2. "And they ought," he says, "to keep their laws not only because different peoples have had different ideas of laws and customs, and because of the necessity of guarding public institutions, but also because it is probable that different parts of the earth were originally assigned to different superintending spirits, and having been made into separate realms are that way administered." So, as if he had forgotten what he said against the Jews, he now gives them a share in the general distribution of praise to all who keep the ancestral usages; for he says, |165 "And, in fact, in the several instances right practice would depend on the pleasure of the ruling spirits." And observe whether he does not distinctly mean, if he can bring it about, to make a Jew live in the observance of Jewish laws and not forsake them, inasmuch as he would be guilty of profanity if he did forsake them; for he says, "It is profanity to relinquish the original local usages." In reply, I should like to ask him and those who agree with him, who it was that originally assigned the different parts of the earth to the different guardian angels, in particular, the country of the Jews and its people, to the one or more angels whose charge they were. Did Zeus, as Celsus would say, assign the Jewish people and their country to one or more? And Did Zeus intend that the spirit to whom Judea was allotted should make the existing Jewish laws, or was this done against his will? That Celsus may answer, if he will, you see I am willing to put the whole thing in a nutshell. But if the parts of the earth have not been assigned to their guardian spirits by some one deity, it follows that each at random and with no one to direct him, took his share of the earth just as it happened; but this is absurd, and enough to overthrow belief in the providence of the Supreme God.