Having thus defamed the Christians, he passes to the examination of the Christian doctrine, in its form, its method, and its substance. His æsthetic sense, ruined with the idolatry of form, and unable to appreciate the thought, regards the Gospels as defective and rude through simplicity.(179) The method of Christian teaching also seems to him to be defective, as lacking philosophy and dialectic, and as denouncing the use of reason.(180) Lastly, he turns to the substance of the dogmas themselves. He distinguishes two elements in them, the one of which, as bearing resemblance to philosophy or to heathen religion, he regards as incontestably true, but denies its originality, and endeavours to derive it from Persia or from Platonism;(181) resolving, for example, the worship of a human being into the ordinary phenomenon of apotheosis.(182) The other class of doctrines which he attacks as false, consists of those which relate to creation,(183) the incarnation,(184) the fall,(185) redemption,(186) man’s place in creation,(187) moral conversions,(188) and the resurrection of the dead.(189) His point of view for criticising them is derived from the fundamental dualism of the Platonic system; the eternal severance of matter and mind, of God and the world; and the reference of good to the region of mind, evil to that of matter. Thus, not content with his former attack on the idea of creation in discussion with the Jew, he returns to the discussion from the philosophical side. His Platonism will not allow him to admit that the absolute God, the first Cause, can have any contact with matter. It leads him also to give importance to the idea of δαίμονες, or divine mediators, by which the chasm is filled between the ideal god and the world;(190) not being able otherwise to imagine the action of the pure ἰδέα of God on a world of matter. Hence he blames Christians for attributing an evil nature to demons, and finds a reasonable interpretation of the heathen worship.(191) The same dualist theory extinguishes the idea of the incarnation, as a degradation of God; and also the doctrine of the fall, inasmuch as psychological deterioration is impossible if the soul be pure, and if evil be a necessary attribute of matter.(192) With the fall, redemption also disappears, because the perfect cannot admit of change; Christ’s coming could only be to correct what God already knew, or rectify what ought to have been corrected before.(193) Further, Celsus argues, if Divinity did descend, that it would not assume so lowly a form as Jesus. The same rigorous logic charges on Christianity the undue elevation of man, as well as the abasement of God. Celsus can neither admit man more than the brutes to be the final cause of the universe; nor allow the possibility of man’s nearness to God.(194) His pantheism, destroying the barrier which separates the material from the moral, obliterates the perception of the