5. Celsus is welcome to the teachers of fabulous conflagrations and deluges. According to him they were the wisest of the Egyptians, and traces of their wisdom may be seen in the worship of irrational creatures, and in the arguments to show that such a worship of God, though partly lost and mysterious, is quite reasonable. If the Egyptians boast of their animal worship and explain the principles of their religion, they are wise; but if a man, assenting to the Judaic law and acknowledging the lawgiver, refers everything to the only God, the Maker of the universe, he is accounted by Celsus and his followers inferior to him who degrades the Godhead to the level not only of rational and mortal creatures, but of irrational creatures, thus going beyond the fabulous transmigration of souls, according to which a soul falls from the vaults of heaven and descends to irrational creatures, not only such as are tamed, but even the most savage. And if Egyptians tell these mythic tales, they are believed to have been philosophers with their riddles and mysteries; but if Moses writes histories for a whole nation, and |91 bequeaths laws to the people, his words are regarded as empty fables, incapable of even an allegorical interpretation. For this is the opinion of Celsus and the Epicureans.