If these are powers, Jesus is stronger

I should like to chat a little with the man who somehow says such things, in some such words as these, as befits him: Are these whom you have listed nothing, then? Is there no power at Lebadea connected with Trophonius, nor at Thebes around the temple of Amphiaraus, nor in Acarnania connected with Amphilochus, nor in Cilicia with Mopsus? Or is there in such places some being, whether a demon or a hero or even a god, working things greater than man can?

For if he says that there is nothing else about these, neither demonic nor divine, then let him at least now admit his own view as an Epicurean, one who does not think as the Greeks do, and who neither recognises demons nor even worships gods as the Greeks do. And let him be convicted of having brought forward to no purpose both what he said before, as though he accepted it as true, and what he goes on to add.

But if he says that those he lists are demons or heroes or even gods, let him see that by what he has said he will establish what he does not want: that Jesus too was something of this kind. That is why he has also been able to convince no small number of people that he came from God to dwell among the human race. And once Celsus admits this, see whether he will not be forced to say that Jesus is stronger than those with whom he has counted him. For none of those forbids the honours paid to the others; but Jesus, confident in himself as more powerful than all of them, forbids the acceptance of them as wicked demons, which have seized beforehand places on earth because they cannot touch the purer and more divine region, where the grossness that comes from the earth and from its countless evils does not reach.