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Chapter LIV.
When Celsus adds, “We must therefore believe
that men are entrusted to certain beings who are the keepers of this
prison-house,” our answer is, that the souls of those who are
called by Jeremiah “prisoners of the earth,”4944
when eager in the pursuit of virtue, are
even in this life delivered from the bondage of evil; for Jesus
declared this, as was foretold long before His advent by the prophet
Isaiah, when he said that “the prisoners would go forth, and they
that were in darkness would show themselves.”4945
And Jesus Himself, as Isaiah also
foretold of Him, arose as “a light to them that sat in darkness
and in the shadow of death,”4946
so that we may
therefore say, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast their
cords from us.”4947
If Celsus,
and those who like him are opposed to us, had been able to sound the
depths of the Gospel narratives, they would not have counselled us to
put our confidence in those beings whom they call “the keepers of
the prison-house.” It is written in the Gospel that a woman
was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And
when Jesus beheld her, and perceived from what cause she was bowed
together, he said, “Ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom
Satan has bound, lo, these eighteen years, to be loosed from this bond
on the Sabbath day?”4948
And how many
others are still bowed down and bound by Satan, who hinders them from
looking up at all, and who would have us to look down also! And
no one can raise them up, except the Word, that came by Jesus Christ,
and that aforetime inspired the prophets. And Jesus came to
release those who were under the dominion of the devil; and, speaking
of him, He said with that depth of meaning which characterized His
words, “Now is the prince of this world judged.” We
are, then, indulging in no baseless calumnies against demons, but are
condemning their agency upon earth as destructive to mankind, and show
that, under cover of oracles and bodily cures, and such other means,
they are seeking to separate from God the soul which has descended to
this “body of humiliation;” and those who feel this
humiliation exclaim, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?”4949
It is not in vain, therefore, that we
expose our bodies to be beaten and tortured; for surely it is not in
vain for a man to submit to such sufferings, if by that means he may
avoid bestowing the name of gods on those earthly spirits that unite
with their worshippers to bring him to destruction. Indeed, we
think it both reasonable in itself and well-pleasing to God, to suffer
pain for the sake of virtue, to undergo torture for the sake of piety,
and even to suffer death for the sake of holiness; for “precious
in the sight of God is the death of His saints;”4950
and we maintain that to overcome the love of
life is to enjoy a great good. But when Celsus compares us to
notorious criminals, who justly suffer punishment for their crimes, and
does not shrink from placing so laudable a purpose as that which we set
before us upon the same level with the obstinacy of criminals, he makes
himself the brother and companion of those who accounted Jesus among
criminals, fulfilling the Scripture, which saith, “He was
numbered with transgressors.”4951
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