Against Celsus 3.35

I would like to talk, as befits him, with one who, I know not how, says such things, in this way: “Are these beings you listed nothing at all, and is there no power at Lebadea in Trophonius, or at Thebes around the temple of Amphiaraus, or in Acarnania around Amphilochus, or in Cilicia around Mopsus? Or is there in such places some being, whether a daemon or a hero or even a god, working things greater than human?” If he says that there is nothing else, neither daemonic nor divine, about them, let him admit his opinion at least now, that he is an Epicurean who does not think the same as the Greeks, who neither recognizes daemons nor worships gods as the Greeks do; and let him be convicted of having brought forward in vain both what was said before, as if he accepted it as true, and what he adds later. But if he says that those listed are daemons or heroes or even gods, let him see that by what he has said he will establish what he does not wish, that Jesus too was something of this kind; which is why he was able to convince not a few people that he had come from God to the human race. And once he accepts this, see whether he will not be forced to say that he is more powerful than those with whom he has numbered him. For none of them forbids honors to the others, but this one, confident that he is more powerful than all of them, forbids their acceptance, as of wicked daemons who have seized places on earth, since they cannot reach the purer and more divine region, where the grossness of the earth and its countless evils does not reach.