Divine power and sorcery are not of one kind

Celsus caught a hint from Scripture when he made Jesus say that “a certain Satan” will contrive such things. But he also snatches at a conclusion when he claims that Jesus does not deny “that these works have nothing divine about them but are the deeds of wicked men”; for he has made them of one kind when they are in fact of different kinds. As a wolf is not of one kind with a dog, even if it seems to have some likeness in the shape of its body and in its voice, nor the wood pigeon with the dove, so what is accomplished by the power of God is nothing like what comes from sorcery.

We will say this as well against Celsus’s malicious arguments. Are mighty works done by sorcery through evil demons, while no mighty work at all is accomplished by the divine and blessed nature? Has human life borne the worse things, yet had no room at all for the better? It seems to me that this principle should be laid down as applying in every case: wherever something worse pretends to be of one kind with the better, there is certainly something better on the other side. So too with those who work by sorcery: there must certainly also be things that happen in this life through divine working. And by the same logic one must either do away with both and say that neither happens, or, if one grants the one, and especially the worse, admit the better as well. But if someone were to grant that things happen through sorcery yet not grant those that come through divine power, he seems to me like a man who grants that there are sophisms and plausible arguments which fall short of the truth while pretending to present it, but holds that truth, and a dialectic free of sophistry, has its home nowhere among men.

But if once we accept that, given the real existence of magic and sorcery worked by evil demons, who are charmed by magical invocations and obey sorcerers, it follows that what comes from divine power must also be found among men, why should we not also examine rigorously those who claim these powers, judging by their life, by their character, and by what follows from their powers, whether harm to people or the reform of their morals, to see who does such things in the service of demons through certain incantations and tricks, and who, having come into a pure and holy standing before God in his soul and spirit, and I think also in his body, and having received some divine spirit, does such things for people’s benefit and to urge them to believe in the true God. And if once we must inquire, without being carried away by the powers, who accomplishes such things from the better source and who from the worse, so that we neither revile them all nor admire and accept them all as divine, how will it not be plain from what took place under Moses and under Jesus, when whole nations were formed after their signs, that these men did by divine power the things that they are recorded to have done? For wickedness and trickery would not have formed a whole nation that rose above not only statues and the things set up by men, but also every created nature, and ascended to the uncreated first principle, the God of all.