Against Celsus 8.65

We, however, must despise winning the favour of men and kings, not only if we are to win their favour by murders, licentiousness, and the most cruel deeds, but also if it is through impiety toward the God of the universe, or through some servile and abject word, foreign to brave and high-minded men who wish to take up endurance, as the greatest virtue, together with the others. Where, however, we do nothing contrary to the law and word of God, we are not mad, nor do we rush to rouse against ourselves the anger of a king or potentate, which brings us to outrages and tortures or even death. For we have read also, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God; so that whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed.” In our Exegetica on the Letter to the Romans we examined these words more fully and in various ways, as far as we could; but now we have taken them for the present purpose more simply, in the more common sense, since Celsus says, “Not even these have been deemed worthy of their position here without demonic power.” And since there is much to say about the establishment of kings and potentates, and much inquiry on the subject because of those who have ruled more cruelly and tyrannically, or who from ruling have run aground on luxury and self-indulgence, for this reason we have put off examining the problem for the present. We do not, however, swear by the Fortune of the emperor, as we do not swear by any other supposed god. For if, as some have put it, fortune is only a manner of speaking, like “opinion” and “interval,” we do not swear by what is nothing at all as though it were a god, or had any real existence and could do anything, so that we may not apply the power of an oath to what we should not; or if (as some have thought, saying, “Those who swear by the Fortune of the Roman emperor swear by his demon”) what is called the emperor's Fortune is a demon, then in that case we must rather die than swear by a wicked and faithless demon, which often sins together with the man to whom it has been allotted, or even sins more than he.