Against Celsus 8.30

For what is offered to idols is sacrificed to demons, and the man of God must not become a partner in “the table of demons”; and as for things strangled, since the blood has not been drained out, which they say is the food of demons, who are nourished by the fumes rising from it, the Word forbids them, so that we may not be nourished with the food of demons; perhaps some such spirits would be nourished along with us if we partook of things strangled. From what has been said about “things strangled,” the reason for abstaining from “blood” can be clear. And it is not out of place, now that I have come to this subject, to recall a most elegant maxim, recorded in the Sentences of Sextus, which most Christians read, and which runs thus: “The use of animals for food is indifferent, but abstaining is more reasonable.” We abstain, then, not simply in keeping with some ancestral custom from what are considered victims and are sacrificed to so-called gods or heroes or demons, but for several reasons, of which I have set out some in part. But it is not the case that, just as one must abstain from all wickedness and what comes from wickedness, so one must abstain from eating all animals. One must abstain not only from eating animals but from anything whatever, if we use food from wickedness and what comes from wickedness; for one must abstain from eating out of gluttony or because one is led by pleasure, without the purpose of the body's health and its care. We do not, however, hold the transmigration of the soul and its fall down to the irrational animals; and plainly, if we sometimes abstain from animals, it is not as Pythagoras did that we shall not use their flesh. For we know that only the rational soul is to be honoured, and its organs to be committed with honour to burial according to custom; for it is fitting that the dwelling-place of the rational soul should not be cast aside dishonourably and at random like that of the irrational animals, especially since Christians have believed that honour extends to the body in which a rational soul has dwelt, and to the body itself that has received a soul which contended well through such an organ. And as to “How are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come?”, we have explained this briefly above, as the matter required.