Against Celsus 8.54

Then, since Celsus says, “We must believe, then, that they are handed over to certain overseers of this prison,” we must say to him that a good soul is set free from the bonds of wickedness even in the life of those whom Jeremiah called prisoners “of the earth,” because of Jesus, who said what the prophet Isaiah foretold long before his coming. And what did he foretell but “To say to the prisoners, Come out, and to those in darkness, Be revealed”? And this Jesus, as the same Isaiah foretold of him, is the one who “rose as a light on those who sit in the land and shadow of death,” so that for this reason we say, “Let us burst their bonds asunder and cast away their yoke from us.” If Celsus and those disposed against us like him could have heard the depth of the Gospels, he would not have advised us to obey those he called overseers of the prison. It is written in the Gospel that there was a “woman” who “was bent over and could not straighten herself fully.” Jesus, seeing her and seeing for what cause she was bent over, not being allowed to straighten herself “fully,” said: “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound, behold, eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” And how many others now, bound by Satan, are bent over, unable because of him “to straighten themselves fully,” since he wants us to look down? And no one straightens them up except the Word who came to dwell in Jesus, and who inspired men before him too. And Jesus came to set free “all who were oppressed by the devil,” and said of him, with a depth befitting him, “Now the ruler of this world is judged.” We do not, then, revile the demons here, but expose their workings for the destruction of the human race, since on the pretext of oracles and bodily healings and other things they wish to separate from God the soul that has fallen into “the body of humiliation”; which those who have understood cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Nor do we offer our bodies at random to be racked and beaten to death; for one who is plotted against by the earthly demons and those who worship them, because he will not proclaim them gods, does not offer his body to these things at random. And we have rightly believed it pleasing to God to be beaten to death for virtue, to be racked for piety, and to die for holiness. For “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones”; and we say it is good also not to cling to life. But Celsus, likening us to criminals who justly suffer what they suffer for robbery, and not ashamed of so great a purpose, declares it similar to the disposition of robbers, making himself in this a brother of those who counted Jesus “with the lawless”; in whom the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “He was counted with the lawless.”