wrestling in his reasoning against the frenzies caused by the demons and being mostly defeated, he adds: “If this is so, what harm is there in winning the favour of the rulers here, both the others and the potentates and kings among men, since not even these have been deemed worthy of their position here without demonic power?” In what went before he tried, as far as lay in him, to bring our soul down to the demons; now he wants us to win the favour also of potentates and kings among men; and since life and history are full of examples of these, I have not thought it necessary to set them out now.