Against Celsus 8.59

It is likely that one who embraces Celsus's views will laugh when we say that “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue is brought to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”; but after laughing he will receive more effective proofs that this is so than of the names he reports, Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, and the rest of the Egyptian list, as being invoked and healing the ailments of the parts. And see how, turning us away from believing in the God of the universe through Jesus Christ, he calls us, for the healing of our body, to believe in thirty-six barbarian demons, whom the Egyptian magicians alone invoke and by whom they promise us, I do not know how, better things. It is time for us, according to Celsus, to practise magic and sorcery rather than Christianity, and to believe in some countless number of demons rather than in the God over all, who is manifest in himself, living, and evident, through him who with great power sowed the pure word of worship of God in the whole inhabited world of men; and I shall not lie if I add that he sowed it also among the other rational beings who need correction, healing, and conversion from wickedness.