BOOK ONE

"The Holy Scriptures foretell that there will be unmistakable signs of the Coming of Christ. Now there were among the Hebrews three outstanding offices of dignity, which made the nation famous, firstly the kingship, secondly that of prophet, and lastly the high priesthood. The prophecies said that the abolition and complete destruction of all these three together would be the sign of the (b) presence of the Christ. And that the proofs that the times had come, would lie in the ceasing of the Mosaic worship, the desolation of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the subjection of the whole Jewish race to its enemies. The holy oracles foretold that all these changes, which had (c) not been made in the days of the prophets of old, would take place at the coming of the Christ, which I will presently shew to have been fulfilled as never before in accordance with the predictions."

EUSEBIUS: SON OF PAMPHILUS ¹

THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL

BOOK 1

INTRODUCTION ²

SEE now, Theodotus,³ miracle of bishops, holy man of God, I am carrying through⁴ this great work with the help of God and our Saviour the Word of God, after completing at the cost of great labour my Preparation for the Gospel {2} in fifteen books.

Grant then, dear friend, my request, and labour with rue henceforward in your prayers in my effort to present the Proof of the Gospel from the prophecies extant among the Hebrews from the earliest times. I propose to adopt this method. I propose to use as witnesses those men, beloved by God, whose fame you know to be far-spread in the world: {2} Moses, I mean, and his successors, who shone forth with resplendent godliness, and the blessed prophets and sacred writers. I propose to shew, by quotations from them, how they forestalled events that came to the light long ages after their time, the actual |2  circumstances of the Saviour's own presentment of the Gospel, and the things which in our own day are being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit before our very eyes. It shall be my task to prove that they saw that which was not present as present, and that which as yet was not in existence as actually existing; and not only this, but that they foretold in writing the events of the future for posterity, so that by their help others can even now know what is coming, and look forward daily to the fulfilment of their oracles. What sort of fulfilment, do you ask? {3} They are fulfilled in countless and all kinds of ways, and amid all circumstances, both generally and in minute detail, in the lives of individual men, and in their corporate life, now nationally in the course of Hebrew history, and now in that of foreign nations. Such things as civic revolutions, changes of times, national vicissitudes, the coming of foretold prosperity, the assaults of adversity, the enslaving of races, the besieging of cities, the downfall and restoration of whole states, and countless other things that were to take place a long time after, were foretold by these writers.

But it is not now the time for me to provide full proof of this. I will postpone most of it for the present, and perhaps, from the truth of what I shall put before you, there will be some guarantee of the possibility of proving what is passed over in silence.

CHAPTER 1

The Object and Contents of the Work.

IT seems now time to say what I consider to be desirable at present to draw from the prophetic writings for the proof of the Gospel. {4} They said that Christ, (Whom they named) the Word of God, and Himself both God and Lord, and Angel of Great Counsel, would one day dwell among men, and would become for all the nations of the world, both Greek and Barbarian, a teacher of true knowledge of God, and of such duty to God the Maker of the Universe, as the preaching of the Gospel includes. They said that He would become a little child, and would be called the Son of Man, as born of the race of Mankind. They foretold the |3 wondrous fashion of His birth from a Virgin, and—strangest of all—they did not omit to name Bethlehem⁵ the place of His birth, which is to-day so famous that men still hasten from the ends of the earth to see it, but shouted it out with the greatest clearness. As if they stole a march on history these same writers proclaimed the very time of His appearance, the precise period of His sojourn on earth.

It is possible for you, if you care to take the trouble, to see with your eyes, comprehended in the prophetic writings, all the wonderful miracles of our Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, that are witnessed to by the heavenly Gospels, and to hear His divine and perfect teaching about true holiness. How it must move our wonder, when they unmistakably proclaim the new ideal of religion preached by Him to all men, the call of His disciples, and the teaching of the new Covenant. {5} Yes, and in addition to all this they foretell the Jews' disbelief in Him, and disputing, the plots of the rulers, the envy of the Scribes, the treachery of one of His disciples, the schemes of enemies, the accusations of false witnesses, the condemnations of His judges, the shameful violence, unspeakable scourging, ill-omened abuse, and, crowning all, the death of shame. They portray Christ's wonderful silence, His gentleness and fortitude, and the unimaginable depths of His forbearance and forgiveness.

The most ancient Hebrew oracles present all these things definitely about One Who would come in the last times, and Who would undergo such sufferings among men, and they clearly tell the source of their foreknowledge. They bear witness to the Resurrection from the dead of the Being Whom they revealed, His appearance to His disciples, His gift of the Holy Spirit to them, His return to heaven, His establishment as King on His Father's throne and His glorious second Advent yet to be at the consummation of the age. In addition to all this you can hear the wailings and lamentations of each of the prophets, wailing and lamenting characteristically over the calamities which will overtake the Jewish people because of their impiety to Him Who had been foretold. {6} How their kingdom, that had continued from the days of a remote ancestry to their own, would be utterly destroyed after their sin against |4 Christ; how their fathers' Laws would be abrogated, they themselves deprived of their ancient worship, robbed of the independence of their forefathers, and made slaves of their enemies, instead of free men; how their royal metropolis would be burned with fire, their venerable and holy altar undergo the flames and extreme desolation, their city be inhabited no longer by its old possessors but by races of other stock,⁶ while they would be dispersed among the Gentiles through the whole world, with never a hope of any cessation of evil, or breathing-space from troubles. And it is plain even to the blind, that what they saw and foretold is fulfilled in actual facts from the very day the Jews laid godless hands on Christ, and drew down on themselves the beginning of the train of sorrows.

But the prophecies of these inspired men did not begin and end in gloom, nor did their prescience extend no further than the reign of sorrow. They could change their note to joy, and proclaim a universal message of good tidings to all men in the coming of Christ: they could preach the good news that though one race were lost every nation and race of men would know God, escape from the daemons,⁷ cease from ignorance and deceit and {7} enjoy the light of holiness: they could picture the disciples of Christ filling the whole world with their teaching, and the preaching of their gospel introducing among all men a fresh and unknown ideal of holiness: they could see churches of Christ established by their means among all nations, and Christian people throughout the whole world bearing one common name: they could give assurance that the attacks of rulers and kings from time to time against the Church of Christ will avail nothing to cast it down, strengthened as it is by God. If so many things were proclaimed by the Hebrew divines, and if their fulfilment is so clear to us all to-day, who would not marvel at their inspiration? Who will not agree that their religious and philosophic teaching and beliefs must be sure and true, since their proof is to be found not |5 in artificial arguments, not in clever words, or deceptive syllogistic reasoning, but in simple and straightforward teaching, whose genuine and sincere character is attested by the virtue and knowledge of God evident in these inspired men? Men who were enabled not by human but by divine inspiration to see from a myriad ages back {8} what was to happen long years after, may surety claim our confidence for the belief which they taught their pupils.

Now I am quite well aware, that it is usual in the case of all who have been properly taught that our Lord and Saviour Jesus is truly the Christ of God to persuade themselves in the first place that their belief is strictly in agreement with what the prophets witness about Him. And secondly, to forewarn all those, with whom they may enter on an argument, that it is by no means easy to establish their position by definite proofs. And this is why in attacking this subject myself I must of course endeavour, with God's help, to supply a complete treatment of the Proof of the Gospel from these Hebrew theologians. And the importance of my writing docs not lie in the fact that it is, as might be suggested, a polemic against the Jews. Perish the thought, far from that! For if they would fairly consider it, it is really on their side. For as it establishes Christianity on the basis of the antecedent prophecies, so it establishes Judaism from the complete fulfilment of its prophecies. To the Gentiles too it should appeal, if they would fairly consider it, because of {9} the extraordinary foreknowledge shown in the prophetic writers, and of the actual events that occurred in agreement with their prophecies. It should convince them of the inspired and certain nature of the truth we hold: it should silence the tongues of false accusers by a more logical method of proof, which slanderers contend that we never offer, who in their daily arguments with us keep pounding away with all their might with the implication forsooth that we are unable to give a logical demonstration of our case, but require those who come to us to rest on faith alone. |6 

My present work ought to have something to say to a calumny like this, as it will assuredly rebut the empty lies and blasphemy of godless heretics against the holy prophets by its exposition of the agreement of the new with the old. My argument will dispense with a longer systematic interpretation of the prophecies, and will leave such a task to any who wish to make the study, and are able to expound such works. And I shall take as my teacher the sacred command which says "sum up many things in few words," and aspire to follow it. I shall only offer such help in regard to the texts, and to the points which bear on the subject under consideration, as is absolutely necessary for their clear interpretation.

{10} But I will now cease my Introduction and begin my Proof. As we have such a mob of slanderers flooding us with the accusation that we are unable logically to present a clear demonstration of the truth we hold, and think it enough to retain those who conic to us by faith alone, and as they say that we only teach our followers like irrational animals to shut their eyes and staunchly obey what we say without examining it at all, and call them therefore "the faithful" because of their faith as distinct from reason, I made a natural division of the calumnies of our position in my "Preparation" of the subject as a whole. On the one side I placed the attacks of the polytheistic Gentiles, who accuse us of apostasy from our ancestral gods, and make a great point of the implication, that in recognizing the Hebrew oracles we honour the work of Barbarians more |7 than those of the Greeks. And on the other side I set the accusation of the Jews, in which they claim to be justly incensed against us, because we do not embrace their manner of life, though we make use of their sacred writings. Such being the division, I met the first so far as I could in my Preparation for the Gospel by allowing that we were originally Greeks, or men of other nations who had absorbed Greek ideas, and enslaved by ancestral ties in the deceits of polytheism. But I went on to say that our conversion was due not to emotional and unexamined impulse, {11} but to judgment and sober reasoning, and that our devotion to the oracles of the Hebrews thus had the support of judgment and sound reason.

And now I have to defend myself against the second class of opponents, and to embark on the investigation it requires. It has to do with those of the Circumcision, it has not yet been investigated, but I hope in time to dispose of it in the present work on the Proof of the Gospel. And so now with an invocation of the God of Jews and Greeks alike in our Saviour's Name we will take as our first object of inquiry, what is the character of the religion set before Christians. And in this same inquiry we shall record the solutions of all the points investigated.

CHAPTER 2

The Character of the Christian Religion.

I HAVE already laid down in my Preparation that Christianity is neither a form of Hellenism, nor of Judaism, but that it is a religion with its own characteristic stamp, and that this is not anything novel or original, but something of the greatest antiquity, something natural and familiar to the godly men {12} before the times of Moses who |8 are remembered for their holiness and justice. But now let us consider the nature of Hellenism and Judaism, and inquire under which banner we should find these pre-Mosaic saints, whose godliness and holiness is attested by Moses himself. Judaism would be correctly defined as the polity constituted according to the Law of Moses, dependent on the one, omnipotent God. Hellenism you might summarily describe as the worship of many Gods according to the ancestral religions of all nations. What then would you say about the pre-Mosaic and pre-Judaic saints, whose lives are recorded by Moses, Enoch for instance, of whom he says:

"And Enoch pleased God." 

Or Noah, of whom he says again:

"And Noah was a man righteous in his generation '' 

Or Seth, and Japheth, of whom he writes:

"Blessed be the Lord God of Seth (Shem), . . . and may God make room for Japheth." 

Add to these Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, include as is right the patriarch Job, and all the rest who lived according to the ideals of these men; they must, you may think, have been either Jews or Greeks. But yet they could not properly be called Jews, inasmuch as the system of Moses' Law had not yet been brought into being. {13} For if (as we have admitted) Judaism is only the observance of Moses' Law, and Moses did not appear until long after the date of the men named, it is obvious that those whose holiness he records who lived before him, were not Jews. Neither can we regard them as Greeks, inasmuch as they were not under the dominion of polytheistic superstition. For it is recorded of Abraham that he left his father's house and his |9 kindred altogether, and cleaved to the One God alone, Whom he confesses when he says:

"I will stretch out (my hand) to the most-high God, who created the heaven and the earth." 

And Jacob is recorded by Moses as saying to his house and all his people:

"2. Remove the strange gods from your midst, 3. and let us arise and go to Bethel, and make there an altar to the Lord that heard me in the day of affliction, who was with me, and preserved me in the way wherein I went. 4. And they gave to Jacob the strange gods, which were in their hands, and the ear-rings in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that is in Shechem, and destroyed them to this day."

These men, then, were not involved in the errors of idolatry, moreover they were outside the pale of Judaism; yet, though they were neither Jew nor Greek by birth, we know them to have been conspicuously pious, holy, and just. {14} This compels us to conceive some other ideal of religion, by which they must have guided their lives. Would not this be exactly that third form of religion midway between Judaism and Hellenism, which I have already deduced, as the most ancient and most venerable of all religions, and which has been preached of late to all nations through our Saviour. Christianity would therefore be not a form of Hellenism nor of Judaism, but something between the two, the most ancient organization for holiness, and the most venerable philosophy, only lately codified as the law for all mankind in the whole world. The convert from Hellenism to Christianity does not land in Judaism, nor does one who rejects the Jewish worship become ipso facto a Greek. From whichever side they come, whether it be Hellenism or Judaism, they find their place in that intermediate law of life preached by the godly and holy men of old lime, which our Lord and Saviour has raised up anew after its long sleep, in accordance with Moses' own prophecies, and those of the other prophets on the point. Yes, Moses himself writes prophetically in the oracles |10 addressed to Abraham, that in days to come {15} not only Abraham's descendants, his Jewish seed, but all the tribes and nations of the earth will be counted worthy of God's blessing on the common basis of a piety like Abraham's.

"1. And the Lord said to Abram, Go forth out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and from the house of thy father, and come hither into the land which I shall shew thee. 2. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed, 3. and I will bless those that bless thee, and I will curse those that curse thee, and in thee all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed." 

And again God said:

"Shall I hide from Abraham my servant that I shall do? For Abraham shall become a great and numerous nation, and in him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed."

How could all the nations and families of the earth be blessed in Abraham, if there was no connection between him and them, either of spiritual character or physical kinship? There was assuredly no physical kinship between Abraham and the Scythians, or the Egyptians, or the Aethiopians, or the Indians, or the Britons, or the Spaniards: such nations and others more distant than they could not surely hope to receive any blessing because of any physical kinship to Abraham. It was quite as unlikely that all the nations would have any common claim to share the spiritual blessings of Abraham. {16} For some of them practised marriage with mothers and incest with daughters, some of them unmentionable vice. The religion of others lay in slaughter, and the deification of animals, idols of lifeless wood, and superstitions of deceiving spirits. Others burned their old men alive, and commended as holy and good the customs of delivering their dearest to the flames, or feasting on dead bodies. Men brought up in such savage ways |11 could not surely share in the blessing of the godly, unless they escaped from their savagery, and embraced a way of life similar to the piety of Abraham. For even he, a foreigner and a stranger to the religion which he afterwards embraced, is said to have changed his life, to have cast away his ancestral superstition, to have left his home and kindred and fathers' customs, and the manner of life in which he was born and reared, and to have followed God, Who gave him the oracles which are preserved in the Scriptures.

If Moses then, who came after Abraham and established a polity for the Jewish race on the basis of the law which he gave them, had laid down the kind of laws which were the guide of godly men before his own time, and such as it was possible for all nations to adopt, so that it should be possible for all the tribes and nations of the world to worship according to Moses' enactments; {17} which is the same as saying that the oracles foretold that through Moses' lawgiving men of all nations would worship God and follow Judaism, being brought to it by the law, and would be blessed with the blessing of Abraham—then it would have been right for us to be keeping the enactments of Moses. But if the' polity of Moses was not applicable to the other nations, but only to the Jews and not to all of them, but only to the inhabitants of Judaea, then it was altogether necessary to set up another kind of religion different from the law of Moses, that all the nations of the world might take it as their guide with Abraham, and receive an equal share of blessing with him.

CHAPTER 3 

That the System of Moses was not Suitable for All Nations.

THAT the enactments of Moses, as I said, were only applicable to the Jews, but not to all of them, and certainly not to the dispersed (among the Gentiles), only in fact to the inhabitants of Palestine, will be plain to you if you reflect thus. For the law of Moses says: |12 

{18} "Thrice in the year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God."

And it defines more exactly at what place they should all meet, when it says:

"Three times in the year shall thy males appear before the Lord, thy God, in the place which the Lord shall choose."

You see that it does not bid them meet in each city, or in any indefinite place, but "in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose." There thrice a year it enacts that they must assemble together, and it determines the times, when they must meet at the place where the rites of the worship there are to be celebrated. One season is that of the Passover, the second,' fifty days later, is called the Feast of Pentecost, and the third is in the seventh month after the Passover, on the Day of Atonement, when all the Jews still perform their fast. And a curse is laid on all who do not obey what is enacted. It is plain that all who were to meet at Jerusalem thrice in the year and perform their rites would not be able to live far from Judaea: but they live all round its boundaries. If then it would be impossible even for the lews whose home is the farthest from Palestine to obey their law, {19} it would be absurd to hold that it could be applicable to all nations and to men in the uttermost parts of the earth.

Hear now in what way women after childbirth are bidden by the same Lawgiver to go and present their offerings to God, as follows:

"And the Lord spake to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them, Whatsoever woman shall have conceived and borne a male-child shall be unclean seven days.'' 

And he adds after saying something else:

"6. And when the days of her purification shall have been fulfilled for a son or a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of a year old without blemish for a whole burnt-offering, and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin-offering to the door of the tabernacle of witness to the priest, 7. she shall present [them] before the Lord. And the priest shall make atonement for her, and shall purify her from the issue of her blood; this is the law of her who bears a male or a female." |13 

Again, in addition to this the same law bids those who have contracted defilement by mourning or touching a corpse only to be purified by the ashes of an heifer, and to abstain from their accustomed work for seven days. This is what it says:

"10. And it shall be a perpetual statute to the children of Israel and to the proselytes in the midst of them. 11. He that touches the dead body of any soul of man shall be unclean seven days, 12. shall be purified on the third day and shall be made clean on the seventh day. {20} And if he be not purified on the third day, and on the seventh day, he shall not be clean. 13. Every one who touches the dead body of a soul of a man, if he shall have died, and he be not purified, he has defiled the tabernacle of the witness of the Lord. That soul shall be cut off from Israel, because the water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on him. He is unclean, uncleanness is on him. 14. And this is the law: if a man die in a house, everyone that goeth into that house, and all the things that are in the house, are unclean seven days. 15. And every open vessel which is not bound with a fastening, shall be unclean; 16. and every one who shall touch on the face any man slain by the sword, or a corpse, or a human bone, or a sepulchre, shall be unclean seven clays. 17. And they shall take for the unclean of the burnt ashes of purification, and shall pour it into a vessel, 18. and shall take hyssop. And a clean man shall clip it, and sprinkle it on the house and the furniture and the souls that are therein, and on him that has touched the human bone, or the slain man, or the dead, or the sepulchre. 19. And the clean man shall sprinkle it on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day, {21} and he shall wash his garments, and shall wash [his body] with water, and shall be unclean until the evening. 20. And a man, if he be defiled, and not purified, that soul shall be cast out of the congregation, because the water of purification has not been sprinkled on him; and this shall be a perpetual law to you." |14 

When Moses made this law he even determined the ritual of the sprinkling with water. He said that a red heifer without spot must be completely burnt, and that a portion of its ashes must be cast into the water, with which those who had been defiled by a corpse were to be purified. Where the heifer is to be burnt, where the woman is to bring her offerings after childbirth, where she is to celebrate the other rites, is not in doubt. It is not to be done indifferently in every place, but only in that place which he defines. This is plain from his enactment, when he says:

"And there shall be a place, which the Lord your God shall choose, in which his name shall be called upon, there shall ye bear whatsoever I bid you to-day." 

And he explains in accurate order, adding:

"13. Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy whole burnt-offerings in any place, which thou mayst see, 14. but in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, in one of thy cities; there shall thou offer thy whole burnt-offerings, and there shall thou do whatsoever I bid you to-day." 

And he makes this addition:

"{22} 17. Thou shall not be able to eat in all thy cities the tenth of thy corn and wine and oil, the firstborn of thy herd and thy flock, and all thy vows whatsoever thou hast vowed, and thy thank-offerings, and the firstfruits of thine hands. 18. But before the Lord shall thou eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose for himself, thou and thy sons and thy daughter, and thy servant, and thy maid, and the stranger⁸  {1} that is in thy cities."

And proceeding he confirms the statement, where he says: 

"But thou shall take thy holy things, if thou hast any, and thy vows, and shall come to the place, which the Lord thy God shall choose for himself.'' 

And again:

"Thou shall tithe a tenth of all the produce of thy seed, the produce of thy field year by year. And thou |15 shall eat it in the place {2a} which the Lord thy God shall choose to have his name called on there."

And then in considering what ought to be done if the place designated by him were far off, and the yield of fruit large, how the year's fruits for the whole burnt-offering could be carried to the place of God, he lays down the following law:

"23. And if the journey be too far for thee, and thou art not able to bring them, because the place is far from thee, which the Lord your God shall choose to have his name called on there, because the Lord thy God shall bless thee; 24. and thou shall sell them for money, {2b} and shall take the money in thy hands, and shall go to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose. 25. And thou shall give the money for whalsoever thy soul desireth for oxen or sheep, or wine, or slrong drink, or for whalsoever thy soul desireth and thou shall consume it there before the Lord."

And he again sets his seal on the actual place, when he says:

"19. Every firstborn that shall be born of thy kine and sheep, thou shall offer the males to the Lord thy God; thou shall not work with thy firstborn calf, and thou shall not shear thy firstborn sheep: 20. thou shall eat it before the Lord year by year, {2c} in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, thou and thy house."

Next notice how he arranges the celebration of the feasts, not anywhere in the land, but only in the appointed place. For he says:

"Observe the month of new corn, and thou shall keep the Passover lo the Lord thy God, sheep and bulls, in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose."

And he again reminds them, saying:

"5. Thou shall not be able to sacrifice the passover {2d} in any of the cities which the Lord thy God gives thee; 6. But in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, to have his name called on there, thou shall sacrifice the passover at even at the setting of the sun |16 at the time when them earnest out of Egypt. 7. And thou shalt boil and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose."

Such, then, is the law of the Feast of the Passover. Hear that of Pentecost:

"9. Seven weeks in full shalt thou number to thyself, from when thou beginnest to put the sickle in the corn, 10. and thou shalt keep a feast of weeks to the Lord thy God, according as thy hand has power in whatsoever things the Lord thy God gives thee to bless thee. 11. And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou and thy son, and thy daughter, thy servant, and thy maid, {3a} and the Levite that is in thy cities, and the proselyte; and the orphan, and the widow that is among you, in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose for himself, to have his name called on there."

And hear where he commands the third feast to be celebrated:

"13. And thou shalt keep the feast of tabernacles when thou gatherest in from thy corn-floor and from thy wine-press, 14. and shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy servant, and thy maid, and the widow, {3b} in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose for himself."

As he is so insistent on the selected place, and says so many times that they are to meet there in all their tribes and in all their families, the law could hardly apply to those living even a little way from Judaea, and still less to the nations of the whole world, especially as he allows no pardon to those who transgress his ordinances, and invokes a curse on those who do not carry them all out to the minutest detail, in the following words:

"{3c} Cursed is he who continueth not in all things written in this law to do them."

Consider, again, other instances of the impossibility of all men following the law of Moses. He makes a distinction between voluntary transgressions and those hard to evade, and after assigning penalties to sins which deserve |17 the severest punishment, he provides laws by which those who sin unwittingly are to receive different treatment. One of these runs as follows:

"27. And if a soul of the people of the land shall sin unwittingly by doing anything contrary to the commandments of the Lord that ought not to be done, and shall transgress, 28. and his sin shall be known to him, wherein he hath sinned [in it], then shall he bring [his gift] a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, {3d} he shall bring it for his sin that he hath sinned 29. in the place where they slay the whole burnt-offerings, 30. and the priest shall take of the blood."

You see here how one who has sinned unintentionally is required to present himself at the place where the whole burnt-offerings are sacrificed. And this is the place the law has already so often mentioned, when it says:

"The place which the Lord thy God shall choose."

But, indeed, the Lawgiver himself perceived the impossibility for all mankind to carry out the law, and clearly noted it by not promulgating his law universally for all, but with this limitation:

"If a soul sin unwittingly of the people of the land."

And he lays down a second law which says: {4a} 

"And if a soul hear the voice of the swearing of an oath, and he is a witness or has seen or been conscious of it, if he do not report it, he shall bear the iniquity."

What is he to do? He is to take the victim in his hands and go with all speed to the purification. And of course that must take place where the whole burnt-offerings are sacrificed.

And once more a third law:

"2. The soul, it says, which shall touch any unclean thing, or carcases of unclean cattle, and should take from it, he also himself is defiled and transgresses, 3. or if he touch the uncleanness of a man, and by all the uncleanness that he touches be defiled, and {4b} know it not, and afterwards should know it and transgress." |18 

Here the only thing necessary for the polluted person is for him to go once more to the sacred place, and offer for the sin which he has sinned a female animal from his flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats, for his sin. And the law was the same in the case of a soul, which shall "swear pronouncing with his lips to do evil or to do good, whatsoever it be that a man shall pronounce with an oath, and it be hid from him; and when he knoweth of it and is guilty in one of those things, and shall confess the sin that he hath sinned:"he too, the law says, taking the same offering, is to go with all speed to the sacred place, and the priest is to pray on his behalf for the sin, and his sin shall be forgiven. And another law besides those I have quoted makes this provision:

"The soul which shall be really unconscious, and shall sin unwittingly in any of the holy things of the Lord, even he shall bear a ram for his transgression to the Lord. [And he shall bear it again to the high-priest to the place, that is to say the chosen place." 

And he adds a sixth law in these words:

"{4d} And the soul which shall sin and do one thing against the commandments of the Lord, which it is not right to do, and hath not known it, and shall have transgressed and contracted guilt, he shall even bring a ram to the High Priest, and the priest shall make atonement for his trespass of ignorance, and he knew it not, and it shall be forgiven him."

The following is a seventh, law:

"2. The soul which shall have sinned and surely overlooked the commandments of the Lord, and shall deal falsely in the affairs of his neighbour in the matter of a deposit, or concerning association (in business), or plunder, or has in any way wronged his neighbour, 3. or has found that which was lost, and has lied concerning it, and shall have sworn unjustly concerning any one of all the things, whatsoever a man may do, so as to sin thereby; 4. it shall come to pass, whenever he so hath sinned and transgressed, that he shall restore the plunder he has seized, or redress the injustice he has |19 committed, or restore the deposit which was entrusted to him, {5a} 5. or the lost article he has found of any kind, about which he swore unjustly, he shall even restore it in full, and shall add to it the fifth part."

Here, again, after confession and reparation the transgressor had to go with all speed, putting everything else on one side, to the place, which the Lord our God should choose, and offer for his sin an unblemished ram, and the priest was to pray for him before the Lord, and he would be forgiven.{5b} 

In this careful way our wonderful Moses distinguished sins done unwittingly and ignorantly from intentional offences, on which in the government of his people he set rigorous penalties. For he that would not pardon the unwitting offender before he had confessed his offence, exacted a small penalty from him in the sacrifice ordained, by requiring him to repair with all speed {5c} to the sacred place fostered both the religious spirit and watchfulness of those who worshipped God by his rule, and of course restrained even more the desires of willing offenders. What, then, must be our conclusion from all this, when, as we have said, we find Moses summing up his whole system with a curse, where he says:

"Cursed is everyone, who shall not remain in all the things written in this law. to do them "? 

Was it, then, meant that Moses' future disciples from the ends of the earth must do all these things, if they were to escape the curse and receive the blessing promised to Abraham? Were they to go thrice a year to Jerusalem, {5d} and were the female worshippers of all nations, fresh from the pangs of childbirth, to undertake so long a journey, to offer the sacrifice ordained by Moses for each one of their children? Were those who had touched a dead body, or had forsworn themselves, or had sinned against their will, to come from the ends of the earth, to run and hasten to the purification that was required by the law, in order to escape the visitation of the curse? Of course it is clear to you that it was hard enough to follow Moses' rule of life for those who lived round Jerusalem, or only inhabited Judaea, and that it was quite out of the question for the |20 other nations to fulfil it.

Hence, of course, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Son of God, said to His disciples after His Resurrection:

"{6a} Go and make disciples of all the nations,'' and added: "Teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you.''

For He did not bid them to teach the laws of Moses to all nations, but whatsoever He Himself had commanded: that is to say, the contents of the Gospels. And agreeably to this His disciples and apostles in considering the requirements of the Gentiles decided that Moses' enactments were unsuitable to their needs, since neither they themselves nor their fathers had found them easy to be kept. As St. Peter says in the Acts: {6b} 

"Now therefore why do ye attempt to lay a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?"

And agreeably to this Moses himself for this very reason said that another prophet would be raised up "like unto him"; and publishes the good news that he should be a lawgiver for all the nations. He speaks of Christ in a riddle. He orders his followers to obey him in these prophetic words.

"{6c} 15. A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you from your brethren, like unto me, ye shall hear him [whatsoever he saith unto you]. 19. And it shall |21 be that every soul who will not hear that prophet shall be cast out of its race."

And that this prophet, who is clearly the Christ, should come forth from the Jews and rule all nations, he proclaims again when he says:

"{6d} 5. How fair are thy dwellings, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel, 6. as shady groves, and as a garden by a river, and as tents which God pitched. 7. There shall come a man out of his seed, and he shall rule over many nations, and his kingdom shall be exalted."

He makes it clear from which tribe of all the twelve that comprised the Hebrew race, namely the tribe of Judah, Christ the Lawgiver of the Gentiles according to the prophecy should arise. He is clear as to the date, for it would be after the cessation of the Jewish monarchy which had been handed down from their forefathers.

"A ruler shall not fail from Juda, nor a prince from his loins, until there come the things stored up for him; and he is the expectation of the nations."

What "expectation" could this be, but that expressed in the promise to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed? Moses has, therefore, made |22  it quite plain from his own words that he was quite well aware of the failure of the law he had laid down to apply to all nations, and that another prophet would be necessary for the fulfilment of the oracles given to Abraham. And this was He, of Whom his prophecy proclaimed the good news that one should arise from the tribe of Judah and rule all nations.

CHAPTER 4

Why it is we reject the Jews' Way of Life, though we accept their Writings.

THESE, then, are the reasons why we have accepted and loved as belonging to ourselves the sacred books of the Hebrews, including as they do prophecies relating to us Gentiles. And the more so, since it was not Moses only who foretold the coming of the Lawgiver of the Gentiles after him, but really the whole succession of the prophets, who proclaimed the same truth with one voice, as David, when he said:

"Appoint, O Lord, a Lawgiver over them: let the nations know that they are but men."

See how he too speaks of a second Lawgiver of the nations. And in the same spirit in another (psalm) he calls on the Gentiles to sing, not the ancient song of Moses, but a new song, when he says:

"1. Sing to the Lord a new song; | sing to the Lord all the whole earth: | 3. proclaim among the nations his glory, | among all peoples his wonders: | 4. For great is the Lord, and very worthy to be praised, | he is terrible above all gods. | 5. For all the gods of the nations are demons, | but it is the Lord that made the heavens. | 7. Bring to the Lord ye families of the nations; | 8. bring to the Lord glory to his name."

And again: .

"10. Say among the nations, The Lord is King. | |23 For he has established the world, that it shall not be shaken."

And again:

"1. Sing to the Lord a new song, | for he hath done marvellous things, | 2. The Lord hath made known his salvation; | Before the nations he hath revealed righteousness. | 3. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God."

And notice how he ordains the new song not for the Jewish race only; the ancient song of Moses suited them, but for all the nations. This new song is called by Jeremiah, another Hebrew prophet, "a new covenant"where he says:

"31. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda: 32. not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: for they abode not in my covenant, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord. 33. For this is my, covenant which I will make with the house of Israel, saith the Lord, I will put my laws in their minds, and on their hearts I will write (them), and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

You see here that he distinguishes two covenants, the old and the new, and says that the new would not be like the old which was given to the fathers. For the old covenant was given as a law to the Jews, when they had fallen from the religion of their forefathers, and had embraced the manners and life of the Egyptians, and had declined to the errors of polytheism, and the idolatrous superstitions of the Gentiles. It was intended to raise up the fallen, and to set on their feet those who were lying on their faces, by suitable teaching.

"For the law, it is said, is not for the righteous, but for the unjust and disorderly, for the unrighteous and for sinners, and for those like them."

But the new covenant leads those who, through our Saviour |24 by the grace and gift of God are raised up, to a rapid march into the kingdom promised by God. It summons all men equally to share together the same good things. This "new covenant" Isaiah, another of the Hebrew prophets, calls the "new law,"when he says:

"3. For out of Sion shall go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And all the nations shall go, and all the peoples shall be gathered together, and shall say, Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob."

This law going forth from Sion, different from the law enacted in the desert by Moses on Mount Sinai, what can it be but the word of the Gospel, "going forth from Sion" through our Saviour Jesus Christ, and going through all the nations? For it is plain that it was in Jerusalem and Mount Sion adjacent thereto, where our Lord and Saviour for the most part lived and taught, that the law of the new covenant began and from thence went forth and shone upon all, according to the commands which He gave his disciples when He said:

"Go ye, and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you."

What could He mean but the teaching and discipline of the new covenant? Since, then, I have proved my facts, let us proceed to investigate together the character of the new covenant, and the new song and the new law that were foretold.

CHAPTER 5 

The Character of the New Covenant of Christ.

I HAVE now proved that the old covenant and the law given by Moses was only applicable to the Jewish race, and only to such of them as lived in their own land. It did not apply to other nations of the world nor to Jews |25 inhabiting foreign soil. And I have shown that the ideal of the new covenant must be helpful to the life of all nations: the members of its kingdom are to be restricted in no way whatever. Considerations of country, race or locality, or anything else are not to affect them in any way at all. The law and life of our Saviour Jesus Christ shows itself to be such, being a renewal of the ancient pre-Mosaic religion, in which Abraham, the friend of God, and his forefathers are shown to have lived. And if you cared to compare the life of Christians and the worship introduced among all nations by Christ with the lives of the men who with Abraham are witnessed to by Scripture as holy and righteous, you would find cne and the same ideal. For they too turned their backs on the errors of polytheism, they relinquished idolatrous superstition, they looked beyond the whole of the visible creation and deified neither sun nor moon, nor any part of the whole. They raised themselves to the Supreme God, Himself the Highest, the Creator of heaven and earth. And Moses himself bears this out in his history of ancient times when he records Abraham's saying:

"I will stretch forth my hand unto God most high, who hath created the heaven and the earth."

And when, before this, he introduces Melchizedek, whom he calls the priest of the Most High God, blessing Abraham as follows:

"Blessed be Abraham by God most high, who hath created the heaven and the earth."

And you would find that Enoch and Noah were reckoned just and well pleasing to God in the same way as Abraham. Job, ton, a just, true, blameless, devout man, averse from everything evil, is recorded as pre-Mosaic. He underwent a |26 trial of his utter devotion to the God of the Universe when he lost everything he had, and left the greatest example of holiness to posterity, when he spoke these philosophic words:

"21. I myself came forth naked from my mother's womb, and naked shall I depart. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away. As the Lord pleased, so it came to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

That he said this as a worshipper of the God of the universe is made quite clear when he goes on to say:

"4. For he is wise in mind and mighty and great; 6. Who shakes the (earth) under heaven from its foundation and its pillars totter. 7. Who commands the sun and it rises not, and he seals up the stars; 8. Who alone has stretched out the heaven." 

If then the teaching of Christ has bidden all nations now to worship no other God but Him whom the men of old and the pre-Mosaic saints believed in, we are clearly partakers of the religion of these men of old time. And if we partake of their religion we shall surely share their blessing. Yes, and equally with us they knew and bore witness to the Word of God, Whom we love to call Christ. They were thought worthy in very remarkable ways of beholding His actual presence and theophany.

Remember how Moses calls the Being, Who appeared to the patriarchs, and often delivered to them the oracles afterwards written down in Scripture, sometimes God and Lord, and sometimes the Angel of the Lord. He clearly implies that this was not the Omnipotent God, but a secondary Being, rightly called the God and Lord of holy men, but the Angel of the Most High His Father. Thus he says:

"10. And Jacob went forth ... to Charran, 11. and came to a certain place, and he slept there. . . . And he |27 took of the stones of the place, and put it at his head, and lay down to sleep in that place, 12. and he dreamed: and behold, a ladder fixed on the earth whose top reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascended and descended on it. 13. And the Lord stood upon it, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: fear not, the earth, the land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed: 14 and thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth."

To which he adds:

"16. And Jacob arose in the morning, and took the stone, which he had put under his head, and set it up as a pillar."

Then further on he calls this God and Lord Who appeared to him the Angel of God. For Jacob says:

"11. For the Angel of God said to me in a dream, Jacob. And I said, What is it? "

And then:

"12. I have seen, he says, all that Laban does to thee. I am the God that was seen by thee in the place of God, where thou anointedst for me there a pillar, and thou vowedst to me there a vow."

This same being who appeared to Abraham is called Lord and God. He teaches the saint mysteriously of His Father's rule, and speaks some things, as it were, of another God, which I will examine in their place. Then, again, it is impious to suppose that the Being who answered Job after his severe trial was the same. For when He shows Himself first in the whirlwind and the clouds He reveals Himself as the God of the Universe, but He goes on to reveal Himself in a way which makes Job say:

"4. Hear me, O Lord, and I will speak. 5. I heard of thee before by the hearing of the ears, but now mine eye hath seen thee." 

And if it is not possible for the Most High God, the |28 Invisible, the Uncreated, and the Omnipotent to be said to be seen in mortal form, the Being Who was seen must have been the Word of God, Whom we call Lord as we do the Father. But it is needless for me to labour the point, since it is possible to find instances in Holy Scripture. These I will collect at leisure in connection with my present work to prove that He Who was seen by the patriarchal saints was none other than the Word of God.

Therefore besides the conception of the Creator of the Universe, we and they have inherited also the conception of Christ in common. Hence you can find instances of the pre-Mosaic saints being called "Christs," just as we are called Christians. Hear what the oracle in the Psalms says about them:

"12. When they were few in numbers, very few, and strangers in the land, 13. and they went from nation to nation, from (one) kingdom to another people: 14. He suffered no man to wrong them, and he reproved kings for their sakes, saying: 15. 'Touch not my Christs, and do no evil to my prophets.'"

The whole context shows that this must be referred to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: they therefore shared the name of Christ with us.

CHAPTER 6

The Nature of the Life according to the New Covenant proclaimed to All Men by Christ.

JUST as a life of virtue and a system of holiness is through the teaching of Christ preached to all nations without any reference to the Mosaic legislation, so by these men of old time the same independent ideal of holiness was upheld. They cared nothing for circumcision, nor do we. They did not abstain from eating certain beasts, neither do we. For instance, Moses introduces Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God, uncircumdsed, not anointed with prepared |29 ointment according to Moses, knowing naught of the Sabbath, paying no heed whatever to the commandments afterwards given by Moses to the whole Jewish race, hut living exactly according to the Gospel of Christ. And yet Moses says he was the priest of the Most High God, and the superior of Abraham. For he is introduced as blessing Abraham. Such too was Noah, a just man in his generation, whom as a kindling seed of the human race Almighty God preserved in the destruction by the flood when all men on earth were destroyed. He again was quite ignorant of Jewish customs, he was uncircumcised, he did not follow the Mosaic law in any point, yet he is recognized as conspicuously just. And Enoch before him, who is said to have pleased God, and to have been translated, so that his death was not seen, was another like person, uncircumcised, with no part or lot in the law of Moses, living a distinctly Christian rather than a Jewish life.

And Abraham himself, coming later than those already named, being younger than they according to the age men reached in those times, though an old man in reality, was the first to receive circumcision as a seal, for the sake of his descendants, and he left it to those who should be born of him according to the flesh as a sign of their descent from him. He too before he had a son, and before he was circumcised, by his rejection of idolatry, and his confession of the one omnipotent God, yea, by his virtuous life alone is shown to be one who lived as a Christian, not as a Jew. For he is represented as having kept the commandments and the precepts and the ordinances of God before the enactments of Moses. That is why God giving the oracle to Isaac says:

"And I will give to thy seed all this land, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Because Abraham thy father heard my voice, and kept my commandments, and my laws, and my judgments, and my statutes."

So there were before the Mosaic law other commandments of God, and ordinances not like those of Moses, other laws and precepts of Christ, by which they were justified. Moses |30 clearly shews that these were not the same as his own enactments, when he says to the people:

"Hear, Israel, the ordinances and the judgments, all that I speak in your ears this day, and ye shall learn them, and observe to do them. The Lord your God made a covenant with you in Choreb; the Lord did not make this covenant with your fathers, but with you."

See how distinctly he alludes to this covenant, when he says God did not give the same covenant to their fathers. For if he had said that absolutely no covenant was given to their fathers it would have been a false statement. For Holy Scripture testifies that a covenant of some kind was given both to Abraham and Noah. And so Moses adds that one "not the same" was given to their fathers, implying that other greater and glorious covenant, by which they were shown forth as friends of God. So Moses records that Abraham by his faith in Almighty God attained righteousness when he says:

"Abraham believed in God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness."

This text shews clearly that he received the sign of circumcision after his attainment of righteousness and after the witness to his holiness, and that this added nothing at all to his justification.

Again, you would find Joseph in pre-Mosaic times in the palaces of the Egyptians living in freedom not burdened by Judaism. Moses himself, the leader and lawgiver of the Jews, lived from his babyhood with the daughter of the King of Egypt, and partook of the Egyptian food without question. What is to be said of Job the thrice-blessed, the true, the blameless, the just, the holy, what was the cause of his holiness and justice, was it Moses' commandments? Certainly not. Was it the keeping of the Sabbath, or any other Jewish observance? How could that be, if Job was earlier than the time of Moses and his legislation? For Moses was seventh from Abraham, and Job fifth, preceding him by two generations. And if you regard his life, you will see it was untouched by the Mosaic legislation, but not foreign to the teaching of our Saviour. Thus in reviewing his life in his apology to his friends he says: |31 

"12. For I saved the poor from the hand of the powerful, and I helped the orphan who had no helper. The mouth of the widow blessed me, 14. and I was clad in righteousness. I put on judgment as a cloak, 15. an eye was I to the blind, a foot to the lame, 16. I was a father of the weak."

This surely is exactly the same teaching which is preached to us all in the Gospel. Then again as one well acquainted with the words, "Weep with those that weep," and "Blessed are they that weep, for they shall laugh"; and "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it,"which are included in the Gospel teaching, he shews his sympathy for the miserable by saying:

"25. And I wept for every weak one—I groaned when I saw a man in difficulties."

Then, again, this holy man forestalls the Gospel teaching, which forbids unseemly laughter, when he says:

"5. But if I had gone with scorners, and if my foot has hasted to deceit 6. For I am weighed in a just balance, and the Lord knows my innocence."

And where the Mosaic law says "Thou shall not commit adultery,"and assigns death as the punishment of adulterers, He who draws out the law of the Gospel teaching, says: "It was said to them of old time, Thou shall not commit adultery; but I say unto you, thou shall not desire at all."

Look well at the man of whom we are speaking; he was so good a Christian in his life that he restrained even his looks when they were wayward, and made it his boast so to do— for he says:

"9. And if my heart has followed my eye for the wife of another man."  

And he gives the reason, as he continues:

"11. For the spirit of a man is not to be stayed, in the case of defiling another man's wife. 12. For it is a fire burning on every side, and where it enters, it utterly destroys." |32 

Here he shows his incorruptibility:

"7. If, too, I have touched gifts with my hands; 8. then let me sow, and others eat, and let me be uprooted from the earth."

How he treated his servants we may learn from his teaching here:

"13. And if I have trifled with the cause of my servant, or handmaiden, when they pleaded with me."

And again he gives the reason:

"14. What, then, should I do, if the Lord should try me? ... 15. Were not they also formed as I was in the womb? Yea, we were formed in the same womb."

He adds:

"16. I did not cause the eye of the widow to fail. 17. And if I did eat my morsel alone, and did not share it with the orphan, ... 19. and if I saw the naked perishing, and did not clothe him."

And again he proceeds:

"24. And if I trusted in a precious stone, 25. and if I rejoiced when my wealth was great, and if I laid my hand on unnumbered (treasures)."

And again he gives the reason:

"26. Do we not see the sun waxing and waning, and the moon eclipsed? "

So, again, whereas the teaching of the Gospel says:

"43. It was said to them of old time, Thou shall love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies": Job wonderfully anticipating the command by his own original teaching actually carried it out, for he says:

"29. And if I, too, was glad at the fall of my enemies, and said in my heart, It is well—30. then let my ear hear my curse."

And he adds:

"But the stranger did not remain outside, and my door was opened to all that came,"

showing himself no stranger in spirit to Him, who said, "I was a stranger, and ye took me in."Then hear what he says about offences done unintentionally: |33 

"33. Or if too, having sinned unintentionally, I hid my sin. 34. For I did not stand in awe of a great multitude, so as not to speak boldly before them. And if I did not let the poor depart (from my door) with an empty bosom . . . 35. And if I had not feared the hand of the Lord. And as to the written charge which I had against any . . . 37. I did not rend it and return it, taking nothing from the debtor."

So and in such ways the pre-Mosaic saints (for from the record of one we may imagine the life of all), waged their renowned contests for good, and were reckoned friends of God, and prophets. What need had they of the commandments of Moses, which were given to weak and sinful men? From all this it is abundantly proved that the Word of God announced to all nations the ancient form of their ancestors' religion, as the new covenant does not differ from the form of holiness, which was very ancient even in the time of Moses, so that it is at the same time both old and new. It is, as I have shown, very, very old; and, on the other hand, it is new through having been as it were hidden away from men through a long period between, and now come to life again by the Saviour's teaching.

And it was in this intermediate period, while the ideal of the new covenant was hidden from men, and as it were asleep, that the law of Moses was interposed in the interval. It was like a nurse and governess of childish and imperfect souls. It was like a doctor to heal the whole Jewish race, worn away by the terrible disease of Egypt. As such it offered a lower and less perfect way of life to the children of Abraham, who were too weak to follow in the steps of their forefathers. For through their long sojourn in Egypt, after the death of their godly forefathers, they adopted Egyptian customs, and, as I said, fell into idolatrous superstition. They aimed no higher than the Egyptians, they became in all respects like them, both in worshipping idols, |34 and in other matters. Moses tore them from their godless polytheism, he led them back to God, the Creator of all things; he drew them up as it were from an abyss of evil, but it was natural for him to build first this step of holiness at the threshold and entrance of the Temple of the more Perfect. Therefore he forbade them to murder, to commit adultery, to steal, to swear falsely, to work uncleanness, to lie with mother, sister or daughter, to do many actions which till then they had done without restraint. He rescued them from their wild and savage life, and gave them a polity based on better reason and good law as the times went, and was the first lawgiver to codify his enactments in writing, a practice which was not yet known to all men. He dealt with them as imperfect, and when he forbade idolatry, he commanded them to worship the One Omnipotent God by sacrifices and bodily ceremonies. He enacted that they should conduct by certain mystic symbols the ritual that he ordained, which the Holy Spirit taught him in a wonderful way was only to be temporary: he drew a circle round one place and forbade them to celebrate his ordinances anywhere, except in one place alone, namely at the Temple in Jerusalem, and never outside it. And to this day it is forbidden for the children of the Hebrews outside the boundaries of their ruined mother-city to sacrifice according to the law, to build a temple or an altnr, to anoint kings or priests, to celebrate the Mosaic gatherings and feasts, to be cleansed from pollution, to be loosed from offences, to bear gifts to God, or to propitiate Him according to the legal requirements.

And therefore, of course, they have fallen under Moses' curse, attempting to keep it in part, but breaking it in the whole, as Moses makes absolutely clear:

"Accursed is he, who does not continue in all the things written in this law, to do them."

And they have come to this impasse, although Moses himself foresaw by the Holy Spirit, that, when the new covenant was revived by Christ and preached to all nations, his own legislation would become superfluous, he rightly confined its influence to one place, so that if they were ever deprived |35 of it, and shut out of their national freedom, it might not be possible for them to carry out the ordinances of his law in a foreign country, and as of necessity they would have to receive the new covenant announced by Christ. Moses had foretold this very thing, and in due course Christ sojourned in this life, and the teaching of the new covenant was borne to all nations, and at once the Romans besieged Jerusalem, and destroyed it and the Temple there. At once the whole of the Mosaic law was abolished, with all that remained of the old covenant, and the curse passed over to those who became lawbreakers, because they obeyed Moses' law, when its time had gone by, and still clung ardently to it, for at that very moment the perfect teaching of the new Law was introduced in its place. And, therefore, our Lord and Saviour rightly says to those who suppose that God ought only to be worshipped in Jerusalem, or in certain mountains, or some definite places:

"1. The hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. For God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

So He said, and presently, not long after, Jerusalem was besieged, the holy place and the altar by it and the worship conducted according to Moses' ordinances were destroyed, and the archetypal holiness of the pre-Mosaic men of God reappeared. And the blessing assured thereby to all nations came, to lead those who came to it from the first step and from the first elements of the Mosaic worship to a better and more perfect life. Yes, the religion of those blessed and godly men, who did not worship in any one place exclusively, neither by symbols nor types, but as our Lord and Saviour requires "in spirit and in truth," by our Saviour's appearance became the possession of all the nations, as the prophets of old foresaw. For Zephaniah says the very same thing:

"The Lord shall appear against them, and shall utterly destroy all the gods of the nations of the earth. |36 And they shall worship him each one from his own place."

Malachi as well contends against those of the circumcision, and speaks on behalf of the Gentiles, when he says:

"10. I have no pleasure (in you), saith the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice at your hands. 11. For from the rising of the sun even to the setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering."

By "the incense and offering to be offered to God in every place,"what else can he mean, but that no longer in Jerusalem nor exclusively in that (sacred) place, but in every land and among all nations they will offer to the Supreme God the, incense of prayer and the sacrifice called "pure," because it is not a sacrifice of blood but of good works? And Isaiah literally shouts and cries his prophecy to the same effect:

"19. There shall be an altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt. . . . And the Lord shall be known to the Egyptians ... 20. And he shall send to them a man who shall save them, . . . 21, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall offer sacrifice, and vow vows to the Lord and pay (them). And they shall he turned to the Lord, and he shall hear them and heal them."

Do we not say truly then that the prophets were inspired to foretell a change of the Mosaic Law, nay its end and conclusion? Moses lays down that the altar and the |37 sacrifices should be nowhere else on earth but in Judaea, and there only in one city. But this prophecy says that an altar to the Lord shall be set up in Egypt, and that Egyptians shall celebrate their sacrifices to the Lord of the prophets and no longer to their ancestral gods. It foretells that Moses shall not be the medium of their knowledge of God, nor any other of the prophets, but a man fresh and new sent from God. Now if the altar is changed contrary to the commandment of Moses, it is beyond doubt necessary that the Law of Moses should be changed also. Then, too, the Egyptians, if they "sacrifice to the Supreme God," must be admittedly worthy of the priesthood. And if the Egyptians are priests Moses' enactments about the Levites and the Aaronic succession would be useless to the Egyptians. The time, therefore, will have come when a new legislation will be needed for their support. What follows? Have I spoken at random? Or have I proved my contention? Behold how to day, yes in our own times, our eyes see not only Egyptians, but every race of men who used to be idolaters, whom the prophet meant when he said "Egyptians," released from the errors of polytheism and the daemons, and calling on |38 the God of the prophets! They pray no longer to lords many, but to one Lord according to the sacred oracle; they have raised to Him an altar of unbloody and reasonable sacrifices according to the new mysteries of the fresh and new covenant throughout the whole of the inhabited world, and in Egypt itself and among the other nations, Egyptian in their superstitious errors. Yes, in our own time the knowledge of the Omnipotent God shines forth, and sets a seal of certainty on the forecasts of the prophets. You see this actually going on, you no longer only expect to hear of it, and if you ask the moment when the change began, for all your inquiry you will receive no other answer but the moment of the appearance of the Saviour. For He it was, of Whom the prophet spoke, when he said that the Supreme God and Lord would send a man to the Egyptians, to save them, as also the Mosaic oracles taught in these words: "A man shall come forth from his seed, and shall rule over many nations"; among which nations the Egyptians would certainly be numbered. But a great deal could be said on these points, and with sufficient leisure one could deal with them more exhaustively. Suffice it to say now, that we must hold to the truth, that the prophecies have only been fulfilled after the coming of Jesus our Saviour. For it is through Him that in our day that old system of Abraham, the most ancient and venerable form of religion, is followed by the Egyptians, the Persians, the Syrians and the Armenians. The Barbarians from the end of the earth, those of them who were of old the most uncivilized and wild, yea, they that inhabit the isles, for prophecy thought well even to mention them, follow it as well. And who would not be struck by the extraordinary change—that men who for ages have paid divine honour to wood and stone and daemons, wild beasts that feed on human flesh, poisonous reptiles, animals of every kind, repulsive monsters, fire and earth, and the lifeless elements of the universe should after our Saviour's coming pray to the |39 Most High God, Creator of Heaven and earth, the actual Lord of the prophets, and the God of Abraham and his forefathers? That men a little while before involved in marriage with mothers and daughters, in unspeakable vice and all sorts of vileness, men who lived like wild beasts, now converted by the divine power of our Saviour, and become like different beings, should crowd the public schools and learn lessons of virtue and purity. That not men only, but women, poor and rich, learned and simple, children even and slaves, should be taught in their daily occupation in town or country the loftiest ethics, which forbids to look with eyes unbridled, to be careless even in words, or to follow the path of custom and fashion. That they should learn the true ideal of worshipping the Supreme God, and serving Him in every place, according to the prophecy, which says: "And they shall worship Him each from his own place."Every one, then, whether Greek or Barbarian, is worshipping the Supreme God, not running to lerusalem, nor made holy with bloody sacrifices, but staying at home in his own land, and offering in spirit and in truth his pure and bloodless offering. And theirs is the new covenant, not according to the old. Do not allow the covenant of the pre-Mosaic Saints to be called "the old covenant,"but that which was given to the Jews by the Law of Moses. For the text which says that the new will be quite unlike the old clearly implies which one was the old:

"I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt."

"Not according to the covenant of the Mosaic Law,"he says. For that was introduced to the Jews at the exodus from Egypt. It might have seemed that he was introducing a new covenant opposed to the religious ideals of the Abrahamic Saints, if he had not distinctly said:

"Not according to the covenant, which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt." |40 

He prophesied that the new covenant would not be according to the one enacted at the time of the Exodus and the wanderings in the wilderness, hut according to the ancient one under which the pre-Mosaic saints flourished. And, therefore, for the future you may confidently classify the ideals of religions worshippers under three heads, not two: the completely idolatrous, who have fallen into the errors of polytheism; those of the circumcision, who by the aid of Moses have reached the first step of holiness; and thirdly, those who have ascended by the stair of Gospel teaching. If you regard this as a mean between the other two, you will no longer suppose that perverts from Judaism necessarily fall into Hellenism, nor that those that forsake Hellenism are, therefore, Jews. Recognizing the third division in the middle, you will see it standing up on high, as if it were set on a very lofty mountain ridge, with the others left below on each side of the height. For as it has escaped Greek godlessness, error, superstition, unbridled lust and disorder, so it has left behind Jewish unprofitable observances, designed by Moses to meet the needs of those who were like infants and invalids. And as it stands on high, hear what it says as it proclaims the law, which suits not Jews alone, but Greeks and barbarians, and all nations under the sun:

"O man! and all the human race! the Law of Moses, beginning from one race of men, first called the whole race of the Jews, because of the promise given to their holy forefathers, to the knowledge of the one God, and released its servants from bitter slavery to the daemons. But I am the herald to all men and to the nations of the whole world of a loftier knowledge of God and holiness; I call them to live according to the ideals of those of Abraham's day, and men still more ancient of pre-Mosaic date, with whom many of all races are recorded to have shone in holiness as lights in the world.

And again:

The Law of Moses required all who desired to be holy to speed from all directions to one definite place; but I, giving freedom to all, teach men not to look for |41 God in a corner of the earth, nor in mountains, nor in temples made with hands, but that each should worship and adore Him at home.

And again:

The old law commanded that God should be worshipped by the sacrifice of slain beasts, of incense and fire and divers other similar external purifications. Hut I, introducing the rites of the soul, command that God should be glorified with a clean heart and a pure mind, in purity and a life of virtue, and by true and holy teaching.

And again:

Moses forbade the men of his time who were defiled with blood to kill; but I lay down a more perfect law for those who have him for a schoolmaster and have kept the earlier commandment—when I ordain that men must not be slaves to anger.

And once more:

The Law of Moses enacted to adulterers and the impure that they must not commit adultery, or indulge in vice, or pursue unnatural pleasures, and made death the penalty of transgression; but I do not wish my disciples even to look upon a woman with lustful desire.

And again, it said:

Thou shall not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths; but I say unto you, Swear not at all, but let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

And again, it commanded resistance against the unjust, and reprisal, when it said:

An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thec on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And he who will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

And again, it exhorts to love your friend, and to hate your enemies; but I in my excess of goodwill and forbearance lay down the law:

Pray for persecutors, that you may be children |42 of your Father in heaven, who letteth his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

And, moreover, the Mosaic Law was suited to the hardness of heart of the vulgar, gave ordinances corresponding to those under the rule of sense, and provided a form of religion, reduced and inferior to the old. But I summon all to the holy and godly life of the holy men of the earlier days. And in fine, it promises, as to children, a land flowing with milk and honey, while I make citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven those who are worthy to enter therein.

Such was the message to all nations given by the word of the new covenant by the teaching of Christ. And the Christ of God bade His disciples teach them to all nations, saying:

"Go ye into all the world, and make disciples of all the nations . . . teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you."

And in giving them to all men both Greeks and barbarians to keep He clearly revealed the nature of Christianity, the nature of Christians, and the nature of the Teacher of the words and instruction, our Lord and Saviour the Christ of God Himself. He set up this new and perfect system throughout the whole world, that such teaching and such wisdom might be the food, not only of men but of women, of rich and poor alike, and of slaves with their masters. And yet the introducer of this new law is represented as having lived in all ways according to the Law of Moses. And this is a wonderful fact, that though He was going to come forward as the legislator of a new polity, according to the Gospel of His new covenant, He did not revolt from Moses as opposed to him and contrary. If He had thought good to command things opposed to Moses, He would have afforded to godless sectaries against Moses and the prophets material for much scandal, and to those of the circumcision a specious handle for attacking Him, particularly in view of the fact that they actually contrived their plot against His life as a transgressor and breaker of the law. |43 

CHAPTER 7

How Christ, having first fulfilled the Law of Moses, became the Introducer of a New and Fresh System.

AND now having lived in all ways according to the Law of Moses, He made use of His Apostles as ministers of the new legislation, on the one hand teaching them that they must not consider the Law of Moses either foreign or unfriendly to their own religion, on the other as being the author and introducer of a legislation new and salutary for all men, so that He did not in any way break Moses' enactments, but rather crowned them, and was their fulfilment, and then passed on to the institution of the Gospel Law. Hear Him speaking in this strain:

3. "I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it."

For if He had been a transgressor of the Law of Moses, He would reasonably have been considered to have rescinded it and given a contrary law: and if He had been wicked and a law-breaker He could not have been believed to be the Christ. And if He had rescinded Moses' Law, He could never have been considered to be One foretold by Moses and the prophets. Nor would His new Law have had any authority. For He would have had to embark on a new Law, in order to escape the penalty of breaking the old. But as a matter of fact He has rescinded nothing |44 whatever in the Law, but fulfilled it. It is, as one might say, Mosaically perfect. Yet since it was no longer possible for the causes I have stated already to accommodate the Law of Moses to the needs of the other nations, and it was necessary, thanks to the love of God the All-good, "that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth," He laid down a law suitable and possible for all. Nor did He forbid His Apostles to preach Moses' Law to all men, except when it was likely to be a stumbling-block to them, as the apostle says:

"For that which was impossible by the law, in that it was weak, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh," etc.

And it was "impossible "for all the nations to go up thrice a year to Jerusalem as the Law of Moses required, for a woman after childbirth to hasten there from the ends of the earth to pay the fees of her purification, and in many other ways, which you can arrive at for yourselves at your leisure. Since then it was not possible for the nations living outside Judaea to keep these things even if they wished, our Lord and Saviour could hardly be said to have rescinded them, but was the fulfilment of the Law, and gave a proof to those who could see, that He was indeed the Christ of God foretold by the old Jewish prophets. This He did, when He gave to all nations through His own disciples enactments that suited them. And, therefore, we reject Jewish customs, on the ground that they were not laid down for us, and that it is impossible to accommodate them to the needs of the Gentiles, while we gladly accept the Jewish prophecies as containing predictions about ourselves. Thus the Saviour on the one side is our teacher, and on the other the fulfilment of the Law of Moses, and of the prophets who followed him.

For since as yet the prophecies lacked the fulfilment of their conclusions and of their words, He must necessarily fulfil them. As for example the prophecy in Moses says:

"A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you like unto me, him shall ye hear in all things, whatsoever that prophet shall speak to you."

He fulfilled what remained to be fulfilled in this prophecy, |45 appearing as the second Lawgiver after Moses, giving to men the Law of the Supreme God's true holiness. For Moses does not say simply "a prophet,"but adds "like unto me": ("For a prophet," he says, "shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, like unto me. Him shall ye hear"), and this can only menu that He who was foretold would be equal to Moses. And Moses was the giver of the Law of holiness of the Supreme God. So He that was foretold, to be like Moses, would probably be like him in being a Lawgiver. And though there were many prophets in later days, none of them is recorded to have been "like Moses."

For they all referred their hearers to him. Even Scripture bears witness that "a prophet has not arisen like Moses": neither Jeremiah, nor Isaiah, nor any other of the prophets was like him, because not one of them was a Lawgiver. When the expectation was that a prophet who was also a Lawgiver like Moses should arise, Jesus Christ came giving a Law to all nations, and accomplishing what the Law could not. As He said:

"it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, Thou shalt not desire to." And, "It was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill, but I say unto you, Thou shalt not be angry." And, "No more in Jerusalem, but in every place must you worship." And, "Worship not with incense and sacrifices, but in spirit and in truth." And all such things that are recorded of His teaching are surely the laws of a Lawgiver very wise and very perfect. 

Wherefore Holy Scripture says His hearers were "astounded," because He taught them "as one having authority, and not as the Scribes and the Pharisees"—an oracle which supplied what was lacking to the fulfilment of the prophecy of Moses. And the same can be said of the other prophecies about Him, and the calling of the Gentiles. He was, therefore, the fulfiller of the Law and the prophets since He brought the predictions referring to Himself to a conclusion.

He ordained that the former Law should stand till He came, and He was revealed as the originator of the second Law of the new covenant preached to all nations, as being |46 responsible for the Law and influence of the two religions, I mean Judaism and Christianity. And it is wonderful that divine prophecy should accord:

"Behold, I lay in Zion a stone, choice, a cornerstone; precious, and he that believes on him shall not be ashamed."

Who could be the corner-stone but He, the living and precious stone Who supports by His teaching two buildings and makes them one? For He set up the Mosaic building, which was to last till His day, and then fitted on to one side of it our building of the Gospel. Hence He is called the corner-stone. And it is said in the Psalms: "22. The stone which the builders refused, the same is become the head of the corner. 23. This is of the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

This oracle too indubitably indicates the Jewish conspiracy against the subject of the prophecy, how He has been set at naught by the builders of the old wall, meaning the Scribes and Pharisees, the High-Priests and all the rulers of the Jews. And it prophesied that though He should be despised and cast out He would become the head of the corner, regarding Him as the originator of the new covenant, according to the above proofs.

So then we are not apostates from Hellenism who have embraced Judaism, nor are we at fault in accepting the law of Moses and the Hebrew Prophets, and we do not live as Jews, but according to the system of the men of God who lived before Moses. Nay, we claim that in this |47 we authenticate Moses and the succeeding prophets, in that we accept the Christ foretold by them, and obey His laws, and endeavour prayerfully to tread in the steps of His teaching, for so we do what Moses himself would approve. For he says, in foretelling that God will raise up a prophet like himself, "and every soul which doth not hear that prophet shall be cast out from its race."Therefore the Jews, because they rejected the prophet, and did not hearken to His holy words, have suffered extreme ruin according to the prediction. For they neither received the law of Christ of the new covenant, nor were they able to keep the commands of Moses without some breach of his law; and so they fell under the curse of Moses, in not being able to carry out what was ordained by him, being exiled as they were from their mother-city, which was destroyed, where alone it was allowed to celebrate the Mosaic worship. Whereas we, who accept Him that was foretold by Moses and the prophets, and endeavour to obey Him prayerfully, must surely be fulfilling the prophecy of Moses, where he said: "And every soul, which doth not hear that prophet, shall be cast out from its race."And we heard just now what the ordinances of the prophet were, which we must obey, their wisdom, perfection and heavenliness, which he thought fit to inscribe, not on tables of stone like Moses, nor yet with ink and parchment, but on the hearts of his pupils, purified and open to reason. On them he wrote the laws of the new covenant, and actually fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah.

"I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers. For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel, I will give my laws into their mind, and upon their heart I will write them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. |48 

CHAPTER 8 

That the Christian Life is of Two Distinct Characters.

THE one wrote on lifeless tables, the Other wrote the perfect commandments of the new covenant on living minds. And His disciples, accommodating their teaching to the minds of the people, according to the Master's will, delivered on the one hand to those who were able to receive it, the teaching given by the perfect master to those who rose above human nature. While on the other the side of the teaching which they considered was suitable to men still in the world of passion and needing treatment, they accommodated to the weakness of the majority, and handed over to them to keep sometimes in writing, and sometimes by unwritten ordinances to be observed by them. Two ways of life were thus given by the law of Christ to His Church. The one is above nature, and beyond common human living; it admits not marriage, child-bearing, property nor the possession of wealth, but wholly and permanently separate from the common customary life of mankind, it devotes itself to the service of God alone in its wealth of heavenly love! And they who enter on this course, appear to die to the life of mortals, to bear with them nothing earthly but their body, and in mind and spirit to have passed to heaven. Like some celestial beings they gaze upon human life, performing the duty of a priesthood to Almighty God for the whole race, not with |49 sacrifices of bulls and blood, nor with libations and unguents, nor with smoke and consuming fire and destruction of bodily things, but with right principles of true holiness, and of a soul purified in disposition, and above all with virtuous deeds and words; with such they propitiate the Divinity, and celebrate their priestly rites for themselves and their race. Such then is the perfect form of the Christian life. And the other more humble, more human, permits men to join in pure nuptials and to produce children, to undertake government, to give orders to soldiers fighting for right; it allows them to have minds for farming, for trade, and the other more secular interests |50 as well as for religion: and it is for them that times of retreat and instruction, and days for hearing sacred things are set apart. And a kind of secondary grade of piety is attributed to them, giving just such help as such lives require, so that all men, whether Greeks or barbarians, have their part in the coming of salvation, and profit by the teaching of the Gospel.

CHAPTER 9

Why a Numerous Offspring is not as Great a Concern to us as it was to them of Old Time.

This being so, the question naturally arises, if we claim that the Gospel teaching of our Saviour Christ bids us worship God as did the men of old, and the pre-Mosaic men of God, and that our religion is the same as theirs, and our knowledge of God the same, why were they keenly concerned with marriage and reproduction, while we to some extent disregard it? And again, why are they recorded as propitiating God with animal sacrifices, while we are forbidden to do so, and are told to regard it as impious. For those two things alone, which are by no means unimportant, would seem to conflict with what 1 have said; they would imply that in these matters we have not preserved the ancient ideal of religion. But it is possible for us to refute this charge by a study of the Hebrew writings. The men renowned for piety before Moses are recorded as having lived when human life was first beginning and organizing itself, while we live when it is nearing its end. And so they were anxious for the increase of their descendants, that men might multiply, that the human race might grow and flourish at that time, and reach its height; but these things are of little moment to us, who believe the world to be perishing and running down and reaching its last end, since it is expressly said that the gospel teaching will be at the door before the |51 consummation of life, while a new creation and the birth of another age at no distant time is foretold. Such is one reply, and this is a second. The men of old days lived an easier and a freer life, and their care of home and family did not compete with their leisure for religion; they were able to worship (iod without distraction from their wives and children and domestic cares, and were in no way drawn by external things from the things that mattered most. But in our days there are many external interests that draw us away, and involve us in uncongenial thoughts, and seduce us from our zeal for the things which please God. The word of the Gospel teaching certainly gives this as the cause of the limitation of marriage, when it says:

29. But this 1 say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth that they who have wives be as though they had none. 30. And those that wept as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; 31. and they that use this world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away. 32. But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is divided. 34. And the unmarried woman and the virgin careth for the things of the Lord how she may please the Lord), that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. 35. And this I speak for your profit; not that I may cast a cord upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction. |52 

This expressly attributes the decrease of marriage to the evils of the time and of external circumstances, such as did not affect the ancients.

And I might give this third reason why the godly men of old were so devoted to the procreation of children. The rest of mankind were increasing in evil, they had fallen into an uncivilized, inhuman, and savage mode of life, they had given themselves up completely to godlessness and impiety, while they themselves, a very scanty remnant, had divorced themselves from the life of the many, and from common association with other men. They were living apart from other nations and in isolation, and were organizing a new kind of polity; they were evolving a life of true wisdom and religion, unmingled with other men. They wished to hand on to posterity the fiery seed of their own religion; they did not intend that their piety should fail and perish when they themselves died, and so they had foresight for producing and rearing children. They knew they could be the teachers and guides of their families, and considered it their object to hand on to posterity the inheritance of their own good qualities. Hence many prophets and righteous men, yea, even our Lord and Saviour Himself, with His apostles and disciples, have come from their line.

And if some of them turned out wicked, like straw growing up with the corn, we must not blame the sowers, nor those who tended the crop, just as we should admit that even some of our Saviour's disciples have erred from the right way through self-will. And this explanation of the ancient men of God begetting children cannot be said to apply to the Christians to-day, when by God's help through our Saviour's Gospel teaching we can see with our own eyes many peoples and nations in city and country and field all hastening together, and united in running to learn the godly course of the teaching of the Gospel, for whom I am glad to say we are able to provide teachers and preachers of the word of holiness, free from all ties of life and anxious thoughts. And in our day these men are necessarily devoted to |53 celibacy that they may have leisure for higher things; they have undertaken to bring up not one or two children but a prodigious number, and to educate them in godliness, and to care for their life generally. On the top of all this, if we carefully examine the lives of the ancient men of whom I am speaking, we shall find that they had children in early life, but later on abstained and ceased from having them. For it is written that "Enoch pleased God after Methusaleh was born." Scripture expressly records that he pleased God after the birth of his son, and tells nothing of his having children afterwards. And Noah, that just man, who was saved alone with his family when the whole world was destroyed, after the birth of his children, though he lived many years more, is not related to have begotten more children. And Isaac is said, after becoming the father of twins by one wife, to have ceased cohabitation with her. Joseph again (and this was when he lived among the Egyptians) was only the father of two sons, and married to their mother only, while Moses himself and Aaron his brother are recorded as having had children before the appearance of God, but after the giving of the divine oracles as having begotten no more children. What must I say of Melchisedek? He had no son at all, no family, no descendants. And the same is true of Joshua, the successor of Moses, and many other prophets.

If there is any question about the families of Abraham and Jacob, a longer discussion will be found in the book I wrote about the polygamy and large families of the ancient men of God. To this I must refer the student, only warning him that according to the laws of the new covenant the producing of children is certainly not forbidden, but the provisions are similar to those followed by the ancient men of God. "For a bishop," says the Scripture, "must be the husband of one wife." Yet it is fitting that |54 those in the priesthood and occupied in the service of God, should abstain after ordination from the intercourse of marriage. To all who have not undertaken this wondrous priesthood, Scripture almost completely gives way, when it says: "Marriage is honourable, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." This, then, is my answer to the first question.

CHAPTER 10

Why we are not bidden to burn Incense and to sacrifice the Fruits of the Earth to God as were the Men of Old Time.

I SHOULD give the following reply to those who ask why we do not sacrifice animals to Almighty God, as the men of God of old did, whom we claim to imitate. Greek ideas, and what is actually found in the sacred books of the Hebrews, do not agree about the cultus of the ancient primitive men. The Greeks say that early men did not ever sacrifice animals, nor burn incense to the gods, but "herbage, which they lifted up in their hands as the bloom of the productive power of nature," and burnt grass and leaves and roots in the fire to the sun and the stars of heaven. And that in the next stage men launching far into wickedness stained the altars with the sacrifice of animals, and that this was a sacrifice sinful, unrighteous, and quite displeasing to God. For man and beast in no way differ in their reasonable soul. So they said that those who offer animals are open to the charge of murder, the soul being one and the same in man and brute. This was the view of the ancient Greeks, but it does not agree with the Hebrew Scriptures. They record that the first men, as soon as they |55 were created, honoured God with animal sacrifices at the very creation of their life. For they say: 

"And it came to pass after some days that Cain brought of the fruits of the earth a sacrifice to the Lord. And Abel also brought of the first-born of his sheep.. . . And God looked upon Abel and his gifts. But Cain and his sacrifices be regarded not."

Here you will understand that he who sacrificed an animal is said to have been more accepted by God than he who brought an offering of the fruits of the earth. Noah again brought to the altar his first-fruits of all clean cattle, and of all clean fowls; Abraham also is described as sacrificing: so that if we accept the evidence of Holy Scripture, the first sacrifices thought of by the ancient men of God were those of animals.

And this thought, I hold, was not due to accident, nor was its source in man, but it was divinely suggested. For when they saw since they were holy, brought nigh to God, and enlightened by the Divine Spirit in their souls that there was need of great stress on the cleansing of the sons of men, they thought that a ransom was due to the source of life and soul in return for their own salvation. And then as they had nothing better or more valuable than their own life to sacrifice, in place of it they brought a sacrifice through that of the unreasoning beasts, providing a life instead of their own life. They did not consider this was sinful or unrighteous. They had not been taught that the soul of the brutes was like man's, which has discourse of reason: they had only learned that it was the animal's blood, and that in the blood is the principle of life, which they offered themselves, sacrificing as it were to God one life instead of another. |56 

Moses makes this abundantly clear, when he says:

"For the life of all flesh is the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your sins: for the blood shall make atonement for the soul. Therefore I said to the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood."

Note carefully in the above the words, "I gave to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for the blood shall make atonement for the soul."

He says clearly that the blood of the victims slain is a propitiation in the place of human life. And the law about sacrifices suggests that it should be so regarded, if it is carefully considered. For it requires him who is sacrificing always to lay his hands on the head of the victim, and to bear the animal to the priest held by its head, as one offering a sacrifice on behalf of himself. Thus he says in each case:

"He shall bring it before the Lord. And he shall lay his hands on the head of the gift."

Such is the ritual in every case, no sacrifice is ever brought up otherwise. And so the argument holds that the victims are brought in place of the lives of them who bring them. In teaching that the blood of the brutes is their life, it in no way implies that they share in the essence of thought and reason, for they are composed of matter and body, in the same way as the vegetation of the earth and plants. Thus Moses tells that God said in one creative word:

"Let the earth bring forth herb of grass and the fruit tree."

And again in like manner:

"Let the earth bring forth four-footed things, and creeping things, and wild beasts of the earth after their kind."

We must, therefore, regard the brutes as akin in kind and nature and essence to the vegetation of the earth and the plants, and conclude that those who sacrifice them commit no sin. Noah indeed was told to eat flesh, as the herb of the field.

While then the better, the great and worthy and divine sacrifice was not yet available for men, it was necessary for |57 them by the offering of animals to pay a ransom for their own life, and this was fitly a life that represented their own nature. Thus did the holy men of old, anticipating by the Holy Spirit that a holy victim, dear to God and great, would one day come for men, as the offering for the sins of the world, believing that as prophets they must perform in symbol his sacrifice, and shew forth in type what was yet to be. But when that which was perfect was come, in accordance with the predictions of the prophets, the former sacrifices ceased at once because of the better and true Sacrifice.

This Sacrifice was the Christ of God, from far distant times foretold as coming to men, to be sacrificed like a sheep for the whole human race. As Isaiah the prophet says of him:

"As a sheep he was led to slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before her shearers."

And he adds:

"4. He bears our sins and is pained for us; yet we accounted him to be in trouble, and in suffering and in affliction. 5. Hut he was wounded on account of our sins, and he was made sick on account of our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripe we are healed. ... 6. And the Lord hath given him up for our iniquities ... .9 for he did no sin himself, nor was guile found in his mouth.''

Jeremiah, another Hebrew prophet, speaks similarly in the person of Christ: "I was led as a lamb to the slaughter."

John Baptist sets the seal on their predictions at the appearance of our Saviour. For beholding Him, and pointing Him out to those present as the one foretold by the prophets, he cried: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.''

Since then according to the witness of the prophets the great and precious ransom has been found for Jews and Greeks alike, the propitiation for the whole world, the life given for the life of all men, the pure offering for every stain and sin, the Lamb of God, the holy sheep dear to God, the Lamb that was foretold, by Whose inspired and mystic teaching all we Gentiles have procured the forgive ness of our former sins, and such Jews as hope in Him |58 are freed from the curse of Moses, daily celebrating His memorial, the remembrance of His Body and Blood, and are admitted to a greater sacrifice than that of the ancient law, we do not reckon it right to fall back upon the first beggarly elements, which are symbols and likenesses but do not contain the truth itself. And any Jews, of course, who have taken refuge in Christ, even if they attend no longer to the ordinances of Moses, but live according to the new covenant, are free from the curse ordained by Moses, for the Lamb of God has surely not only taken on Himself the sin of the world, but also the curse involved in the breach of the commandments of Moses as well. The Lamb of God is made thus both sin and curse—sin for the sinners in the world, and curse for those remaining in all the things written in Moses' law. And so the Apostle says: "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"; and "Him that knew no sin, for our sakes he made sin."For what is there that the Offering for the whole world could not effect, the Life given for the life of sinners, Who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a lamb to the sacrifice, and all this for us and on our behalf? And this was why those ancient men of God, as they had not yet the reality, held fast to their symbols. This is exactly what our Saviour teaches, saying:

"Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them."

And we, who have received both the truth, and the archetypes of the early copies through the mysterious dispensation of Christ, can have no further need for the things of old. |59 

He then that was alone of those who ever existed, the Word of God, before all worlds, and High Priest of every creature that has mind and reason, separated One of like passions with us, as a sheep or lamb from the human flock, branded on Him all our sins, and fastened on Hirn as well the curse that was adjudged by Moses' law, as Moses foretells: "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." This He suffered "being made a curse for us; and making himself sin for our sakes."And then "He made him sin for our sakes who knew no sin,"and laid on Him all the punishments due to us for our sins, bonds, insults, contumelies, scourging, and shameful blows, and the crowning trophy of the Cross. And after all this when He had offered such a wondrous offering and choice victim to the Father, and sacrificed for the salvation of us all, He delivered a memorial to us to offer to God continually instead of a sacrifice.

This also the wondrous David inspired by the Holy Spirit to foresee the future, foretold in these words:

"I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me |, and heard my calling |. 2. And he brought me up out of a pit of misery |, and from miry clay |. And he set my feet on a rock | and ordered my steps aright |. 3. And he hath put a new song in my mouth |, a hymn to our God. |"

And he shews clearly what "the new song" is when he goes on to say:

"7. Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not ; |60 but a body hast them prepared me |; whole burnt-offering; and sin offering thou didst take no pleasure in |. 8. Then said I, Lo, I come: | in the volume of the book it is written of me |, to do thy will, O God, I desired. |"

And he adds: "I have preached righteousness in the great congregation." He plainly teaches that in place of the ancient sacrifices and whole burnt-offerings the incarnate presence of Christ that was prepared was offered. And this very thing He proclaims to his Church as a great mystery expressed with prophetic voice in the volume of the book. As we have received a memorial of this offering which we celebrate on a table by means of symbols of His Body and saving Blood according to the laws of the new covenant, we are taught again by the prophet David to say:

"5. Thou hast prepared a table before me in the face of my persecutors |. Thou hast anointed my head with oil |, and thy cup cheers me as the strongest (wine). |"

Here it is plainly the mystic Chrism and the holy Sacrifices |61 of Christ's Table that are meant, by which we are taught to offer to Almighty God through our great High Priest all through our life the celebration of our sacrifices, bloodless, reasonable, and well-pleasing to Him. And this very thing the great prophet Isaiah wonderfully foreknew by the Holy Spirit, and foretold. And he therefore says thus:

"O Lord, my God, I will glorify thee, I will hymn thy name, for thou hast done marvellous things."

And he goes on to explain what these things so truly "wonderful" are:

"And the Lord of Sabaoth shall make a feast for all the nations. They shall drink joy, they shall drink wine, they shall be anointed with myrrh (on this mountain). Impart thou all these things to the nations. For this is God's counsel upon all the nations."

These were Isaiah's "wonders."the promise of the anointing with ointment of a good smell, and with myrrh made not to Israel but to all nations. Whence not unnaturally through the chrism of myrrh they gained the name of Christians. But he also prophesies the "wine of joy "to the nations, darkly alluding to the sacrament of the new covenant of Christ, which is now openly celebrated among the nations. And these unembodied and spiritual sacrifices the oracle of the prophet also proclaims, in a certain place:

"Offer to God the sacrifice of praise, and give the Highest thy vows: And call upon me in the clay of thy affliction, and I will deliver thee, and thou shall glorify me."

And again: 

"The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice."And once more: "The sacrifice of God is a contrite spirit."

And so all these predictions of immemorial prophecy are being fulfilled at this present time through the teaching of our Saviour among all nations. Truth bears witness with the prophetic voice with which God, rejecting the Mosaic sacrifices, foretells that the future lies with us: |62 

"Wherefore from the rising of the sun unto the setting my name shall be glorified among the nations. And in every place incense shall be offered to my name, and a pure offering."

We sacrifice, therefore, to Almighty God a sacrifice of praise. We sacrifice the divine and holy and sacred offering. We sacrifice anew according to the new covenant the pure sacrifice. But the sacrifice to God is called "a contrite heart.""A humble and a contrite heart thou wilt not despise."Yes, and we offer the incense of the prophet, in every place bringing to Him the sweet-smelling fruit of the sincere Word of God, offering it in our prayers to Him. This yet another prophet teaches, who says: "Let my prayer be as incense in thy sight."

So, then, we sacrifice and offer incense: On the one hand when we celebrate the Memorial of His great Sacrifice according to the Mysteries He delivered to us, and bring to God the Eucharist for our salvation with holy hymns and prayers; while on the other we consecrate ourselves to Him alone and to the Word His High Priest, devoted to Him in body and soul. Therefore we are careful to keep our bodies pure and undefiled from all evil, and we bring our hearts purified from every passion and stain of sin, and worship Him with sincere thoughts, real intention, and true beliefs. For these arc more acceptable to Him, so we are taught, than a multitude of sacrifices offered with blood and smoke and fat.

[All footnotes, biblical references, and indications of the numbering of the Greek text (beyond the first few) have reluctantly been omitted]

1. [1] The Title: "son of Pamphilus" either by adoption, or E. assumed the name from affection (G.P.E. vol. iii. p. 2). Genitive of kinship cannot mean "friend of P."

2. [2] The paging in the margin is that of J. A. Fabricius, who first edited the opening of the work (pp. 1, 4-17, 18) from the Mavrocordato Codex; R. Stephen (1545) and the Paris edilion (1628) derive from the Paris Codex (469) which had lost the beginning of the work up to η παιδισκη και ο προσηλυτος (page 14 of this translation). [[On odd-numbered pages, the Fabricius pagination is in parentheses on the right of the line. On even-numbered pages, the pagination is on the left.]]

3. [3] Theodotus, bishop of Laodicea in Syria, about A.D. 310-340: the Praeparatio is dedicated to him. See also H.E. vii. 32, 23 for a panegyric of him.

4. [4] εξανυεται. Lit., is being brought to a conclusion. The introduction was written last.

5. [1] For Bethlehem as a place of pilgrimage see also 97 c (and note) and 341 b, and Origen, c. Cels. i. 51.

6. [1] αλλοφυλων: so Fabricius.

7. [2] δαιμονων αποφυγην. See Harnack : Expansion of Christianity. Excursus on "The Conflict with Demons." E. T. i. 152-180. For daemons as fallen angels, heathen gods, and oracles, cf. P.E. 329. See Jewish legends, Book of Jubilees, 10 ^3.6.8; 15; 22 ¹⁷; 1 Enoch 6; 15 ^8.9.11; 16^7; 69 ^2.3; 86, 106 ^{13.14 etc.}

8. ¹ It is at this point that the Paris Codex 469, the basis of the edition of Stephen, and the Paris edition of 1628 begins.  Up to this point we are dependent on the edition of the lost Mavrocordato Codex by Fabricius and on his paging.  The paging is now that of Stephen and starts here as page 1.

BOOK TWO

"The Holy Scriptures foretell that there will be unmistakable signs of the Coming of Christ. Now there were among the Hebrews three outstanding offices of dignity, which made the nation famous, firstly the kingship, secondly that of prophet, and lastly the high priesthood. The prophecies said that the abolition and complete destruction of all these three together would be the sign of the (b) presence of the Christ. And that the proofs that the times had come, would lie in the ceasing of the Mosaic worship, the desolation of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the subjection of the whole Jewish race to its enemies. The holy oracles foretold that all these changes, which had (c) not been made in the days of the prophets of old, would take place at the coming of the Christ, which I will presently shew to have been fulfilled as never before in accordance with the predictions."

BOOK II.

PREFACE

That we have not embraced the Prophetic Books of the (43) Hebrews with so much Zeal without Aim or Object.

IN my survey of the ideal of true religion brought before all men by the Gospel teaching and of the Life in Christ in the previous book, I have argued and I (b) believe demonstrated the impossibility of all the nations living by the Jewish law, even if they wished. My present object is to resume the argument at a point further back,¹ to return to the evidence of the prophetic books, and to give a more complete answer to the charges of those of the Circumcision, who say that we have no (c) share whatever in the promises of their Scriptures. They hold that the prophets were theirs, that the Christ, Whom they love to call Saviour and Redeemer, was foretold to them, and that it is to be expected that the written promises will be fulfilled for them. They despise us as being of alien races, about which the prophets are unanimous in foretelling evil. I propose to meet these attacks by evidence derived straight from their own prophetic books, (d)

With regard to the Christ of God having been promised in their land, and His advent preaching salvation to Israel, we should be the last to deny it ; all would agree that this is the plain teaching of all their writings. But with regard to the Gentiles being debarred from the expected benefits in Christ, on the ground that the promise was limited to Israel, it is quite impossible to yield to what they advance against the evidence of Holy Scripture. |64

CHAPTER 1

(44) That their Prophets gave their Best Predictions for Us of the Foreign Nations.

(b) IN the first place, as it is their constant habit to pick out the prophecies which are more favourable to themselves, and to have them ever on their lips, I must array against them my proofs from the prophecies about the Gentiles, making it clear how full they are of predictions of good and salvation for all nations, and how strongly they asserted that their promises to the Gentile world could only be fulfilled by the coming of the Christ. When we shall have reached that point of the argument, I think I shall have proved that it is untrue to say that the hope of the Messiah was more proper for them than for us. (c) Then having demonstrated that for Jews and Greeks the hope of the promise was on an equality, so that those of the Gentiles would be saved through Christ would be in exactly the same position as the Jews, I shall proceed to show with superabundance of evidence,² that the divine oracles foretold that the Advent of Christ and the call of the Gentiles would be accompanied by the total collapse and ruin of the whole Jewish race, and prophesied good fortune only for a scanty few easy to number, while their city (d) with its temple would be captured, and all its holy things taken away—prophecies which have all been exactly fulfilled. How under one head and at the same time holy Scripture can foretell for Israel at Christ's coming both a ransom from evil and the enjoyment of prosperity, and also adversity and the overturning of the worship of God, I will make clear when the proper time comes. For the present let us go on with our first task ; viz., to select a few statements to prove my contentions from a great number of prophecies.

Inasmuch, then, as they always use in argument with us the prophecies about themselves, which are most favourable, as if the privileges of the old dispensation were limited to them, it is time for us to array against them the |65 promises about the Gentiles, as contained in their own prophets.

1. From Genesis. (45)

How the Nations of the World will be blessed in the same Way as those named after Abraham.

[Passage quoted, Gen. xviii. 27.]

The oracle says that God will not hide from the man dear to Him a mystery that is hidden and secret to many, but will reveal it to him. And this was the promise that (b) all the nations should be blessed, which had of old been hidden through all the nations in Abraham's day being given over to unspeakably false superstition, but is now unveiled in our time, through the Gospel teaching of our Saviour that he who worships God in the manner of Abraham will share His blessing. We must not suppose (c) that this oracle referred to Jewish proselytes, since we have very fully shown in the preceding book the impossibility of all nations following the law of Moses. And as I have proved in the same book that the blessing on all nations given to Abraham could only apply to the Christians of all nations, I will refer those interested to the former passage.

2. From the same.

That all the Nations of the Earth will be blessed in the Seed that is to come from the Line of Isaac.

The Lord conferring with Isaac, after saying other things, (d) proceeds —

[Passage quoted, Gen. xxvi. 3.]

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born of the seed of Isaac, according to the flesh, in Whom all the nations of the earth are blessed, in learning through Him of Almighty God, and in being taught through Him to bless men dear to God. So there is reciprocal blessing, they enjoying the same blessing as the men they bless, according to God's saying to Abraham : " Blessed be they [[Num. xxiv. 9]] that bless thee."³ |66

(46) 3. From the same.

Of many Nations, and Multitudes of Nations, arising out of Jacob, although only the Nation of the Jews has come forth from him.

[Passage quoted, Gen. xxxv. 11.]

As it is quite certain that only one nation, that of the Jews, arose from Jacob, how can this oracle speak truly of a multitude of nations? Since the Christ of God being born of the seed of Jacob brought together many multitudes of nations by His Gospel teaching, in Him and (b) through Him the prophecy has attained its natural fulfilment already, and will attain it still more.

4. From Deuteronomy.

The Joy in God of the Nations.

[Passage quoted, Deut. xxxii. 43.]

(c) Instead of "Rejoice ye Gentiles with his people," Aquila ⁴ reads, "Cry out, nations of his people." And Theodotion,⁵ "Exult, ye nations of his people."

5. From Psalm xxi.

How from the ends of the Earth, and from all Nations there shall be a Turning to God, and how the Generation to come and the People that shall be begotten shall learn Righteousness.

[ Passage quoted, Ps. xxi. 28. 32.] 

This is clear enough to need no interpretation. |67 

6. From Psalm xlvi. (47) 

An Announcement of Holiness and Purity to the Nations, and the Kingdom of God over the Nations.

[Passages quoted, Ps. xlvi. i, 2 and 8 ] 

This is clear, and needs no interpretation.

7. From Psalm lxxxv.

The holiness of the nations.

[Passage quoted, Ps. lxxxv. 8-10.]

8. From Psalm xcv.

Of the Holiness of all the Heathen, and of the new Song, and of the Kingdom of God, and of the Happiness of the World.

[Passages quoted, Ps. xcv. 1-4, 7, and 10.]

This is clear.

9. From Zechariah.

Of all the Nations, and of the Egyptians the most superstitious of them all, of the Knowledge of the only true God, and of the spiritual Worship and Festival according to the divine Law.

[Passage quoted, Zech. xiv. 16-19.] 

(48) This passage clearly implies the calling of all the Gentiles, if we only regard the sense of what is said about Jerusalem and the tabernacle, to which I will give the proper interpretation in its right place.

10. From Isaiah.

Of the Choice of the Apostles, and the Calling of the Gentiles. 

[Passage quoted, Isa. ix. 1-2.]

11. From the same. 

Of the Calling of the Gentiles. 

[ Passage quoted, Isa. xlix. 1.]

In which he adds more about the Gentiles and about (c) Christ. |68 

[Passage quoted, Isa. xlix. 6.]

And you could yourself find many such passages, dispersed through the prophets in the promises to the nations, which there is no time now to select or interpret. Those that I have chosen are sufficient to prove my point. And this was simply to demonstrate to the Circumcision, who proudly and boastfully claim, that God has preferred them (d) before all other nations, and given them a peculiar privilege in His divine promises, that nothing of the kind is to be found in the divine promises themselves.

And now that I have proved the inclusion of the Gentiles in the divine promises, I would ask you to consider the reason of their being called and admitted to the promises. For it will be good for us to realize the reason why they can be said to be associated in their benefits. This can only be the coming of Christ, through Whom those of the Circumcision also agree that they look for their own redemption. I have then only to prove that the hope (49) of the call of the Gentiles was nothing else but the Christ of God, looked for as the Saviour, not only of the Jews, but of the whole Gentile world. And for the present I will give the mere texts of the prophets without interpretation, as I shall be able to interpret them individually at leisure more broadly ⁶ altogether, when with God's help I have collected the predictions about the nations.

CHAPTER 2

12. From Psalm ii.

(c) Of the Plotting against Christ, and He ⁷ that is called the Son of God, receiving His Portion and the Gentiles from the Father.

[Passages quoted, Ps. ii. 1, 2, and 7, 8.] |69 

13. From Psalm lxxi. 

Of Christ's Kingdom, and the Call of the Gentiles, and the (50) Blessing of all the Tribes of the Earth. 

[Passages quoted, Ps. lxxi. 1, 2, 8, 11, 17, 19.]

14. From Psalm xcvii.

Of the new Song, and of the Arm of the Lord, and of the Shewing of His Salvation to all Nations ; the Salvation of the Son is shewn by the Name in the Hebrew.

15. From Genesis.

How after the Cessation of the Kingdom of the Jews, the (c) Christ Himself coming will be the Expectation of the Gentiles.

"There shall not fail a prince from Juda, nor a governor from his loins, until he come in whom it is laid up,⁸ and he is the expectation of the Gentiles." [[Gen. xlix. 10]]
 

16. From Zephaniah.

A Shewing forth of the Appearing of Christ, and of the (d) Destruction of Idolatry, and of the Piety of the Nations towards God.

[Passage quoted, Zeph. ii. 11.]

17. From the same.

A Shewing forth of the Day of Christ's Resurrection, and (51) the Gathering of Nations, and of all Men knowing God, and Turning to Holiness, and how the Ethiopians will bring Sacrifices to him.

[Passage quoted, Zeph. iii. 8.]

18. From Zechariah.

A Shewing forth of the Appearing of Christ, and of the (b) Fleeing of many Nations to Him, and how the Peoples of the Nations shall be established in the Lord.

[Passage quoted, Zech. ii. 10.] |70 

19. From Isaiah.

(c) A Shelving forth of the Birth of Christ coming from the Root of David, and the Call by Him of all the Nations. 

[Passages quoted, Isa. xi. i, 10.]

20. From the same.

(52) A Shewing forth of the Appearing of Christ, and of the (d) Benefits brought by him to all the Nations. 

[Passages quoted, Isa. xlii. 1-4 and 6-9.]

21. From the same.

(b) A Shewing forth of Christ and his Birth, and the Call of the Gentiles.

[Passage quoted, Isa. xlix. i.]

22. From the same.

(c) The Shewing forth of the Coming of Christ and of the Call of the Gentiles. 

[Passage quoted, Isa. xlix, 7.]

23. From the same.

(53) A Shewing forth of Christ, and the Call of the Gentiles.

[Passage quoted, Isa. lv. 3-5.]

And now that we have learned from these passages that the presence of Christ was intended to be the salvation not only of the Jews, but of all nations as well, let me prove my third point, that prophecies not only foretold that good things for the nations would be associated with the date of His appearance, but also the reverse for the Jews. Yes, the Hebrew oracles foretell distinctly the fall and ruin of the Jewish race through their disbelief in Christ, so that we should no longer appear equal to them, but better than they. And I will now, present the bare quotations from the prophets without any comment on them, because they are quite clear, and because I intend at my leisure to examine them thoroughly. |71 

CHAPTER 3

24. From Jeremiah. (d)

Shewing forth the Refusal of the Jewish Race, and the (54) Substitution of the Gentiles in their Place. 

[Passage quoted, Jer. vi. 16.]

25. From the same.

Shewing forth of the Piety of the Nations, and Accusation of the Impiety of the Jewish Race. Prediction of the Evils to overtake them after the Coining of Christ.

[Passage quoted, Jer. xvi. 19-xvii. 4.] ⁹

26. From Amos. 

(d) Concerning the Dispersion of the Jewish Race among all the Nations, and the Renewing of Christ's Coming and Kingdom, and the Call of all the Nations consequent upon it. 

[Passage quoted, Amos ix. 9.]

27. From Micah. 

(55) Accusation of the Rulers of the Jewish People, and a Shewing forth of the Desolation of their Mother-city, and the Appearance of Christ and of the House of God His Church, the. Entrance of His Word and His Law, and its Shewing to all Nations.¹⁰

[Passages quoted, Mic. iii. 9-iv. 2.]

28. From Zechariah.

Shewing forth of Christ's Appearing, and the Destruction of the warlike Preparation of the Jews, and the Peace of the. Nations, and the Kingdom of the Lord unto the Ends of the World.

[Passage quoted, Zech. ix. 9-10.]

29. From Malachi. 

(56) Rebuke of the Jewish Race, and Refusal of the Mosaic outward Worship, and of the spiritual Worship delivered by Christ to all Nations.

[Passage quoted, Mal. i. 10-12.] |72 

30. From Isaiah.

(b) The Apostasy of the Jewish Race and the Revelation of the Word of God, and of the new Law, and of His House, and the Shewing forth of the Piety of all the Nations. 

[Passages quoted, Isa. i. 8, 21, 30; ii. 2-4.]

(57) 31. From the same. 

The Destruction of the Glory of the People of the Jews, and the Turning of the Nations from Idolatry to the God of the Universe, and the Prophecy of the Desolation of the Jewish Cities, and of their Unfaithfulness to their God. 

[Passage quoted, Isa. xvii. 5-11.]

32. From the same.

Shewing forth of the destruction of the Jewish cities, and of the joy of the Gentiles in God.

[Passage quoted, Isa. xxv. 1-8.]

(d) 33. From the same.

The Message of good News to the Church of the Nations desolate of old, and the Rejection of the Jewish Nation, and Accusation of their Sins, and the Call of all the Gentiles. 

[Passages quoted, Isa. xliii. 18-25 ; xlv. 22-25]

34. From the same.

Shewing forth of the Coming of Christ to Men. And Reproof of the Jewish Race, and Promise of good Things to all Nations.

[Passages quoted, Isa. 1. 1, 2, 10 ; li. 4, 5.]

(59) 35. From the same.

Reproof of the Sins of the Jewish People, and their Fall from Piety, and the Shewing forth of the Call of all the Gentiles.

[Passages quoted, Isa. lix. 1-11, 19.]

(d) But although there are a number of prophecies on this subject, I will be content with the evidence I have |73 produced, and I will return to them again and explain ¹¹ them at the proper time, as I consider that by the use of these numerous texts and of their evidence I have given adequate proof that the Jews hold no privilege beyond other nations. For if they say that they alone partake of the blessing of Abraham, the friend of God, by reason of their descent from him, it can be answered that God promised to the Gentiles that He would give them an equal share of the blessing not only of Abraham but of Isaac and Jacob also, since He expressly predicted that all nations would be blessed like them, and summoned the rest of the nations under one and the same (rule of) joy as the blessed and the godly, in saying: "Rejoice ye Gentiles [[Deut. xxxii. 43; Ps. xlvii. 9]] with his people," and : "The princes of the peoples were gathered together with the God of Abraham."

And if it is on the kingdom of God they plume them- (60) selves, as being His portion, it can be answered that God prophesies that He will reign over all other nations. For he says : "Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is [[Ps. xcvi. 10]] King." And again: "God reigneth over all the nations."

And if they say that they were chosen out to act as [[Ps. xlvii. 8]] priests and to offer worship to God, it can be shewn that the Word promised that He would give to the Gentiles an equal share in His service, when He said: "Render to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the nations, render to the Lord glory and honour: bring sacrifices and come into [[Ps. xcvi. 7.]] his courts." To which the oracle in Isaiah may be con- (b) joined, which says: "There shall be an altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt . . . and the Egyptians will know the Lord. And they shall do sacrifice, and say prayers to the Lord, and offer." And in this you will understand [[Isa.xix.19]] that it is prophesied that an altar will be built to the Lord away from Jerusalem in Egypt, and that the Egyptians will there offer sacrifice, say prayers and give gifts to the Lord. Yes, and not only in Egypt, but in the true Jerusalem itself, whatever it is thought to be, all the nations, and the (c) Egyptians forsooth, the most superstitious of them all, are invited to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, as a feast of the heart.^{12 |74} 

And if it was true long ago: "Jacob is become the portion of the Lord, and Israel the rope of his inheritance." [[Deut. xxx ii. 9]] Yet afterwards it was also said that all the nations would be given to the Lord for His inheritance, the Father saying to him : " Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance." [[Ps. ii. 8]] And it is also prophesied that He shall rule from sea to sea and to the ends of the world : "All the Gentiles shall serve him, and in him shall the tribes of the earth be blessed." [[ Ps. lxxii. ii, 17]] And the reason of this (d) was that the Supreme God should make known His salvation before all nations. And I have already noted before that the name of Jesus translated from Hebrew into Greek would give "salvation," so that "the salvation of God" is simply the appellation of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

And Simeon bears witness to this in the Gospel, when he takes the infant in his hands, I mean of course Jesus, and prays:

(61) "Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word :
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles." [[ Luke ii.29]]

And this same salvation the Psalmist meant, when he said:

"The Lord declared his salvation, in the sight of the heathen he openly shewed his righteousness." 

And, according to Isaiah, it will be when they behold this very salvation that all men will worship the supreme God, (b) Who has bestowed His salvation on all ungrudgingly. And they will worship Him not in Jerusalem below, which is in Palestine, but each from his own place, and all who are in the isles of the Gentiles; and then, too, the oracle shall be fulfilled which said that all men should call no longer on their ancestral gods, nor on idols, nor on daemons, but on the Name of the Lord, and shall serve Him under one yoke, and shall offer to Him from the furthest rivers of Ethiopia the reasonable and bloodless sacrifices of the new Covenant of Christ, to be sacrificed not in Jerusalem below, nor on the altar there, but in the aforesaid borders of Ethiopia.

(c) And if it be admitted to be a noble privilege to be and |75 to be reckoned the people of God, and if this one thing is the noblest of the divine promises, that God should say of those who are worthy of Him, "I will be their God, and [[Jer. xxxi. 33.] they shall be my people," Israel was naturally proud in days of old of being the only people of God, but now the Lord has come to sojourn with us and promises graciously to extend this privilege to the Gentiles, saying: 

"Lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of you, [[Zech. ii. 10.]] and many nations shall flee unto the Lord, and they shall be to him a people."

On which I may aptly quote : "And I will say to a people (d) that were not my people, Ye are my people. And they [[Hos.ii. 23.]] shall say, Thou art the Lord our God." And if it is the Christ and no one else Who is prophesied as springing from the root of Jesse, and this at least is so strongly held by the Hebrews themselves, that not one of them questions its truth at all, consider how He is proclaimed as about to arise to reign not over Israel but over the Gentiles, and how the Gentiles arc said to be about to hope in Him, and not Israel, inasmuch as He is the expectation of the Gentiles. Wherefore He is said "to be about to bring [[Isa. xlii. 1, 6]] judgment to the Gentiles," and "to be for a light to the Gentiles." And again it is said: "In his name shall the Gentiles trust," and that He shall be given for salvation not only to the Jews but to all men, even to those at the ends of the earth. Wherefore it was said to Him by the Father that sent Him down : (62)

"I gave thee for a covenant of the race, for a light of [[Isa. xlix. 8.]] the Gentiles, to establish the earth, and to inherit the waste heritages." He says He is "a witness to the Gentiles," meaning that nations which have never before learned anything about Christ, when they knew His dispensation, and the might that was in Him, have called on Him, and that the peoples who did not before of old know Him, have taken refuge in Him.

But why need I say more, since it is possible from these prophetic sayings which I have laid before you, and from others to be found in Holy Scripture which I will record at leisure, for any one who wishes, to collect the words of the (b) prophets, and by their aid to put to silence those of the Circumcision, who say the promises of God were given to them alone, and that we who are of the Gentiles are |76 supernumerary ¹³ and alien to the divine promises? For I have proved, on the contrary, that it was prophesied that all the Gentiles would benefit by the coming of Christ, while the multitudes of the Jews would lose the promises given to their forefathers through their unbelief in Christ, few of (c) them believing in our Lord and Saviour, and therefore attaining the promised spiritual redemption through Him.

About which the wonderful Apostle teaches something when he says :

"27. Isaiah also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand ot the sea, the remnant ¹⁴ shall be saved : 28. For finishing the word and cutting it short in righteousness, because a word cut short ¹⁵ will the Lord do upon the earth. 29. And as Isaiah said before, If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left to us a seed, we should have [[Rom. ix. 27-29]] been as Sodom, and we should have been like to Gomorrah."

(d) To which he adds after other things:

"1. Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2. God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Know ye not what the Scripture saith of Elias? how he intercedes with God, speaking of Israel,¹⁶ 3. Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I only am left, and they seek my life to take it awny.¹⁷ 4. But what saith the answer of God to him? I have reserved to myself 7000 men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal. 5. Even so then at this present time [[Rom. xi. 1-5.]] also there is a remnant according to the election of grace."

(63) In these words the Apostle clearly separates, in the falling away of the whole Jewish people, himself and the Apostles and the Evangelists of our Saviour like Himself and all the |77 Jews now who believe in Christ, as the seed named by the prophet in the words: "Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left unto us a seed." And he implies that they also are that which is styled in the other prophecies "the remnant," which he says was preserved by the election of grace. And with reference to this remnant I will now return to the prophets and explain what they say, so that the argument may be based on more evidence, that God did not promise to the whole Jewish nation absolutely that (b) the coming of Christ would be their salvation, but only to a small and quite scanty number who should believe in our Lord and Saviour, as has actually taken place in agreement with the predictions.

36. From Isaiah.

That the Divine Promises did not extend to the whole (c) Jewish Nation, but only to a few of them.

[Passage quoted Isa. i. 7-9.]

This great and wonderful prophet at the opening of his own book here tells us that the whole scheme of his prophecy includes a vision and a revelation against Judaea and Jerusalem, then he attacks the whole race of the Jews, (d) first saying:

" 3. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's manger, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not understand." [[Isa. i. 3]] 

And then he laments the whole race, and adds :

"4. Woe, race of sinners, a people full of iniquity, an evil seed, unrighteous children."

Having brought these charges against them in the beginning of his book, and shewn beforehand the reasons for the later predictions that he is to bring against them, he goes on to say, "Your land is desolate," though it was not desolate at the time when he prophesied : "Your cities are burnt with fire." Nor had this yet taken place, and strangers had not devoured their land. And yet he says, "Your land, (64) strangers devour it before your eyes," and that which follows. But if you came down to the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of those He sent, and to the present time, you would find all the sayings fulfilled. For the daughter of |78 Zion (by whom was meant the worship celebrated on Mount Zion) from the time of the coming of our Saviour has (b) been left as a tent in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, or as anything that is more desolate than these. And strangers devour the land before their eyes, now exacting tax and tribute,¹⁸ and now appropriating for themselves the land which belonged of old to Jews. Yea, and the beauteous Temple of their mother-city was laid low, being cast down by alien peoples, and their cities were burnt with fire, and Jerusalem became truly a besieged city. But (c) since, when all this happened, the choir of the Apostles, and those of the Hebrews who believed in Christ, were preserved from among them as a fruitful seed, and going through every race of men in the whole world, filled every city and place and country with the seed of Christianity and Israel, so that like corn springing from it, the churches which are founded in our Saviour's name have come into being, the divine prophet naturally adds to his previous threats against them: "We should have been as Sodom, (d) and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." Which the holy Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans more clearly defines and interprets.

[The passages Rom. ix. 17-29 and xi. 1-5, already quoted 62 c, d, are repeated.]

And to shew that the prophecy can only refer to the (b) time of our Saviour's coming, the words that follow the text—"unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah," naming the whole people of the Jews as the people of Gomorrah, and their rulers as the princes of Sodom—imply a rejection of the Mosaic worship, and introduce in the prediction about them the characteristics of the covenant announced to all men by our Saviour, I mean regeneration by water,¹⁹ and the word and law completely new. For it says :

(^c) "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give heed to the law of God, ye people of Gomorrah, [[Isa. i. 10.]] What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?" .

and that which follows. Thus it takes away what belongs |79 to the Mosaic law, and introduces in its place another mode of the forgiveness of sins, through the washing of salvation and the life preached in accordance with it, saying : 

"Wash you, be ye clean ; take away the evils from [[Isa. i. 16.]] your souls."

And the prophet himself at once supplies the reason, why he called them rulers of Sodom, and people of Gomorrah: "For your hands are full of blood." And again a little further on :

"They have proclaimed their sin as Sodom and (d) made it manifest. Woe to their soul, because they have taken evil counsel with themselves, saying,²⁰ We will bind the just, for he is burdensome to us." [[Isa. iii. 9.]] 

Since he so very clearly mentions some one's blood, and a plot against some one just man, what could this be but the plot against our Saviour Jesus Christ, through which²¹ and after which all the things aforesaid overtook them ?

37. From the same Isaiah. 

[Passage quoted Isa. iv. 2.]

And the meaning of "the remnant of Israel" the prophet (66) himself clearly explains by the words, "All who are registered in Jerusalem, and called holy." It will be clear to you, if you run through the whole course of this section, what that day is, in which it is said God will glorify and exalt the remnant of Israel and those who are called holy and to be written in (the book of) life. For in the begin- (b) ning of his complete book the prophet having seen the vision against Judah and Jerusalem, and numbered in many words the sins of the whole people of the Jews, and uttered threats and spoken about their ruin and the complete desolation of Jerusalem, brings his vision about them to an end with the words :

" 30. For they shall be as a terebinth that has cast her leaves, and as a garden without water. 31. And their strength shall be as a thread of tow, and their works as sparks of fire, and the transgressors and the [[Isa. i. 30]] sinners shall be burnt together, and there shall be none (c) to quench them." |80 

And having inscribed here the prediction against them, he "lowers his tone"²²: and making another start he enters on a second subject, and as a preface, so to say, employs such words as these, "The word which came to Isaiah the (d) son of Amos concerning Judah and Jerusalem"; or, as Symmachus ²³ interpreted it, "on behalf of Judah and Jerusalem." From which one would perhaps expect that he was about to change to more favourable prophecies about the same peoples on whom his former predictions had showered sadness. But the succeeding passages would certainly not confirm the expectation, since they contain nothing at all that is good with regard to the race of the Jews, or that which is called Israel, neither for Judah nor Jerusalem. On the contrary, they bring many charges and accusations against Israel, and gloomy threats against Jerusalem, and prophesy for all the Gentiles salvation in their call and in the knowledge of the Supreme God. While in addition to this they tell of the coining of a new Mount, and the manifesting of another House of God, besides the one in Jerusalem. For he says after speaking about Judaea and Jerusalem:

(67) "2. In the last days the Mount of the Lord shall be manifest, and the house of the Lord upon the tops of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, 3. and all nations shall come to it, and shall say, Come and let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob."  [[Isa. ii. 2.]]

Such are his prophecies about all the Gentiles. Hear what he proceeds to add about the Jews:

" 6. For he has rejected his people, the house of the God of Jacob,²⁴ for the land is filled as at the beginning with auguries, as the land of strangers, and many |81 children of strangers are born to them. 7. For the land was filled with silver and gold, and there was (b) no end of their treasures." 

And that which follows after this, to which he adds:

"9. And they worshipped that which their own fingers had made, and a man bowed down, and was humbled, and I will not reject them. 10. And now enter ye into the rocks, and hide yourselves in the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the face of his glory, when he arises to shake the earth."

And in this he teaches that there will be a Resurrection of the Lord, at which all the land of the Jewish people (c) will be shattered. For the whole portion refers to them, in the following sections as well, saying : "For the day of the Lord of Sabaoth shall be upon every one that is proud and insolent, and upon every one that is lofty and exalted." And that which follows. Wherefore it is on the day of the Lord's Resurrection, that the prophet having first addressed those who lift themselves up against the knowledge of God, says: "On this very day"; "the Lord shall be exalted in that very day, and they shall hide all the work of their hands, bearing them into the caves," (d) clearly showing the destruction of the idols, which the Jews themselves and all other men cast away after the appearance of the Saviour, despising all superstitions :

" 20. On that day, he says, a man shall cast away his abominations of gold and silver which they made to worship vanities."

Thus speaking, it would seem, generally about all men, because of the coming call of the Gentiles. But he alludes particularly again to the Jewish race under one head as follows:

"Behold now, the Lord, the Lord of Sabaoth, will take away from Judaea and from Jerusalem the strong man and strong woman, the strength of bread, and the strength of water, 2. The giant and the strong man, and the man of war, and the judge, and the prophet, and (68) the counsellor, and elder, and captain of fifty, 3. And the wonderful counsellor, and the clever artificer, and the wise hearer." [[Isa.iii.1-3.]] 

And that which follows. Stop at this point, and set |82 beside the above the introduction to the prophecy, in which it was said: "The word that came from the Lord to Isaiah the son of Amoz on behalf of Judah and Jerusalem," and see how much more in accordance with what follows "against" is than "for," unless indeed some hidden meaning is contained in the words. For how could one about to take away from Judah and Jerusalem strong (b) man and strong woman, the strength of bread and the strength of water, and all things that of old were beautiful among them, introduce his prophecy by saying it was "for" Judah and Jerusalem ? And how could that which follows again be "for" them :

"Jerusalem is forsaken, and Judaea hath fallen, and their tongues [have spoken] with iniquity, disbelieving [[Isa. iii. 8.]] the things of the Lord " ?

Nay, rather, at a time when it should be necessary for the Mountain of the Lord to be proclaimed to all the Gentiles, and the House of God on the Mount, when all (c) the Gentiles meet and say: "Come and let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, and to the House of the God of Jacob": the Scripture using such accusations of the Jewish race, and threatening them so sorely, adds thereto all the sayings I have quoted, and teaches that of the whole Jewish race which will fall away from the holiness of God, there will be left over some of them not immersed in their common evils; and further, that being saved as it were from the sinful and lawless, and embracing piety in sincerity and truth, they will be reckoned worthy of (d) God's Scripture, and will be called holy servants of God. And it means by these, the apostles, disciples, and evangelists of our Saviour, and all the others of the Circumcision, who believed on Him, at the time of the falling away of their whole race. Scripture darkly implies this, when it says: "In that day"—i.e. the day in which plainly all the aforesaid things shall take place connected with the calling of the Gentiles, and the falling away of the Jews—"God shall shine gloriously in counsel on the earth, to uplift and to glorify the remnant of Israel, and there shall be a remnant in Sion, and a remnant in [[Isa. iv. 2.]] Jerusalem, and all who are written for life in Jerusalem (69) shall be called holy."

And it was these, who came forth from Judaea and |83 Jerusalem that the preface meant the prophecy to allude to, when it said: "For Judaea and Jerusalem," yea, both the actual Jerusalem, and the figurative Jerusalem thought of as analagous to it. And which of the apostles of our Saviour or of His evangelists, beholding the inspired power (b) by which "their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words to the ends of the earth," and by which all the Churches of Christ from that day to this have their words and teaching on their lips, and the laws of Christ of the new covenant preached by them, would not bear witness to the truth of the prophecy, which says that God openly will exalt and glorify in counsel and with glory the remnant of Israel through all the world, and that the remnant in Sion and the remnant in Jerusalem shall be (c) called holy, all they who are written in the book of life? Instead of the reading of the LXX, "in counsel with glory," Aquila and Theodotion agree in interpreting "for power and glory" indicating the power given to the apostles by God, and their consequent glory with God— according to the words: "The Lord will give a word to [[Ps. lxviii.11] the preachers with much power." 

And this which has really come to pass :

" 9. Ye shall hear indeed, and shall not understand : and seeing ye shall see and not perceive. 10. For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and they hear (d) with heavy ears, and they have closed their eyes, lest they should ever see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,²⁵ and turn, and I should heal them.²⁶ 11. And I said, Until when, O Lord? And he said, Until the cities be desolated that none dwell in them, and houses that no men be in them, and the earth be left desolate. 12. And afterwards God will increase men, and they that are left on the earth shall be increased." [[Isa. vi. 9.]]

And notice here how they that are left again on the earth, all the rest of the earth being desolate, alone are said to multiply. These must surely be our Saviour's Hebrew disciples, going forth to all men, who being left behind (70) like a seed have brought forth much fruit, namely, the Churches of the Gentiles throughout the whole world. And see, too, how at the same time he says that only those will multiply who are left behind from the falling away of |84 the Jews, while the Jews themselves are utterly desolate: "Their land," he says, "shall be left unto them desolate." And this was also said to them before by the same prophet : "Your land is desolate, your cities are burnt with fire, your country strangers devour it before your eyes."

(b) And when was this fulfilled, except from the times of our Saviour? For up to the time they had not yet dared to do impiety to Him, their land was not desolate, their cities were not burned with fire, nor did strangers devour their land. But from that inspired word, by which our Lord and Saviour Himself predicted what was about to fall on them, saying : "Your house is left unto you desolate," from that moment and not long after the prediction they were besieged by the Romans and brought to desolation. (c) And the word of prophecy gives the cause of the desolation, making the interpretation almost certain, and showing the cause of their falling away. For when they heard our Saviour teaching among them, and would not listen with their mind's ear, nor understood Who He was, seeing Him with their eyes, but not beholding Him with the eyes of their spirit, " they hardened their heart, and all but closed [[Isa. vi. 10.]] the eyes of their mind, and made their ears heavy."

As the prophecy says, because of this He says that their cities would be made desolate so that none should dwell in them, and their land should become desolate, and only (d) a few of them be left behind, kept like fruitful and spark-like seed, who it is said, should go forth to all men, and multiply on the earth.

But also even after the departure of those who are clearly the apostles of our Saviour, he says that "a tenth" will still remain on Jewish soil:

"And again it shall be for a spoil, as a terebinth, and [[Isa. vi. 13.]] as an acorn, when it falls out of its husk."

The Scripture, as I suppose, means by this, that after the first siege, which they are recorded to have undergone (71) in the time of the apostles, and of Vespasian, Emperor of the Romans, being a second time besieged again under Hadrian they were completely debarred from entering the place, so that they were not even allowed to tread the soil of Jerusalem.²⁷ And this he darkly suggests in the |85 words : "And again it shall be for a spoil, as a terebinth, and as an acorn when it falls out of its husk " : [[Isa. vii 21.]]

21. "And it shall come to pass in that day, a man will nourish a heifer and two sheep. 22. And it shall come to pass from their drinking much milk, every one left on the land shall eat butter and honey." 

Here if you inquire to what day the prophet looks forward, (b) you will find it to be the very time of the appearance of our Saviour. For when the prophet says: " Behold a virgin shall ,be with child, and shall bring forth a son," ²⁸ though he interposes many things, yet he prophesies of the things that will come to pass on that very day, that is to say about the time of our Saviour's appearance.

For he says that unseen powers, and foes and enemies, (c) allegorically designated flies and bees, will attack the land of the Jews, and that the Lord with the razor of its foes will shave the head of the Jewish race, as if it were one great body, and the hairs from its feet, and its beard—in a word its whole glory. And this being done in the day prophesied when He shall be born of a virgin, he foretells that a man who is left from the destruction of the whole race, that is to say all of them who believe in the Christ of God, shall nourish a heifer of the bulls and two sheep, and from their producing very much milk shall eat butter and honey : and you will understand that this is mystically fulfilled in our Saviour's apostles. For each one of them (d) in the churches which he established by Christ's help, nourished two sheep, that is to say two orders of disciples coming like sheep into the sheepfold of Christ, the one as yet probationary, the other already enlightened by baptism,²⁹ and in addition to these one heifer, the ecclesiastical rule of those who preside with their inspired food of the word, and produced from them a fruitful increase of milk and honey from the food they have laboured to provide. |86 

(72) That holy Scripture often likens the multitudes of less perfect disciples to sheep I need not say; every scripture teaches it. And its comparison of the perfect man, who being the leader works the body of the Church as a farmer, to the work of bulls on the soil, the holy apostle uses, when he says:

"Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes ? ³⁰ That he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thresheth, should thresh in hope of partaking." [[I Cor ix 9.]]

And if any one is disgusted with such metaphorical interpretation, let him beware lest refusing to regard figuratively what are called flies, or bees, or a razor, or a beard, (b) or hairs on the feet, he falls into absurd and inconsistent mythology. But if these things can only be figuratively understood, the same may certainly be said of the following :

"18. In that day the mountains shall be consumed, and the hills, and forests, and shall be devoured from soul to body. And he that flees shall be as one that fleeth from burning flame, 19. and they that are left of them shall be a number, and a little child ³¹ shall write them. 20. And it shall come to pass in that (c) day, the remnant of Israel shall no more be added, and they that are saved of Jacob shall no more trust in those that wronged them, and they shall trust in the God the holy one of Israel in truth, 21. and the remnant of Israel shall turn³² to the mighty God. 22. And though the people of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant of them shall be saved. 23. For he will finish the account, and cut it short in righteousness, for God will make a short account in the whole world." [[Isa. x. 18.]]

And notice here, that in his denunciations of gloom, he says :

"He that fleeth shall be as one that fleeth from a burning flame; and their remnant shall be a number, (d) and a little child shall write them"—

by which, he emphasizes the scanty number of those of the Circumcision who will escape destruction, and the |87 burning of Jerusalem. "And they who are left," he says, "will be a number": that is they will be amenable to number, or few and easily numbered. As many, then, as those who believed in our Lord and Saviour were in comparison of the whole Jewish race, who also were thought worthy of being enrolled by Him, as the verse shews, which says: "And a little child shall write them." Having told us before Who the little child was, where he said: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son." And: "Before the child shall (73) know to call on its father or mother."

And since in this place he says: "A little child shall write them," it can be seen why he said in the previous one : "And these shall be a remnant in Sion, and a remnant in Jerusalem, all shall be called holy, and shall be written in [the book of] life." As therefore among them a remnant is named, and it is they who were written in [the book of] life, so also here "the remnant from them shall be a number, and a little child shall write them." And this "remnant from Israel, and they that are saved from Jacob no more" he says "shall be with those that do them wrong, but shall (b) trust in the Lord, the Holy One of Israel." So note if it is not with this very trust that they who went forth from the Jewish race, those who were left behind in the falling away of Israel, the disciples and apostles of our Saviour, taking no notice of the rulers of this world, or of the rulers of the people of the Circumcision who did them wrong of old, went forth to all the nations, preaching the word of Christ, and by their trust in God (for according to the prophecy "they were trusting in God, the holy one of Israel, in truth," for they (c) gave up their whole selves in hope, without deceit or hypocrisy, but with truth) not only went forth from their own land, but prospered in that whereto they were sent. And this same remnant was like the seed of the falling away of Jacob that trusted in the strength of God, and this remnant of the whole race that once was as the sand of the sea, but not as the stars of the heaven, was thought worthy of salvation by God, as the Apostle bore witness saying :

"Isaiah cries concerning Israel, If the number of the (d) children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved." 

For of the promises gives by the oracle to Abraham |88 concerning those who were to come after him that "they shall be as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand of the sea," the friends of God are meant, on the one hand shining like the heavenly lights, such as were those of old, the prophets and our Saviour's apostles, to whom He bore witness saying : "Ye are the light of the world" ; but, on the other, the earth-born who lie upon the ground are compared to the sand of the shore. The prophetic word speaks rightly in the above, first where the whole multitude of Israel's sons, fallen from (74) their true and magnificent virtue to the ground, is compared to the sand of the sea, and then when it says only the remnant shall be saved. But I have now dealt sufficiently with the question of the remnant. And he says that this will come to pass, when "the Lord cutting short and completing his word shall accomplish it through the whole world" : clearly pointing to the Gospel preaching, by which, the whole Mosaic circle of symbols and signs and bodily (b) ordinances being taken away, the complete word of the Gospel given to all men has confirmed the truth of the prophecy.

"10. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, and one arising to rule the Gentiles. In him shall the Gentiles hope, and his rest shall be glory, 11. And it shall be in that clay, the Lord shall again shew his hand, to be jealous and to seek ³³ the remnant remaining from his people, which is left by the Assyrians, and from Egypt, (c) and Babylon, and Ethiopia, and from the Elamites, and from the East, and from the isles of the sea.³⁴ 12. And he will raise a standard to the nations, and will gather together ³⁵ the dispersed of Judah, from the four corners [[Isa. xi. 10.]] of the earth."

As certain events were many times foretold as about to take place on a definite day, that is to say, when a certain time had come, I have by the use of reasoning proved that the said events must follow the appearance of God, for when He appears, the whole Jewish race falling away, holy Scripture makes it clear that a scanty few of them will be left behind, (d) while the passage now in our hands shews in the clearest way both the day, and the time meant by it, and the events |89 that were to follow it. For it prophesies the birth of the Christ of the seed of David, and at the same time foretells the falling away of the Jews. For it says thus :

"Behold, the Lord, the Lord of Sabaoth, will mightily confound the glorious ones, and the lofty men shall be humbled, and the lofty shall fall by the sword, and [[Isa. x. 33.]] Libanus shall fall with the lofty."

By Libanus here Jerusalem is meant, as I have shewn elsewhere, which Scripture threatens shall fall with all its venerable and glorious men within it. And having thus begun, it says afterwards : "And a rod shall come out of (75) the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall spring up from his [[Isa. xi. 1]] root."

By showing very clearly that the birth of Christ should be from the root of Jesse, who was the father of David, it explains upon what birth the call of the Gentiles should follow, which it had previously only given obscurely in the prophetic manner. For "the wolf shall feed with the Iamb, and the leopard shall lie clown with the kid," and such passages, are only intended to shew the change of savage and uncivilized nations in no way differing from wild beasts to a holy, mild, and social way of life. And this is what it (b) teaches afterwards without disguise, in the words : "The whole [earth] shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." And moreover the prophetic word proceeds to interpret itself:

"And there shall be in that day a root of Jesse, and one arising to rule the Gentiles. In him shall the Gentiles trust, and his rest shall be glory." 

Since, then, it had predicted the falling away of the Jewish race in a veiled way, and then the calling of the Gentiles, first in a veiled way and then openly, it is natural for it (c) in returning to the same topic to mention those of the Circumcision who should believe in Christ, that it may not seem to shut them altogether from hope in Christ.

"For there shall be," it says, "one to arise to rule over the Gentiles."

Who could this be Who is to arise, but the root of Jesse, whom it so clearly says is to reign over the Gentiles, but not over Israel ? Since then it had taught in various ways of the conversion of the Gentiles consequent upon the birth and growth of Him Who came from the root of |90 Jesse, and had then nothing bright to say of those of the Circumcision, it naturally here supplies the gap in the prediction, saying, "And it shall come to pass in that day," (d) i.e. in the time of him that is born of the root of Jesse, the Lord moreover shall put forth His power,³⁶ to be jealous for and to seek the remnant remaining of His people that were left of such and such enemies. In place of which Aquila has read :

"And it shall be in that day, the Lord will shew his hand a second time, to possess the remnant of his people, which shall be left by the Assyrians," etc.

And you will understand this, if you consider that the enemies of the people of God are certain intelligent and spiritual beings, either evil daemons, or powers opposed to the word of holiness, who in invisible leadership of the (76) nations named, in days of old laid siege to the souls of Israel, involved them in various passions, seducing them ³⁷ and enslaving them to a life like that of the other nations. When, then, you may almost say that the whole people was taken captive in soul by these powers, they who were kept safe and intact, unwounded and undespoiled according to (b) the prophecy received the message, that they should see the hand of the Lord, and become His possession, according to the words of the oracle, "the Lord will add to shew his hand, to be jealous for the remnant remaining of his people."

But what will the Lord add ? Surely to those to whom once long before He had proclaimed by the prophets "the hand of the Lord has been added," yea, to those who are, as it were, preserved in the fall of the whole people He proclaims that He will add what was lacking to the former. And these are the mysteries of the new covenant, shewn by the hand of the Lord to the remnant of the people. (c) But He also says that "He will be jealous of the remnant that is left of the people." Instead of which Aquila and Theodotion agree in reading : "that He must acquire the remnant of His people, whatever is left from the Assyrians, and the other nations that were their enemies."

And this remnant which is left of His people "shall lift |91 up" he says "a standard to the Gentiles." Through them clearly the Lord will shew His sign among all the Gentiles, and through them will gather together the lost (d) of Israel and the scattered abroad of Judah from the four corners ³⁸ of the earth to the Christ of God, who take refuge in Him through the preaching of His apostles, saying that those gathered together come from them who of old were exiled and cut off from the figurative Israel and Judah. The ideals of such souls shew them to be the true Israel of God, for in contrast to them the weak and sinful nature of Israel according to the flesh makes Him prophetically call them : "Rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah." [[Rom. xi 5.]]

Thus the "remnant according to the election of grace," and that which is called in the prophecy, "the remnant that is left of the people," has proclaimed the sign of the Lord to all the Gentiles, and has joined to God as one people, that is drawn to Him, the souls of the Gentiles that are brought out of destruction to the knowledge of the Lord, a people which from the four corners of the earth even now is welded together by the power of Christ.³⁹ And these same refugees from the lost race of the Jews, (77) the disciples and apostles of our Saviour belonging to different tribes, thought worthy of one calling, and one grace and one Holy Spirit, will cast away all the love, which the tribes of the Hebrew race had to them, as the prophecy says. Bound together, then, by the same mind and will, they have not only traversed the continent, but the isles of the Gentiles also, making plunder of all the (b) souls of men everywhere, and bringing them into captivity to the obedience of Christ, according to the oracle, which said :

"And they shall fly in the ships of strangers ; they shall at the same time spoil the sea, and them from the sun-rising." [[Isa xi. 14.]]

And the remainder of this prophecy you will examine as I have done, testing each passage by yourself, and while you reject everything inconsistent and unworthy in it, yet you will recognize the mind of the Spirit, as the Spirit of (c) God itself suggests your meditation. For time does not |92 allow me to linger on these subjects, as I must press on to complete the task before me.

"13. And I will command evils for the whole world, and their sins for the unholy, and I will destroy the pride of the lawless, and will humble the pride of the insolent, 14. and they that are left shall be more precious than gold unsmelted, and a man shall be more precious than the stone of Suphir." And afterwards (d) it adds: "And they that are left shall be as a fleeing [[Isa.xiii. 11.]] fawn, or as a straying sheep."

In this too the Scripture shews most plainly the small number of the saved in the time of the ruin of the wicked, so that it is not possible to expect that absolutely all the circumcised without exception and the whole Jewish race will attain to the promises of God.

"4. And there shall be in that day a failing of the glory of Jacob, and the riches of his glory shall be (78) shaken. 5. And it shall be as when one gathers standing corn, and reaps the grain of the ears; 6. And it shall be as when one gathers ears in a rich valley, and stubble is left. Or as the berries of an olive tree are left, two or three on the topmost bough, or four or five on its branches, thus saith the Lord God of Israel. 7. In that day a man shall trust in him that made him, and his eyes shall look on the Holy One of Israel, 8. and they shall not trust in the altars, nor in the work [[Isa.xvii.4. ]] of their hands, which their own fingers have made."

And in this it is clearly prophesied how Israel's glory (b) and all her riches will be taken away, and how but a few, easily numbered, like the few berries on the branch of an olive tree, are said to be left; and these would be those of them who are believers in our Lord. And immediately after what is said about these, there is a prophecy of the whole race of mankind turning away from the error of idolatry, and coming to know the God of Israel.

"Hear ye isles,⁴⁰ which are forsaken and tortured, (c) hear, what I heard from the Lord of Sabaoth: the God [[Isa. xxi.10.]] of Israel has announced (it) to us.

Note the way in this passage also in which he does not call those of the Circumcision to hear the unspeakable |93 words, but those only, whom he calls "forsaken and tortured," as were those in the apostolic age who bewailed and lamented the evil of the life of men.

"4 b. The lofty men of the earth mourned, 5. and the earth waxed lawless through her inhabitants.⁴¹ 6b. Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth shall be poor, (d) and few men shall be left." [[Isa.xxiv.4.]]

Here again having rebuked the transgressors of the law of the covenant of God who belong to the people of the circumcision, and threatened them with what was written, he prophesies that some few men of them will be left. And these would be those named of the apostle "the remnant according to the election of grace."

" 12. Cities shall be left desolate, and houses deserted shall fall to ruin. 13. All these things shall come to pass in the earth in the midst of the nations, as if one should strip an olive tree, so shall they be stripped. (79) 14. But when the vintage is stopped, then shall they cry aloud, and the remnant on the earth shall rejoice [[Isa. xxiv. 12]] with the glory of God." 

And here they who are left alone are said to rejoice, all the others being delivered to the woes prophesied.

" 3. The crown of pride, the hirelings of Ephraim shall he beaten down. 4. And the fading flower of glorious hope on the top of the high mountain shall be as the early fig: he that sees it will desire to swallow (b) it, before he takes it into his hand. 5. In that clay the Lord shall be the crown of hope, the garland of glory to the remnant of his people; for they shall be left in [[Is. xxviii. 3.]] the spirit of judgment." 

And here he prophesies that the Lord will be "a crown of hope and glory" to the remnant of his people, not to all their nation, but to those only signified by the remnant, and names the others in contrast to the remnant of his people "a crown of shame and hirelings of Ephraim."

"And they that are left in Judaea, shall take root (c) downwards, and bear fruit upwards, because there shall be a remnant from Jerusalem, and the preserved from Mount Sion. The zeal of the Lord of Sabaoth will [[Isa.xxxvii. 31.]] do this." |94 

He prophesies that those of the Jewish race that are left according to the election of grace, will cast root downwards and bear fruit upwards, shewing very clearly the (d) election of the apostles and disciples of our Saviour. For they, being left from those of the Circumcision, thrust down into the earth the roots of their teaching, so that they have fixed and rooted their teaching throughout the whole world : and they have exhorted men to bear both seed and fruit upwards towards the heavenly promises.

Thus those men themselves, who were left of the Jewish race, when the rest were destroyed, alone are said to be saved. The zeal of the Lord has accomplished this. The zeal of the Lord elected them, in order to provoke the wicked of the Circumcision to jealousy, and He provoked them to jealousy, according to the saying of Moses :

"They have provoked me to jealousy by that which is not God,⁴² and I will provoke them to jealousy by [[Deut. xxxii. 8.]] that which is not a people. By a foolish people I will anger them."

"8. Thus saith the Lord, as a grape-stone shall be (80) found in the cluster, and they shall say, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it: so will I for the sake of him that serves me, for his sake I will not destroy all. 9. And I will lead out the seed of Jacob and Juda, and they shall inherit my holy mountain : and my chosen and my servants shall inherit it and dwell there. 10. And there shall be in the forest a fold⁴³ of sheep, and the valley of Achor shall be a resting-place for the herds of my people, who have sought me.

(b) "11. But ye are they that have left me, and forget my holy mountain and prepare a table for chance, 12. and fill up the drink-offering to the Demon.⁴⁴ I will deliver you up to the sword, ye shall all fall by slaughter, because I called you and ye did not hear, and did evil [[Isa. lxv. 8.]] before me, and chose that which I willed not."

In this passage the Scripture distinguishes, and says that but a small seed from Jacob will attain the promises, and that the elect are those that dwell in the wood. It points here to the calling of the Gentiles, in which the elect of |95 the Lord and the seed of Jacob are [included], and these (c) would be the apostles and disciples of our Saviour, and the rest beyond them are subject to the before-mentioned threats, Scripture stating as clearly as possible, that the whole Jewish nation could not attain the promises of God, but only the seed which is named, and those called "the elect of God." For many are called, but few are chosen. [[Matt. xx.16.]] On them Scripture now proceeds to prophesy that a new name shall be conferred, saying to the wicked :

"For your name shall be left,⁴⁵ as a loathing for my (d) chosen, and the Lord shall destroy you : but my servants shall be called by a new name." [[Is. Ixv. 15.]] 

And this new name, which was not known to them of old time, what could it be but the name of "Christians," blessed through all the world, formed from the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ?

50. From Micah. 

[Passage quoted, Micah ii. 11.]

Micah, too, agrees with the passages from Isaiah in stating (81) that God will not receive all without qualification, but only those who are left. And as in Isaiah "their remnant" was called "a seed," so now those of them that are to be saved are called "a drop." And the choir of the apostles is shewn forth by those figures, as being a drop and a seed from the Jewish race, a drop from which all they that have known the Christ of God through the whole world and received His teaching, have been made worthy of the congregation foretold, having obtained redemption from their enemies.

"2. And thou Bethlehem, house of Ephratha, art the (b) least among the thousands of Juda. Out of thee shall come forth my leader, to be for a prince to Israel, and his goings forth from the beginning are from the days of eternity. 3. Therefore shall he give them until the time of her that brings forth. She shall bring forth, and the [[Micah v. 2, 3]] remainder of their brethren shall turn." 

And after a little he adds :

"7. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, as dew falling |96 from the Lord, and as lambs on the pasture; that none (c) may assemble or resist among the sons of men. 8. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations in the midst of many peoples, as a lion among cattle ⁴⁶ in the forest, and as a lion's whelp in the pastures of sheep : as when he goes through and chooses and carries off, and there is none to deliver. 9. Thine hand shall be exalted against them that afflict thee, and all thine enemies shall [[Micah v. 7.]] be utterly destroyed."

Nothing surely could be more clear than this; at one and the same time it proclaims the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem,⁴⁷ and His existence before eternity,⁴⁸ His Birth of the Virgin, the call of His apostles and disciples, and their preaching of the Christ carried throughout all the world. For when this Ruler, Whose goings forth the Scripture says are from eternity, shall have gone forth from Bethlehem, and when the holy maiden who was to bear Him shall have brought Him forth, it does not say that all they of the Circumcision will be saved, but only they that are left, who will be also a remnant of Jacob, and will be given as dew to all the Gentiles. For the remnant of Jacob, he says, shall be among the nations, as dew falling from the Lord, and as (82) lambs in a pasture. Instead of which Aquila translates, "as drops on the grass," and Theodotion, "as snow on grass." And again, instead of "so that none may assemble or resist among the sons of men, and no son of men attack," Theodotion reads "who shall not wait for man, and shall not hope in the son of man." And Aquila "who shall not await a man, and shall not be concerned with the sons of men." ⁴⁹

Through which the whole hope of the apostles of our Saviour is [shown to be] not in man, but in their Lord and Saviour, and He was the Word of God. And it says lower down :

(b) "And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations in the midst of many peoples, as a lion among the cattle of the forest, and as a lion's whelp in the |97 pastures of sheep; as when he goes through, and chooses, and spoils, and there is none to save." 

By which I think is meant the bravery and intrepidity of the apostles' preaching. They threw themselves like a lion and a lion's whelp on the thicket of the Gentiles and on the flocks of human sheep, they parted the worthy from the (c) unworthy, and subjected them to the word of Christ.

And then His victories are proclaimed to Him : "Thy hand shall be exalted against them that trouble thee, and all thy enemies shall be destroyed."

And we can see this with our own eyes.⁵⁰ For though many have afflicted the word of Christ, and are even now contending with it, yet it is lifted above them and become stronger than them all. Yes, verily, the hand of Christ is raised against all that afflicted Him, and all His enemies who from time to time rise up against His Church are said to be "utterly destroyed."

52. From Zephaniah. 

[Passage quoted, Zeph. iii. 9.]

And in this passage the Lord promised that there will be (83) left for Him a people meek and lowly, meaning none others but they of the Circumcision who believed in His Christ. And He again proclaimed that only the remnant of Israel should be saved, with those called from the other nations, as He shewed in the beginning of the prophecy.

53. From Zechariah. 

[Passage quoted, Zech. xiv. 1, 2.] ⁵¹

The fulfilment of this also agrees with the passages quoted on the destruction of the whole Jewish race, which came upon them after the coming of Christ. For Zechariah (c) writes this prophecy after the return from Babylon, foretelling the final siege of the people by the Romans, through which the whole Jewish race was to become subject to their |98 enemies : he says that only the remnant of the people shall be saved, exactly describing the apostles of our Saviour.

54. From Jeremiah. 

[Passage quoted Jer. iii. 14-16.]

Here again he prophesies that the conversion of Israel will be at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, in which He will choose one from a city, and two from a family, very few and small in number, to be shepherds of the nations that have believed on Him and of the nations that have been increased upon the earth through their destined call by them. No more, he says, will they say "the ark of the covenant of the Lord"—for they will no longer run after the more external worship, having received a new covenant.

(84) 55. From the same.

[Passage quoted, Jer. v. 6-10.]

Here once more the charge against their whole race is shewn, and the siege that came on them, and the remnant again, which he names "the foundation" as belonging to the Lord. Because being inspired and strengthened by their faith in the Christ of God, they did not undergo such sufferings as the rest of their race.

56. From Ezekiel 

[Passage quoted, Ezek. vi. 7.]

This also seems to me to agree with the passages from the other prophets. For whom could you call the "saved" but those called by the others "a remnant, and the drop, and the dew of that people," by which was signified the band of the Apostles of our Saviour? They truly being saved from the destruction of all their race, even in their (d) scattering remembered God, so that it must be agreed that what was written referred to them.

57. From the same. 

[Passage quoted, Ezek. xi. 16.]

And here he has called the same men by another name, meaning by "a little sanctuary," those of them who shall be saved and survive. |99 

58. From the same. (85) 

[Passage quoted, Ezek. xii. 14-16.]

In the dispersion of the whole people He says that even now few in number will be left for Himself, meaning the same men as in the preceding prophecy. (b)

59. From the same. 

[ Passage quoted, Ezek. xiv. 21.] 

This in no way differs from the preceding.

60. From the same. 

[Passage quoted, Ezek. xx. 36.]

Here, again, is a clear witness that but few will come under God's staff, and that this will be when the rest of Israel has fallen away from the promises.

But now that I have proved that the divine prophecies did not foretell good things to all the members of the Jewish race universally and indiscriminately whatever happened, to the evil and unholy and those who were the reverse, but to few of them and those easily numbered, in fact to those of them who believed in our Lord and Saviour, or those justified before His coming, I consider that I have shewn sufficiently, that the divine promises were fulfilled (d) not indiscriminately to all the Jews, and that the oracles of the prophets are not more applicable to them than to those of the Gentiles who have received the Christ of God. And the full meaning of the divine promises I will unfold in the fitting place.

I have but collected these passages, as I was bound to do, in order to refute the impudent assertions of those of the Circumcision, who, in their brainless boasting, say that the Christ will come for them only, and not for all mankind. I wished also to prove that my study of their sacred books (86) had been to good purpose. In the previous book I have already accounted for our not becoming Jews, although we have this delight in their prophetic writings. And I explained there also, as far as was possible, what kind of a life the Christian life is which is preached to all nations, and the ancient character of the ideal of the system of the |100 (b) Gospel. So now that this preliminary work is done, it is high time to attack more mysterious subjects, those which are concerned with the mystical dispensation relating to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Christ of God : so that we may learn why He made His appearance to all men now, and not before, and the reason why He began the call of the Gentiles, not in days long past, but now after the length of ages; and many other things which are germane to the mysterious theology of His Person.

(c) Now, therefore, let us discuss the subject of His Incarnation, which is my first topic at this second beginning of my work, which is addressed to unbelievers, calling on Him Who is, indeed, the Word of God to aid us.

[Footnotes have been renumbered at placed at the end.  Greek page locations are in (), scripture refs in [[]].  This page was scanned at a time when I thought it possible to include all the notes etc, so this is a complete representation of this book.]

1.  ¹ a1nwqen e0panalabw&n to_n lo&gon, e0pa&neimi e0pi/. Cf. e0panabebhko&j, P. E. 130b.

2. ¹ e0k periousi/aj : generally a rhetorical figure—"from superabundant evidence." Gifford [P. E. 64 a, 2] quotes Plato, Theat.: "sparring for mere amusement."

3. ¹ The words of Balaam. Cf. Gen. xii. 3.

4. ¹ Aquila, a Jewish proselyte, probably of Hadrian's time (A.I). 117-138), who produced a Greek version of O.T. which occupies the third column of Origen's Hexapla. His version is slavishly literal, and attempts to give a word for word translation, thus throwing great light on the then state of the Hebrew text. The Fathers on the whole regard the version as having an anti-Christian bias. Deutsch (Dict. Bib. III. 1642) would identify A. with Onkelos.

5. ² Theodotion, like A. first mentioned by Irenaeus (iii. xxi. 1, p. 215), probably an Ephesian Jewish proselyte. He wrote his version probably about A.D. 180 (it is a very vexed question) or earlier. It occupies the sixth column of the Hexapla.

6. ¹ ei\s pla&toj.

7. ² Nominative.

6. ¹ ei\s pla&toj.

7. ² Nominative.

8. ¹ See note, p. 21.

9. ¹ Jer. xvii. 1-4 is wanting from LX, but given in some codices with asterisks. Sec also 484 c. 

10. ² twn eqnwn apantwn.

11. ¹ exomalisomen.

12. ² thn kata dianoian qewroumenhn skhnophgian. Or, "the Feast of Tabernacles in a spiritual sense."

13. ¹ perittouV einai

14. ² kataleimma. LXX : D.F. K. L.P.— upoleimma —Aleph A.B.

15. ³ R.V. " For the Lord will execute his word upon the earth, finishing it and cutting it short." en . . . suntetmhmenon. Omitted by Aleph A.B. 47. W. H. retain with Western and Syrian.

16. ⁴ W. H.: kata tou Israhl. E. legwn peri tou Israhl. 

17. ⁵ W.H.: omit tou labein authn.

18. ¹ dasmouV kai forouV.  

19. ² ton dia loutrou paliggeietiaV.

20. ¹ LXX takes kaq eautwn with eiponteV.

21. ² Paris text has di on - on - autouV.

22.  ¹ 'upostolh xrhtai, "a lowering of diet," Plut. 2, 129 c. ; "an evasion," Hesych. cf. Heb. x. 39.

23. ² Symmachus, author of the third great Jewish version of the O.T., which comes in Origen's Hexapla after that of Aquila. Eusebius (H.E. vi. 17. Dem. Ev. 316c) makes him an Ebionite Christian, and is followed by Jerome. Epiphanius' statement that he was a Samaritan Jew is to be rejected (see Gwynne's art. in D.C.B. iv. p. 749). He probably lived in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and wrote his version aiming at the same literal accuracy as Aquila, but at more refinement of expression.

24. ³ LXX : oikon tou Israhl.

25. ¹ S.: kai thi kardiai sunwsin.

26. ² S.: iasomai. E.: iaswmai.

27. ¹ Cf. H.E. iv. c. 6 ; Tertullian, Apol. c. 16. Origen, c. Celsum viii. ad fin.; Gregory Naz., Orat. xii. After the founding of Aelia Capitolina, Milman says, "An edict was issued prohibiting any Jew from entering the new city on pain of death, or approaching its environs so as to contemplate even at a distance its sacred height."— History of the Jews, Book XVIII. ad fin.

28. ¹ Isa. vii. 14. Cf. 98 a, and Origen, c. Celsum, i. 35.

29. ² to men eiseti stoixeioumenon, to de hdh dia tou loutrou pefwtismenon.

30. ¹ W.H. add : di 'hmaV gar egrafh.

31. ² E. adds mikron.

32. ³ S.: estai. E.: anastreyei.

33. ¹ E. adds kai zhthsai.

34. ² LXX : kai ex ArabiaV. E.: kai apo twn nhswn thV qalasshV.

35. ³ E. omits touV apolomenouV Israhl, kai. (S.)

36. ¹ Lit. "moreover shall add to shew his hand." 

37. ² 'uposuronteV. Cf. P.E. 317 a, Of the Serpent.

38. ¹ Lit. wings. 

39. ² efelkusamenon ena laon sunhxe twi qewi . . . . sugkrotoumenon.

40. ¹ S. omits nhsoi.

41. ¹ Omission in E of 5 b, 6 a, owing to error of scribe because of touV katoikountaV authn (5 a) and oi katoikounteV authn (6 a).

42. ¹ S. adds: Parwxunnan me en toiV eidwloiV autwn—"They have provoked me with their idols."

43. ² LXX : pl.

44. ³ LXX : tw daimoni . . . thi tuchi.

45. ¹ S.: kataleiyete

46. ¹ LXX : 'wV lewn en kthnesin en twi drumwi.

47. ² Cf. 97 c, 275 a, 340 d, and Origen c. Celsum 453.

48. ³ thn pro aiwnoV ousiwsin—cf. P.E. 314 b, 554 c and 541 a: "It is literally the act which gives to einai te kai thn ousian." [G.]

49. ⁴ ou peri uiouV anqrwpwn.

50. ¹ Interesting as an echo of recent persecution.

51. ² Zech. xiv. This is a post-exilic prophecy of an eschatological nature, being one of the fragments appended to Zechariah. It is dependent on Ezekiel xxxviii. Zechariah's prophecies are confined to cc. i.-viii., and his activity, according to Zech. i. 1 and vii. 1; was from the second to the fourth year of Darius. [See Hastings, D.B. iv. 967.]

BOOK III

I HAVE now adequately completed the prolegomena¹ to (87) my Proof of the Gospel: I have shewn the nature of our Saviour's Gospel teaching, and given the reason of our regard for the oracles of the Jews, while we reject their rule of life. And I have also made it clear that their (88) prophetic writings in their foresight of the future recorded our own calling through Christ, so that we make use of them not as books alien to us, but as our own property. And now it is time for me to embark on my actual work, and to begin to treat of the promises. How these were actually concerned with the human dispensation of Jesus the Christ of God, and the teaching of the Hebrew prophets on the theology based on His Person, and predictions of His appearance among men, which I shall (b) shew immediately from their clear fulfilment can only apply to Him alone. But I must first of necessity consider the fact that the prophets definitely made mention ² of the Gospel of the Christ.

CHAPTER 1

That the Prophets made Mention of the Gospel of the Christ.

MY witness of this shall be from the words of Isaiah, who cries in the Person of Christ: |102  

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim (c) deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the [[Isa. lxi. i.]] blind."

Our Saviour, after reading this prophecy through in the Synagogue one day to a multitude of Jews, shut the book [[Luke iv. 21]] and said: "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." And beginning His own teaching from that point He began to preach the Gospel to the poor, putting in the forefront of His blessings: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs [[Matt. v. 3.]] is the kingdom of heaven." Yea, and to those who were (d) hampered by evil spirits, and bound for a long time like slaves by daemons, He proclaimed forgiveness, inviting all to be free and to escape from the bonds of sin, when He [[Matt. xi.28.]] said: "Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you."

And to the blind He gave sight, giving the power of seeing to those whose bodily vision was destroyed, and dowering with the vision of the light of true religion those who of old in their minds were blind ³ to the truth. The prophecy before us shews it to be essential that Christ Himself should be the originator and leader of the Gospel activity, and the same prophet foretells that after Him His own disciples should be ministers of the same system: (89) 

"How beautiful are the feet of them that bring good [[Isa. lii. 7; Rom. x.]] tidings of good things, and of those that bring good tidings of peace."

Here he says very particularly that it is the feet of those who publish the good news of Christ that are beautiful. For how could they not be beautiful, which in so small, so short a time have run over the whole earth, and filled every place with the holy teaching about the Saviour of the world?

(b) And that they did not use human words to persuade their hearers, but that it was the power of God that worked with them in the Gospel preaching, again another prophet says:

"The Lord will give a word to those that bring good [[Ps. lxviii.11.]] tidings with much power."  |103 

And again Isaiah:

"9. Go up to the high mountain, thou that bringest good tidings in Zion, lift up thy voice with strength thou that bringest good tidings to Jerusalem; lift it up, be not afraid, Say to the cities of Juda, Behold your God, 10. Behold the Lord comes with strength,⁴ and his arm with power. Behold his reward is with him, (c) and his work before him. 11. As a shepherd feeds his flock, and gathers the lambs in his arms, and comforts those that are great with young." [[Isa. xl. 9.]] 

We shall know in what sense this is to be taken, when we have reached a further point on the road of Gospel teaching. But at least it is established that the voices of the prophets witnessed to the Gospel, and even to the name of the Gospel, and you have clear and definite proofs from whom the Gospel will take its origin, that is to say from Christ Himself, and by whom it will be preached, that it will be through His Apostles. At least (we are told) by what power it will gain the mastery, that it will not be (d) human: since this is established by the words: "The Lord will give a word to those that bring good tidings with much power." So then it only remains to quote a few out of the many other ancient Hebrew prophecies concerning Christ, that you may know what the good tidings were that would be preached in after days, and may realize the wonderful foreknowledge of future events in the prophets, and the fulfilments of their predictions, how they stand fulfilled in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Christ of God.

CHAPTER 2 

That the Hebrew Prophets prophesied of Christ.

MOSES was the first of the prophets to tell the good news (90) that another prophet like unto himself would arise. For since his legislation was only applicable to the Jewish race, and only to that part of it resident in the land of Judaea or its neighbourhood, and not to those living far away abroad |104 (as has been seen in my previous book); and as it was surely necessary that He Who was not only the God of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles, should provide helpful means for all the Gentiles to know Him and to become holy in their lives, He makes known by the oracle accordingly (b) that another prophet will arise from the Jewish race, no whit inferior to His own dispensation. And God Himself names him in this manner:

"A prophet will I raise up to them from their brethren like unto thee, and I will put my word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them according to what I command him. And whatsoever man shall not hear that prophet['s words], whatsoever he shall speak in [[Deut.xviii.18]] my name, I will take vengeance on him."

And Moses speaks similar words when interpreting the oracle of God to the people:

(c) "A prophet shall the Lord thy God raise up of your brethren like unto me. Him shall ye hear according to all things that ye asked of the Lord God in Horeb [[Deut.xviii.15]] in the day of the assembly."

Was then any of the prophets after Moses, Isaiah, say, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Daniel, or any of the twelve, like Moses in being a lawgiver? Not one. Did any of them behave like Moses? One cannot affirm it. For each of (d) them from the first to the last referred their hearers to Moses, and based their rebukes of the people on their breaches of the Mosaic law, and did nothing but exhort them to hold fast to the Mosaic enactments. You could not say that any of them was like him: and yet Moses speaks definitely of one who should be. Whom then does the oracle prophesy will be a prophet like unto Moses, but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and none other?

We must consider thoroughly why this was said. Moses was the first leader of the Jewish race. He found them attached to the deceitful polytheism of Egypt, and was the first to turn them from it, by enacting the severest punishment (91) for idolatry. He was the first also to publish the theology of the one God, bidding them worship only the Creator and Maker of all things. He was the first to draw up for the same hearers a scheme of religious life, and is acknowledged to have been the first and only lawgiver of their religious polity. But Jesus Christ too, like Moses, |105 only on a grander stage, was the first to originate the teaching according to holiness for the other nations, and first accomplished the rout of the idolatry that embraced (b) the whole world. He was the first to introduce to all men the knowledge and religion of the one Almighty God. And He is proved to be the first Author and Lawgiver of a new life and of a system adapted to the holy.

And with regard to the other teaching on the genesis of the world, and the immortality of the soul, and other doctrines of philosophy which Moses was the first to teach (c) the Jewish race, Jesus Christ has been the first to publish them to the other nations by His disciples in a far diviner form. So that Moses may properly be called the first and only lawgiver of religion to the Jews, and Jesus Christ the same to all nations, according to the prophecy which says of Him:

"Set, O Lord, a lawgiver over them: that the Gentiles may know themselves to be but men." ⁵ [[Ps. ix. 20.]] 

Moses again by wonderful works and miracles authenticated (d) the religion that he proclaimed: Christ likewise, using His recorded miracles to inspire faith in those who saw them, established the new discipline of the Gospel teaching. Moses again transferred the Jewish race from the bitterness of Egyptian slavery to freedom: while Jesus Christ summoned the whole human race to freedom from their impious Egyptian idolatry under evil daemons. Moses, too, promised a holy land and a holy life therein under a blessing to those who kept his laws: while Jesus Christ says likewise: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," promising a far better land in truth, and a holy and godly, not the land of Judaea, which in no way excels the rest (of the earth), but the heavenly country which suits souls that (92) love God, to those who follow out the life proclaimed by Him. And that He might make it plainer still, He proclaimed the kingdom of heaven to those blessed by Him. And you will find other works done by our Saviour with greater power than those of Moses, and yet resembling the works which Moses did. As, for example, Moses fasted forty days continuously, as Scripture witnesses, saying: "And (Moses) was there with the Lord forty days and (b) |106 [[Exod. xxxiv. 28.]] forty nights; he did neither eat bread nor drink water." And Christ likewise: For it is written: "And he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil; and in those days he did eat nothing." [[Luke iv. 1.]]

Moses again fed the people in the wilderness: for Scripture says: Behold, I give ⁶ you bread from heaven." [[Exod. xvi.4.]] And after a little:

"It came to pass as the dew ceased round about the camp, and behold on the face of the wilderness a small (c) thing, like white coriander seed, as frost upon the ground." [[Exod. xvi.14.]] 

And our Lord and Saviour likewise says to.His disciples:

" 8. O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? 9. Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? 10. Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?" [[Matt. xvi.8.]]

Moses again went through the midst of the sea, and led the people; for Scripture says:

(d) "And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the Lord carried back the sea with a strong south wind all the night, and the water was divided. And the children of Israel passed through the midst of the sea on the dry land, and the water was a wall to them on the right and a wall on the left." [[Exod.xiv.21-22]]

In the same way, only more divinely, Jesus the Christ of God walked on the sea, and caused Peter to walk on it. For it is written:

"25. And in the fourth watch of the night he went unto them, walking on the sea. 26. And when they saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled." [[Matt. xiv. 25.]] 

And shortly after:

"28. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. 29. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water."

Moses again made the sea dry with a strong south wind. (93) For Scripture says: "Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the Lord drave back the sea with a strong |107 south wind," and he adds: "The waves were congealed in the midst of the sea." In like manner, only much more grandly, our Saviour "rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm." Again when Moses descended from the Mount, his face was seen full of glory: for it is written:

"And Moses descending from the Mount did not know that the appearance of the skin of his face was (b) glorified while He spake to him. And Aaron and all the elders [of the children] of Israel saw Moses, and the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified." [[Exod. xxxiv. 29.]] 

In the same way only more grandly our Saviour led His disciples "to a very high mountain,⁷ and he was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his garments were white like the light." [[Matt. xvii.2.]]

Again Moses cleansed a leper: for it is written: " And behold Miriam (was) leprous (as white) as snow." [[Num. xii.10.]]

And a little further on: "And Moses cried to the Lord: O God, I pray thee to heal her."

And in the same way, but with more superb power, the (c) Christ of God, when a leper came to him, saying: "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean; answered: I will; be thou clean. And his leprosy was cleansed." [[Matt. viii.2.]]

Moses, again, said that the law was written with the finger of God: for it is written:

"And he gave to Moses, when he ceased speaking to him in Mount Sinai, the two tables of witness, stone tables written with the finger of God." [[Exod.xxxi.18.]] 

And in Exodus: "The magicians therefore said to Pharaoh, (d) It is the finger of God." [[Exod. viii.19.]]

In like manner Jesus, the Christ of God, said to the Pharisees: "If I by the finger of God ⁸ cast out devils." [[Matt. xii.27]] Moreover, Moses changed the name of Nave to Jesus, and likewise the Saviour changed that of Simon to Peter. And Moses set up seventy men as leaders to the people. For Scripture says:

"16. Bring together to me seventy men of the elders of Israel, ⁹ 17. and I will take of the spirit that is upon |108 thee, and I will put it upon them. ... 24. And he brought together seventy men." ¹⁰ [[Num. xi.16]]

Likewise our Saviour "chose out His seventy disciples,¹¹ and sent them ¹² two and two before his face." [[Luke x.1.]] Moses (94) again sent out twelve men to spy out the land, and likewise, only with far higher aims, our Saviour sent out twelve Apostles to visit all the Gentiles. Moses again legislates saying: 

[[Deut. v. 17]] " Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not forswear thyself." ¹³ 

But our Saviour, extending the law, not only forbids to kill, but also to be angry: instead of "Thou shalt not commit adultery," He forbids to look on a woman with unbridled lust. Instead of "Thou shalt not steal," He enjoins that we should give what is our own to the needy. And transcending the law against false swearing, He lays down the rule of not swearing at all. But why need I seek further (b) for proof that Moses and Jesus our Lord and Saviour acted in closely similar ways, since it is possible for any one who likes to gather instances at his leisure? Even when they say that no man knew the death of Moses, or his sepulchre, so (none saw) our Saviour's change after His Resurrection into the divine. If then no one but our Saviour can be shewn to have resembled Moses in so many ways, surely it only remains for us to apply to Him, and to none other, the prophecy of Moses, in which he foretold that God (c) would raise up one like unto himself, saying:

"18. I will raise a prophet to them of their brethren like thee; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them, as I shall bid him. 19. And [[Deut.xviii.18]] whatever man will not hear whatsoever words that prophet saith, I will take vengeance on him."

And Moses himself, interpreting the words to the people, said:

(d) "15. A prophet shall the Lord thy God raise up to |109 thee of thy brethren, like me; him ye shall hear; 16. according to all things which you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly." [[Deut.xviii 15.]] 

But the Old Testament ¹⁴ clearly teaches that, of the prophets after Moses, no one before our Saviour was raised up like unto Moses, when it says:

"And there has not arisen yet a prophet like Moses whom the Lord knew face to face in all his signs and wonders." [[Deut.xxxiv. 10.]] 

I have then proved that the Divine Spirit prophesied through Moses of our Saviour, if He alone and none other has been shewn to fulfil the requirements of Moses' words. But note another recorded prophecy. We know that many (95) multitudes among all the nations call our Lord and Saviour Lord, though He was born according to the flesh of the seed of Israel, confessing Him as Lord because of His divine power. And this also Moses knew by the Divine Spirit, and proclaimed in this manner in writing:

"There shall come a man from his seed" (He means Israel's), "and he shall be Lord over the Gentiles, and his kingdom shall be exalted." [[Num.xxiv.7.]] 

Now if none other of the kings and rulers of those of the Circumcision has ever at any period been Lord of many Gentiles (and no record suggests it) while truth cries and (b) shouts of our Saviour's unique rule, that many multitudes from all nations confess Him to be Lord not only with their lips but with the most genuine affection,¹⁵ what can hinder us from saying that He is.the one foretold by the prophet? That Moses' prediction was not indefinite, and that he did not see his prophecy in the shadows of illimitable and unmeasured time, but circumscribed the fulfilment of his predictions with the greatest accuracy by temporal limits, hear how he speaks prophetically about Him: (c) "There shall not fail a prince from Juda, and a leader from his loins until he come in whom it is laid up,¹⁶ and he is the expectation of the Gentiles"— [[Gen. xlix.10.]] which means that the order and succession of rulers and leaders of the Jewish race will not fail until the coming of the Prophesied, but that when there is a failure of their |110 rulers the Prophesied will come. By Judah here he does (d) not mean the tribe of Judah, but since in later days the whole race of the Jews came to be called after the kingly tribe, as even now we call them Jews, in a very wonderful and prophetic way he named the whole Jewish race, just as we do when we call them Jews.

Next he says that the rulers and heads of their race will not fail, before the Prophesied appear: and that on his arrival the Jewish state will be at once dissolved, and that he will be no longer the expectation of the Jews, but of the Gentiles. Now you could not apply this prophecy (96) to any of the prophets, but only to our Lord and Saviour. For immediately on his appearance the kingdom of the Jews was taken away. For at once their king in the direct line failed, who ruled them according to their own laws, Augustus then being the first Roman Emperor, and Herod, who was of an alien race, becoming their king.¹⁷ And while they failed, the expectation of the Gentiles throughout the whole world appeared according to the divine prophecy, (b) so that even now all men of all nations who believe in Him place the hope of godly expectation in Him.

All these good tidings, and many others besides these, does Moses give us concerning the Christ. And Isaiah definitely foretells in words akin to his of one who shall rise from the seed and line of King David:

"A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall spring forth from his root, and the spirit of God shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding." [[Isa. xi. 1.]]

And then he proceeds in prophetic style to paint the (c) change that will transform all races of men, both Greek and barbarian, from savagery and barbarism to gentleness and mildness. For he says:

"And the wolf shall feed with the lamb, and the |111 leopard shall lie down with the goat, and the calf and the bull and lion shall feed together." [[Isa. xi. 6.]]

And similar things, which he at once makes clear by interpretation, saying:

"And he that arises to rule the Gentiles, on him shall the Gentiles trust."

Thus he has made it clear that the unreasoning animals, (d) and the wild beasts mentioned in the passage, represent the Gentiles, by reason of their being by nature like wild beasts; and he says that one arising from the seed of Jesse, from whom the genealogy of our Lord and Saviour runs, will rule over the Gentiles; on Him the nations that now believe in Him fix their hope, agreeably to the prediction, "And it shall be that he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in him shall the Gentiles trust." And the words "In him shall the Gentiles trust" are the same as "And he will be the expectation of the Gentiles." For there is (97) no difference between saying "In him shall the Gentiles trust" and "He shall be the expectation of the Gentiles." And the same Isaiah, continuing, prophesies these things about Christ:

"Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, he shall bring judgment to the nations." [[Isa. xlii. 1.]] 

And he adds: "Till he place judgment upon the earth, and in his name shall the Gentiles trust."

Here, then, the second time the prophet states that the Gentiles will hope in Christ, having said above "In Him shall the Gentiles trust." Though here it is "In His name shall the Gentiles trust." And it was said also to David, that "of the fruit of thy body shall one be raised (b) up," about Whom God says further on: " He shall call on me, Thou art my father; and I will make him my first-born." [[Ps. cxxxii.11]] And about Him he says again, "And he shall rule from the one sea to the other, and from the rivers even unto the ends of the world." [[Ps.lxxxviii.26.]] And once more, "All the Gentiles shall serve him, and all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed in him." [[Ps. lxxi.8.]] And moreover, the definite place of His prophesied birth is foretold by Micah, saying: [[Ps. lxxi.11 and 17.]] "And thou, Bethlehem, House of Ephratha, art the least that can be among the thousands of Judah. Out of thee shall come a leader, who shall feed my people Israel. And (c) |112 his goings forth are from the beginning from the days of eternity." [[Micah v.2; Matt.ii.6.]]

Now all agree that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem,¹⁸ and a cave ¹⁹ is shewn there by the inhabitants to those who come from abroad to see it. The place of His birth then was foretold. And the miracle of His birth Isaiah teaches sometimes mysteriously, and sometimes more plainly: mysteriously, when he says:

"Lord, who hath believed our report? And the arm of the Lord to whom hath it been revealed? we (d) proclaimed him before as a child, as a root in a thirsty soil." [[Isa. liii. 1.]]

Instead of which Aquila interpreted thus: "And he shall be proclaimed as a suckling before his face, and as a root from an untrodden ground." And Theodotion: "And he shall go up as a suckling before him, and as a root in a thirsty land."

For in this passage, the prophet having mentioned "the Arm of the Lord," which was the Word of God, says: "In his sight we have proclaimed (him) as a sucking child, and one nurtured at the breast, and as a root from untrodden ground." The child that is "a suckling and nurtured at the breast" exactly therefore shews forth the (98) birth of Christ, and "the thirsty and untrodden land" the Virgin that bare Him, whom no man had known, from whom albeit untrodden sprang up "the blessed root," and "the sucking child that was nurtured by the breast." But this prophecy was darkly and obscurely given: the same prophet explains his meaning more plainly, when he says: "Behold a Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name God with us," [[Isa. vii. 14.]] for Emmanuel signifies this.

(b) Such were the thoughts of Hebrews long ago about the birth of Christ among men. Do they, then, describe in |113 their prophecy some famous prince or tyrant, or some one in any other class of those who have great power in earthly things? One cannot say so, for no such man appeared. But as He was in His life, so they prophesied that He would be, in no way failing in truth. For Isaiah said: "We proclaimed him before, as a child, as a root in thirsty soil.'' [[Is. liii. 2.]] And then he proceeds saying:

"2. He hath no form or glory, and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty, 3. And his form was dishonourable and slight even compared with the sons of (c) men, a man in suffering, and knowing to bear sickness ¹ he was dishonoured, and not esteemed." What remains for him to say? 

Surely, if they predicted His tribe and race and manner of birth, and the miracle of the Virgin, and His manner of life, it was impossible for them to pass over in silence that which followed, namely His Death: and what does Isaiah prophesy about it?

"3. A man" he says "in suffering, and knowing to bear sickness,²⁰ he was dishonoured and not esteemed. 4. This man bears our sins, and is pained for our sake. And we thought him to be in trouble, in suffering, and in evil; 5. He was wounded for our sins, and bruised (cl) for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripe we are healed. 6. All we as sheep have gone astray,²¹ and the Lord delivered him for our sins, and he because of his affliction opens not his mouth. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before her shearers, so he opens not his mouth.²² 8. Who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth." [[Isa. liii. 3-8.]] 

In this he shews that Christ, being apart from all sin, will receive the sins of men on Himself. And therefore (99) He will suffer the penalty of sinners, and will be pained on their behalf; and not on His own. And if He shall be wounded by the strokes of blasphemous words, this also will be the result of our sins. For He is weakened through our sins, so that we, when He had taken on Him our faults and the wounds of our wickedness, might be |114 healed by His stripes. And this is the cause why the Sinless shall suffer among men: and the wonderful prophet, (b) in no way shrinking, clearly rebukes the Jews who plotted his death; and complaining bitterly of this very thing he says: "For the transgressions of my people he was led to death." And then because total destruction overtook them immediately, and not a long time after their evil deed to Christ, when they were besieged by the Romans, he does not pass this over either, but adds: "And I will give the wicked for his tomb, and the rich for his death."

It would have sufficed for him to have concluded the prophecy at this point, if he had not seen that something (c) else would happen after the death of Christ. But as He after His death and entombment is to return and rise again almost at once, he adds this also concerning Him, saying next:

"The Lord also is pleased to purify him from his stroke—if ye can give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a life-long seed. And the Lord wills to take away from the travail of his soul, to shew him light." [[Isa. liii. 10.]]

He said above: "A man stricken, and knowing to bear weakness"; and now after his death and burial, he says: "The Lord wishes to cleanse him from his strokes." And (d) how will this be done? "If ye offer," he says, "for sin, your soul shall see a seed that prolongs its days." For it is not allowed to all to see the seed of Christ that prolongs its days, but to those only who confess and bring the offerings for sins to God. For the soul of these only shall see the seed of Christ prolonging its days, be it His eternal life after death, or the word sown by Him through the whole world, which will prolong its days and endure for ever.

And as he said above: "And we reckoned him to be in trouble," so, now, after His slaughter and death, he says: "And the Lord wills to take his life away from its (100) trouble, and to give it light." Since then the Lord, the Almighty God, willed to cleanse Him from this stroke, and to show Him light, if He willed He would most certainly do what He willed; for there is nothing that He wills which is not brought to pass: but He willed to cleanse Him and to give Him light; therefore he accomplished it, He cleansed Him and gave Him light. And since He willed |115 it, and being willing took away the travail of His soul, and shewed Him light, the prophet rightly proceeds with the words: "Therefore he shall inherit from many, and shall divide the spoil of the strong." [[Isa. liii.12.]]

Here it remained for him to mention the heritage of (b) Christ, in agreement with the Second Psalm, in which the prophetic word foretells the plot that was hatched against Him, giving His name:

"2. The kings of the earth stood up,
And the rulers were gathered together
Against the Lord and against his Christ." [[Ps. ii. 2.]] 

And it adds next:

"3. The Lord said to me, Thou art my son, 
To-day I have begotten thee; 
Ask of me and I shall give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance

And the bounds of the earth for thy possession." It was to these Gentiles that the Prophet darkly referred, (c) saying: "He shall inherit from many, and shall divide the spoil of the strong." [[Isa. liii. 12.]] For he rescued the subject souls from the opposing powers, which of old ruled over the Gentiles, and divided them as spoils among his disciples. Wherefore Isaiah says of them: "And they shall rejoice before thee, as they who divide the spoils."[[Isa. ix. 3.]] 

And the Psalmist: 

"12. The Lord will give a word to the preachers with much power. 
13. The king of the powers of the beloved, in the beauty of his house divideth the spoils." [[Ps. lxvii.12.]] 

He rightly, therefore, says this also of Christ: "Therefore (d) he shall have the inheritance of many, and divide the spoils of the strong." And shortly after he tells us why, saying:

"Because his soul was delivered to death, and he was reckoned among the transgressors, and he himself bare the sins of many, and was delivered for their iniquities."

For it was as a meet return for all this, because of His obedience and long-suffering, that the Father gave Him what we have seen, for He was obedient to the Father even unto death. Wherefore it is prophesied that He should receive the inheritance of many, and should be |116 reckoned with the transgressors not before but after His being delivered to death. For therefore He is said "to receive the inheritance of many, and to share the spoil of the strong." And I consider that it is beyond doubt that in these words the resurrection from the dead of the (101) subject of the prophecy is shewn. For how else can we regard Him as led as a sheep to the slaughter, and delivered to death for the sins of the Jewish people, numbered with transgressors, and delivered to burial, then cleansed by the Lord, and seeing light with Him, and receiving the inheritance of many, and dividing the spoils with his friends? David, too, prophesying in the Person of Christ says somewhere of His Resurrection after death:

(b) "10. Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades,
Neither wilt thou give thine Holy one to see corruption." [[Ps.xvi. 10.]] 

And also:

"4. Lord, Thou hast brought my soul out of Hades, Thou hast kept my life from them that go down into the pit." [[Ps. xxx. 4.]] 

And also:

"14. Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death. 15. That I may tell all thy praises." [[Ps. ix. 14.]]

I consider that not even the most obtuse can look these things in the face ²³ (and disregard them). And the conclusion of the prophecy of Isaiah, tells of the soul once sterile and empty of God, or perhaps of the Church of the (c) Gentiles, agreeably to the view I have taken. For since Christ has borne all for its sake, he rightly goes on after the predictions about them, to say:

"Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not; for more are the children of the desolate, than of her that hath a husband,²⁴ for the Lord has said, Enlarge the place of thy tent, and the skins of thy hangings ²⁵ peg down, do not spare. Widen thy cords, and strengthen thy pins: spread out still more to the right and left, and thy seed shall inherit the heathen." [[Is. liv. 1.]] |117 

This is the good news the Word gives the Church (d) gathered from the Gentiles scattered throughout the world and stretching from sunrise to sunset, shewn forth very clearly when it says: "And thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles."

And now, though this part of my subject needs more elaboration, I will conclude it, as I have said sufficient for the present. You yourself will be able at your leisure to make selections relating to the subject, and this present work on the Proof of the Gospel will adduce and interpret individual details in their place. Meantime, for the present what has been said will suffice, on the predictions (and foreknowledge) of the prophets about our Saviour, and that it was they who proclaimed the good news that the good things of the future were coming for all men. (102) They foretold the coming of a prophet and the religion of a lawgiver like Moses, his race, his tribe, and the place he should come from, and they prophesied the time of his appearance, his birth, and death, and resurrection, as well as his rule over all the Gentiles, and all those things have been accomplished, and will continue to be accomplished in the sequence of events, since they find their completion in our Lord and Saviour alone.

But such arguments from the sacred oracles are only (b) intended for the faithful. Unbelievers in the prophetic writings I must meet with special arguments. So that I must now argue about Christ as about an ordinary man and one like other men,²⁶ in order that when He has been shewn to be far greater and more excellent in solitary preeminence than all the most lauded of all time, I may then take the opportunity to treat of His diviner nature, and shew from clear proofs, that the power in Him was not (c) of mere humanity. And after that I will deal with the theology of His Person, so far as I can envisage it.

Since then many unbelievers call Him a wizard and a deceiver, and use many other blasphemous terms, and cease not yet to do so, I will reply to them, drawing my |118 arguments, not from any source of my own, but from His own words and teaching.

CHAPTER 3

Addressed to those that suppose that the Christ of God was a Deceiver.

(d) THE questions I would ask them are these: whether any other deceiver, such as He is supposed to have been, is ever reported to have become as a teacher the cause of meekness, "sweet reasonableness," ²⁷ purity, and every virtue in those that he deceived? Whether it is right to call by these names one that did not permit men to gaze on women with unbridled lust, whether He was a deceiver Who taught philosophy in its highest form in that He trained His disciples to share their goods with the needy, and set (103) industry and benevolence in the front rank? Whether He was a deceiver Who wakened ²⁸ (men) from common, vulgar, and noisy company, and taught them to enjoy only the study of holy oracles?

He dissuaded from everything false, and exhorted men to honour truth before all, so that so far from swearing false oaths, they should abstain even from true ones. "For let your Yea be yea, and your Nay, nay." How could He be justly called a deceiver? And why need I say more, since it may be known from what I have already said what kind of ideal of conduct He has shed forth (b) on life, from which all lovers of (ruth would agree that He was no deceiver, but in truth something divine, and the author of a holy and divine philosophy, and not one of the common vulgar type?

He has been proved in the first book of this work to have been the only one to revive the life of the old Hebrew saints, long perished from amongst men, and to have spread it not among a paltry few but through the (c) whole world: from which it is possible to shew that men ²⁹ |119 in crowds ³⁰ through all the world (are following the way) of those holy men of Abraham's day, and that there are innumerable lovers of their godly manner of life from Barbarians as well as Greeks.

Such then is the more ethical side of His teaching. But let us also examine whether the word deceiver applies to Him in relation to His most central doctrines. Is it not a fact that He is recorded Himself to have been devoted to the One Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and earth and the whole Universe, and to have led His disciples to Him, and that even now the words of His teaching lead up the (d) minds of every Greek and Barbarian to the Highest God, outsoaring all visible Nature? But surely He was not a deceiver in not allowing the real deceiver, fallen headlong ³¹ from the loftiest and the only true theology, to worship many gods? Remember that this was no novel doctrine or one peculiar to Him, but one dear to the Hebrew saints of long ago, as I have shewn in the Preparation, from whom lately the sons ³² of our modern philosophers have derived great benefit, expressing approval of their teaching. Yes, and the most erudite of the Greeks pride themselves, forsooth, on the fact that the oracles of their own gods mention the Hebrews in terms like these. ³³ (104)

"The Chaldeans alone possess wisdom, and the Hebrews, 
       Who worship in holy wise, God their King, self-born."

Here the writer called them Chaldeans because of Abraham, who it is recorded was by race a Chaldean. If, then, in the ancient days the sons of the Hebrews, to whose (b) eminent wisdom even the oracles bear witness, directed men's worship only towards the One God, Creator of all things, why should we class Him as a deceiver and not as a |120 wonderful teacher of religion Who, with invisible and inspired power, pressed forward and circulated among all men the very truths which in days of old were only known to the godly Hebrews, so that no longer as in ancient days some few men easily numbered hold true opinions about God, but many multitudes of barbarians who were once like (c) wild beasts, as well as learned Greeks, are taught simply by His power a like religion to that of the prophets and just men of old?

But let me now examine the third point—whether this is the reason why they call Him a deceiver, viz. that He has not ordained that God should be honoured with sacrifices of bulls or the slaughter of unreasoning beasts, or by blood, or fire, or by incense made of earthly things. That He thought these things low and earthly and quite unworthy of the immortal nature, and judged the most (d) acceptable and sweetest sacrifice to God to be the keeping of His own commandments. That He taught that men purified by them in body and soul, and adorned with a pure mind and holy doctrines would best reproduce the likeness of God, saying expressly: "Be ye perfect, as your Father is perfect."

Now if any Greek is the accuser, let him realize that his accusations would not please his own teachers, who, it may be, assisted by us, for they have come after us in time, I mean after the gifts to us of our Saviour's teaching, have expressed such sentiments as these in their writings— listen.

That we ought not to burn as Incense, or offer in Sacrifice, any of the Things of Earth to the. Supreme God.

(105) From Porphyry ³⁴ On Vegetarianism

[II. 34. Cf. Praep. Evan. IV. p. 149 B.]

To the supreme God, as a certain wise man has said, we must neither offer by fire, nor dedicate any of the things |121 known by sense. (For everything material is perforce impure to the immaterial.) Wherefore not even speech is germane to Him, whether of the speaking voice, or of the voice within when defiled by the passion of the soul. By (b) pure silence and pure thoughts of Him we will worship Him. United therefore with Him and made like Him, we must offer our own "self-discipline" ³⁵ as a holy sacrifice to God. That worship is at once a hymn of praise and our salvation in the passionless state of the virtue of the soul. And in the contemplation of God this sacrifice is perfected.

From the Theology of Apollonius of Tyana ³⁶ (Praep. Ev. p. 150).

In this way then, I think, one would best shew the the proper regard for the deity, and thereby beyond all other men secure His favour and good will, if to Him, Whom we called the First God, and Who is One and separate (c) from all others, and to Whom the rest must be acknowledged |122 inferior, he should sacrifice nothing at all, neither kindle fire nor dedicate anything whatever that is an object of sense—for He needs nothing even from beings that are greater than we are; nor is there any plant at all, which the earth sends up, nor animal which it, or the air, sustains, to which there is not some defilement attached—but should ever employ towards Him only that better speech: I mean (d) the speech which passes not through the lips, and should ask good things from the noblest of beings by what is noblest in ourselves, and this is the mind, which needs no instrument. According to this, therefore, we ought not to offer sacrifice to the great God, that is over all.³⁷

If then these are the conclusions of eminent Greek philosophers and theologians, how could he be a deceiver who delivers to his pupils not words only but acts, which are far more important than words, to perform, by which they may serve God according . to right reason? The manner and words of the recorded sacrifices of the (106) ancient Hebrews have been already dealt with in the first Book of the present work, and with that we will be satisfied. And now, since besides what I have so far examined, we know that Christ taught that the world was created,³⁸ and that the heaven itself, the sun, moon, and stars, are the work of God, and that we must not worship them but their Maker, we must inquire if we are deceived, in accepting this way of thinking from Him.

It was certainly the doctrine of the Hebrews, and the (b) most famous philosophers agreed with them, in teaching that the heaven itself, the sun, moon, and stars, indeed the whole universe, came into being through the Maker of all things. And Christ also taught us to expect a consummation and transformation of the whole into something better, in agreement with the Hebrew Scriptures. And what of that? Did not Plato ³⁹ know the heaven itself, the sun, moon, and other stars to be of a dissoluble and corruptible nature, and if he did not say they would actually be |123 dissolved, it was only because (he thought that) the One Who put them together did not will it?

And though He willed us to be part of such a natural (c) order, yet He taught us to think that we have a soul immortal and quite unlike the unreasoning brutes, bearing a resemblance to the powers of God; and He instructed every barbarian and common man to be assured, and to think that this is so. Has He not made those, who hold His views through the whole world wiser than the philosophers with their eyebrows raised,⁴⁰ who claim that in essence the human soul is identical with that of the flea, the worm, and the fly; yea, that the soul of their most philosophic brethren, so far as essence and nature go, differs not at all from the soul of a serpent, or a viper, or a bear, or a leopard, or a pig?

And if moreover He persisted in reminding men of a (d) divine judgment, and described the punishments and inevitable penalties of the wicked, and God's promises of eternal life to the good, the kingdom of heaven, and a blessed life with God, whom did He deceive?—nay, rather, whom did He not impel to follow virtue keenly, because of the prizes looked for by the holy, and whom did He not divert from all manner of sin through the punishment prepared for the wicked?

In His doctrinal teaching, we learn that below the Highest: God there are Powers, by nature unembodied and spiritual, (107) possessing reason and every virtue, a choir around the Almighty, many of whom are sent by the will of the Father even unto men on missions of salvation. We are taught to recognize and honour them according to the measure of their worth, but to render the honour of worship to Almighty God alone.

In addition to this He has taught us to believe that there are enemies of our race flying in the air (hat surrounds the earth, and that there dwell with the wicked powers of daemons, evil spirits and their rulers, whom we are taught (b) to flee from with all our strength, even if they usurp for themselves without limit God's Name and prerogatives. |124  And that they are to be shunned even more because of their warfare and enmity against God, according to the proofs I have given at great length in the Praeparatio.⁴¹ Whatever teaching of this kind is found in the doctrine of our Saviour is exactly the same religious instruction as the godly men and prophets of the Hebrews gave.

If, then, these doctrines are holy, useful, philosophic and full of virtue, on what fair ground can the name of deceiver (c) be fastened on their teacher?

But the above inquiry has had to do with Christ as if He only possessed ordinary human nature, and has shewn forth His teaching as weighty and useful—let us proceed and examine its diviner side.

CHAPTER 4

Of the Diviner Works of Christ.

WE must now proceed to review the number and character of the marvellous works He performed while living among men: how He cleansed by His divine power those leprous (d) in body, how He drove demons out of men by His word of command, and how again He cured ungrudgingly those who were sick and labouring under all kinds of infirmity. As, for instance, one day He said to a paralytic, "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk," [[Matt iv.10]] and he did what he was told. Or [[Mark ii. 11.]] as again bestowed on the blind the boon of seeing the light; and once, too, a woman with an issue of blood, worn down for many long years by suffering, when she saw great crowds surrounding Him, which altogether prevented her approaching Him in order to kneel and beg from Him the cure of her suffering, taking it into her head that if she could (108) only touch the hem of His garment she would recover, she stole through, and taking hold of His garment, at the same moment took hold of the cure of her illness. She became whole that instant, and exhibited the greatest example of our Saviour's power. And another, a man ⁴² of courtly |125 rank, who had a sick son, besought Jesus, and at once John v. received him safe and well.

Another, again, had a sick daughter, and he was a chief ruler of a Synagogue of the Jews, and He (restored her) though she was even now dead. Why need I tell how (b) a man four days dead was raised up by the power of Jesus? Or how He took His way upon the sea, as upon the earth we tread, while His disciples were sailing? — and how when they were overtaken by the storm He rebuked the sea, and the waves, and the winds, and they all were still at once, as fearing their Master's voice?

When He filled to satisfaction five thousand men in addition to another great crowd of women and children, with loaves five in number, and had so much over that there was enough to (c) fill twelve baskets to take away, whom would He not astonish, and whom would He not impel to an inquiry of the true source of His unheard-of power? But in order not to extend my present argument to too great length, to sum all up I will consider His Death, which was not the common death of all men. For. He was not destroyed by disease, nor by the cord,⁴³ nor by fire, nor even on the trophy ⁴⁴ of the Cross were His legs cut with steel like those of the others who were evil-doers; neither, in a word, did He reach His end by suffering from any man any of the usual forms of violence which destroy life. But as if He were only handing His (d) life over willingly to those who plotted against His body, as soon as He was raised from the earth He gave a cry upon the tree, and commended His Spirit to His Father, saying these words: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"; thus uncompelled and of His own free will He departed from the body. And His body having then been taken by His friends, and laid in the fitting tomb,⁴⁵ on the third day He again took back again the body which He had willingly resigned before when He departed.

And He shewed Himself again in flesh and blood, the very self He was before, to His own disciples, after staying a brief while with whom, and completing a short time, He returned where He was before, beginning His way to the (109) |126 heavens before their eyes. And giving them instructions on what was to be done, He proclaimed them teachers of the highest religion to all the nations. Such were the far-famed wonders of (our Saviour's) power. Such were the proofs of His divinity. And we ourselves have marvelled at them with reverent reasoning, and received them after subjecting them to the tests and inquiries of a critical judgment. We have inquired into and tested them not only by other plain facts which make the whole subject clear, by which our Lord is still wont to shew to those, whom He thinks worthy, some slight evidences of His power,⁴⁶ but also by the more logical (b) method which we are accustomed to use in arguing with those who do not accept what we have said, and either completely disbelieve in it, and deny that such things were done by Him at all, or hold that if they were done, they were done by wizardry for the leading astray of the spectators, as deceivers often do. And if I must be brief in dealing with these opponents, at least I will be earnest, and refute them in some way or other.

CHAPTER 5

Against those that disbelieve the Account of Our Saviour's Miracles given by His Disciples.

(c) Now if they say that our Saviour worked no miracle at all, nor any of the marvels to which His friends bore witness, let us see if what they say will be credible, if they have no rational explanation why the disciples and the Master were associated. For a teacher always promises some special form of instruction, and pupils always, in pursuit of that instruction, come and commit themselves to the teacher. |127 

What cause then shall we assign to the union of the (d) disciples with Christ and of Christ with them, what lay at the root of their earnestness, and of what instruction did they rank Him as Master?

Is not the answer clear? It was only and altogether the instruction which they carried to other men, when they had learned it from Him. And His precepts were those of a philosopher's life, which He outlined when He said to them: "Provide neither gold nor silver ⁴⁷ in your girdles, nor a staff for the road," [[Matt. x. 9.]] and similar words, that they should commit themselves to all-governing Providence, and take no care for their needs, and bade them to aim higher than the Jews under Moses' commandments, to whom he gave a law as to men prone to murder. "Do (110) not kill," and likewise, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" as to men who were lascivious and lecherous, and again, "Thou shalt not steal," as to men of the type of slaves; but our Saviour taught that they must regard such laws as not applying to them, and aim above all at a soul free from passion, cutting away from the depths of their minds as from the roots the shoots of sin: they must try to (b) master anger and every base lust, and more, they must never ruffle the sublime calm of the soul with anger: they must not look upon a woman with unbridled lust, and so far from stealing they must lavish their own property on the needy: they must not be proud of not defrauding one another, but consider rather that they must bear no malice against those who defrauded them. But why should I collect everything that He taught and that they learned? (c) He commanded them besides all this to hold so fast to truth, that so far from swearing falsely they should not need to swear at all, and to contrive to exhibit a life more faithful than any oath, going so far only as Yea and Nay, and using the words with truth.

I would ask, then, where would be the sense in suspecting that hearers of such teaching, who were themselves masters in such instruction, invented their account of their Master's work? How is it possible to think that they were all in (d) agreement to lie, being twelve in number especially chosen, and seventy besides, whom He is said to have sent two |128 and two before His face into every place and country into which He Himself would come? But no argument can prove that so large a body of men were untrustworthy, who embraced a holy and godly life, regarded their own affairs as of no account, and instead of their dearest ones —I mean their wives, children, and all their family—chose a life of poverty, and carried to all men as from one mouth a consistent account of their Master. Such would be the right and obvious and true argument; let us examine that which opposes it. Imagine the teacher and his disciples. Then admit the fanciful hypothesis that he teaches not the aforesaid things, hut doctrines opposed to them, that is to say, to transgress, to be unholy, to be unjust, to be covetous and fraudulent, and anything else that is evil; that he recommends them to endeavour so to do without being found out, and to hide their disposition quite cleverly with a screen of holy teaching and a novel profession of godliness. Let the pupils pursue these, and more vicious ideals still, with the eagerness and (b) inventiveness of evil: let them exalt their teacher with lying words, and spare no falsity: let them record in fictitious narrative his miracles and works of wonder, so that they may gain admiration and felicitation for being the pupils of such a master. Come, tell me, if such an enterprise engineered by such men would hold together? (c) You know the saying, "The rogue is neither dear to rogue nor saint."¹ Whence came, among a crew of so many, a harmony of rogues? Whence their general and consistent evidence about everything, and their agreement even unto death? Who, in the first place, would give heed to a wizard giving such teaching and commands? Perhaps you will say that the rest were wizards no less than their guide. Yes—but surely they had all seen the end of their (d) teacher, and the death to which He came. Why then after seeing His miserable end did they stand their ground? Why did they construct a theology about Him when He was dead? Did they desire to share His fate? No one surely on any reasonable ground would choose such a punishment with his eyes open.

And if. it be supposed that they honoured Him, while |129 He was still their comrade and companion, and as some might say their deceitful cozener, yet why was it that after His death they honoured Him far more than before? For while He was still with men they are said to have once deserted Him and denied Him, when the plot was engineered against Him, yet after He had departed from men, they chose willingly to die, rather than to depart from their good witness about Him. Surely if they (112) recognized nothing that was good in their Master, in His life, or His teaching, or His actions—no praiseworthy deed, nothing in which He had benefited them, but only wickedness and the leading astray of men, they could not possibly have witnessed eagerly by their deaths to His glory and holiness, when it was open to them all to live on untroubled, and to pass a life of safety by their own hearths with their dear ones. How could deceitful and shifty men have thought it desirable to die for some one else, especially, if one may say so, for a man who they knew had been of no service to them, but their teacher in all evil? For (b) while a reasonable and honourable man for the sake of some good object may with good reason sometimes undergo a glorious death, yet surely men of vicious nature, slaves to passion and pleasure, pursuing only the life of the moment and the satisfactions which belong to it, are not the people to undergo punishment even for friends and relations, far less for those who have been condemned for crime. How then could His disciples, if He was really a deceiver and a wizard, recognized by them as such, with their own minds enthralled by still worse viciousness, (c) undergo at the hands of their fellow-countrymen every insult and every form of punishment on account of the witness they delivered about Him?—this is all quite foreign to the nature of scoundrels.

And once more consider this. Granted that they were deceitful cozeners, you must add that they were uneducated, and quite common men, and Barbarians to boot, with no knowledge of any tongue but Syrian—how, then, did they go into all the world? Where was the intellect to sketch out ⁴⁸ so daring a scheme? What was the power that |130 enabled them to succeed in their adventure? For I will admit that if they confined their energies ⁴⁹ to their own (d) country, men of no education might deceive and be deceived, and not allow a matter to rest.⁵⁰ But to preach to all the Name of Jesus, to teach about His marvellous deeds in country and town, that some of them should take possession of the Roman Empire, and the Queen of Cities itself, and others the Persian, others the Armenian, that others should go to the Parthian race, and yet others to the Scythian, that some already should have reached the very ends of the world, should have reached the land of the Indians, and some have crossed the Ocean and reached the Isles of Britain, all this I for my part will not admit (113) to be the work of mere men, far less of poor and ignorant men, certainly not of deceivers and wizards.⁵¹

I ask you how these pupils of a base and shifty master, who had seen His end, discussed with one another how they should invent a story about Him which would hang together? For they all with one voice bore witness that He cleansed lepers, drove out demons, raised the dead (b) to life, caused the blind to see, and worked many other |131 cures on the sick—and to crown all they agreed in saying that He had been seen alive after His death first by them. If these events had not taken place in their time, and if the tale had not yet been told, how could they have witnessed to them unanimously, and guaranteed their evidence by their death, unless at some time or other they had met together, made a conspiracy with the same intent, and come to an agreement with one another with regard to their lies and inventions about what had never taken place? What speech shall we suppose was made at their covenant? Perhaps it was something like this:

"Dear friends, you and I are of all men the best-informed with regard to the character of him, the deceiver and master of deceit of yesterday, whom we have all seen undergo the extreme penalty, inasmuch as we were initiated into his mysteries.⁵² He appeared a holy man to the people, and yet his aims were selfish beyond those of the people, and he has done nothing great, or worth a resurrection, if one leaves out of account the craft and guile of his disposition, and the crooked teaching he gave us and its vain deceit. In return for which, come, let us join hands, and all together make a compact to carry to all men a tale of deceit in which we all agree, and let us say that we have seen him bestow sight on the blind, which none of us ever heard he did, and giving hearing to the deaf, which none of us ever heard tell of: (let us say) he cured lepers, and raised the dead. To put it in a word, we must insist that he really did and said what we never saw him do, or heard him say. But since his last end was a notorious and well-known death, as we cannot disguise the fact, yet we can slip out even of this difficulty by determination, if quite shamelessly we bear witness that he joined us after his resurrection from the dead, and shared our usual home and food. Let us all be impudent and determined, and let us see that our freak lasts even to death. There is nothing ridiculous in dying for nothing at all. And why should we dislike for no good reason undergoing scourging and bodily |132 torture, and if need be to experience imprisonment, dishonour, and insult for what is untrue? Let us now (b) make this our business. We will tell the same falsehoods, and invent stories that will benefit nobody, neither ourselves, nor those we deceive, nor him who is deified⁵³ by our lies. And we will extend our lies not only to men of our own race, but go forth to all men, and fill the whole world with our fabrications about him. And then let us lay down laws for all the nations in direct opposition to the opinions they have held for ages about their ancestral gods. Let us bid the Romans first of all not to worship the gods (c) their forefathers recognized. Let us pass over into Greece, and oppose the teaching of their wise men. Let us not neglect the Egyptians, but declare war on their gods, not going back to Moses' deeds against them of old time for our weapons, but arraying against them our Master's death, to scare them;⁵⁴ so we will destroy the faith in the gods which from immemorial time has gone forth to all men, not by words and argument, but by the power of our Master Crucified.

Let us go to other foreign lands, and overturn all their (d) institutions. None of us must fail in zeal; for it is no petty contest that we dare, and no common prizes lie before us—but most likely the punishments inflicted according to the laws of each land: bonds, of course, torture, imprisonment, fire and sword, and wild beasts. We must greet them all with enthusiasm, and meet evil bravely, having our Master as our model. For what (115) could be finer than to make both gods and men our enemies for no reason at all, and to have no enjoyment of any kind, to have no profit of our dear ones, to make no money, to have no hope of anything gocd at all, but just to be deceived and to deceive without aim or object? This is our prize, to go straight in the teeth of all the nations, to war on the gods that have been acknowledged by them all for ages, to say that our Master, who (was crucified) ⁵⁵ before our very eyes was God, and to represent Him as God's Son, for Whom we are ready to |133 die, though we know we have learned from Him nothing either true or useful. Yes, that is the reason we must (b) honour Him the more—His utter uselessness to us—we must strain every nerve to glorify His name, undergo all insults and punishments, and welcome every form of death for the sake of a lie. Perhaps truth is the same thing as evil, and falsehood must then be the opposite of evil. So let us say that He raised the dead, cleansed lepers, drove out daemons, and did many other marvellous works, knowing all the time that He did nothing of the kind, while we invent everything for ourselves, and deceive those we can. And suppose we convince nobody, at any rate we shall have the satisfaction of (c) drawing down upon ourselves, in return for our inventions, the retribution for our deceit."

Now is all this plausible? Docs such an account have the ring of truth? Can any one persuade himself that poor and unlettered men could make up such stories, and form a conspiracy to invade the Roman Empire? Or that human nature, whose characteristic clement is self-preservation, would ever be able for the sake of nothing at all to undergo a voluntary death? (or) that our Saviour's (d) disciples reached such a pitch of madness, that, though they had never seen Him work miracles, they with one consent invented many, and having heaped together a mass of lying words about Him were ready to suffer death to uphold them? What is that you suggest? That they never looked forward to or expected to suffer anything unpleasant because of their witness ⁵⁶ to Jesus, and so they had no fear in going forth to preach about Him? What, you think it unlikely, that men who announced to Romans, Greeks, and Barbarians the total rout of their gods, would expect to undergo extreme sufferings on behalf of their (116) Master? At least the record about them is clear in shewing, that after the Master's death they were taken by plotters, who first imprisoned them, and afterwards released them, bidding them speak to none about the Name of Jesus. And discovering that after this they had publicly discussed the questions about Him before the multitude, they took them in charge and scourged them as a punishment |134 for their teaching. It was then Peter answered them, and said: "It is right to obey God rather than men." [[Acts v. 29.]] And after this Stephen was stoned to death for boldly addressing the Jewish populace, and an extraordinary (b) persecution arose against those who preached in Jesus' Name.

Herod again later on, the King of the Jews, killed James the brother of John with the sword, and cast Peter into prison, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles. [[Acts xii.1-3]] And yet, though they had suffered thus, the rest of the disciples held tenaciously to Jesus, and were still more diligent in preaching to all of Him and His miracles.

Afterwards James, the Lord's brother, whom of old the people of Jerusalem called "the Just" for his extraordinary (c) virtue, being asked by the chief priests, and teachers of the Jews what he thought about Christ, and answering that He was the Son of God, was also stoned by them.⁵⁷ Peter was crucified head downwards at Rome,⁵⁸ Paul beheaded,⁵⁹ and John exiled to an island. Yet though they suffered thus, not one of the others gave up his intention, (d) but they made their prayer to God that they themselves might suffer a like fate for their religion, and continued to bear witness to Jesus and His marvellous works with yet more boldness.

And even supposing that they combined together to invent falsehoods, it is surely wonderful that so large a number of conspirators should continue to agree about their inventions even to death, and that not one of them in alarm at what happened to those who had been already killed ever severed himself from the association, or preached against the others, and brought to light their conspiracy; nay, the very one who dared to betray his Master while He lived, dying by his own hand, at once paid the penalty for his treachery.

(117) And would it not be a most inexplicable thing that shifty and unlettered men, unable to speak or understand any other language but their own, should not only take it into their heads to dare to go forth to the whole circle⁶⁰ of the nations, but that having gone forth they should |135 succeed in their undertaking. And note, what a remarkable thing it is that they all agreed in every point in their account of the acts of Jesus. For if it is true that in all matters of dispute, either in legal tribunals or in ordinary (b) disagreements, the agreement is decisive (in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word is established), ⁶¹ [[Deut. xiv.15; 2 Cor.xiii.1]] surely the truth must be established in their case, there being twelve apostles and seventy disciples, and a large number apart from them, who all shewed an extraordinary agreement, and gave witness to the deeds of Jesus, not without labour, and by bearing torture, all kinds of outrage and death, and were in all things borne witness to by God, Who even now empowers the Word they preached, and will do so for ever.

I have thus concluded the working out of what would (c) follow if for the sake of argument a ridiculous hypothesis were supposed. This hypothesis was, to make suppositions contrary to the records, and to argue that Jesus was a teacher of impure words, injustice, covetousness, and all kinds of intemperance, that the disciples, profiting by such instruction from Him, surpassed all men in cupidity and wickedness. It was, indeed, the height of absurdity, equivalent to saying that when Moses said in his laws: "Thou shall not kill, Thou shall not commit adultery, Thou shall not steal, Thou shall not bear false witness," he should be calumniated and accused falsely of speaking in irony and pretence, and of really desiring that (d) his hearers should kill and commit adultery, and do the opposite to what his laws commanded, and of merely putting on the appearance and disguise of a holy life for a pretence. In this way, too, any one might slander the records of all the Greek philosophers, their strenuous life and sayings, with the calumny that their disposition and mode of life was contrary to their writings, and that their choice of a philosopher's life was but a hypocritical pretence. And in this way, to speak generally, (118) one might slander all the records of the ancients, annul |136 their truth, and turn them upside down. But just as no one who had any sense would not scruple to set down one who acted thus as a madman, so also (should it be) with regard to our Saviour's words and teaching, when people try to pervert the truth, and suggest that He really believed the opposite to what He taught. But my argument has been, of course, purely hypothetical, with the object of shewing the inconsistency of the contrary, by proving too much would follow from granting for the moment an absurd supposition.

This line of argument, then, being refuted, let me recur to the truth of the sacred writings, and consider the character of the disciples of Jesus. From the men as they stand, surely any sensible person would be inclined to consider them worthy of all confidence; they were admittedly poor men without eloquence, they fell in love with holy and philosophic instruction, they embraced and persevered in a strenuous and a laborious life, with fasting and abstinence from wine and meat, and much bodily restriction besides, with prayers and intercessions to God, (c) and, last but not least, excessive purity, and devotion botli of body and soul.

And who would not admire them, cut off by their divine philosophy even from lawful nuptials, not dragged in the train of sensual pleasure, not enslaved by the desire of children and descendants, since they did not yearn for mortal but immortal progeny? And who would not be astonished at their indifference to money, certified by their not turning from but welcoming a Master, Who forbade the possession of gold and silver, Whose law did not even allow the acquisition of a second coat? Why, any one only hearing such a law might reject it as too heavy, but these men are shewn to have carried out the words in fact. For once, when a lame man was begging from Peter's companions (it was a man in extreme need who begged for food), Peter, not having anything to give him, confessed that he had no belongings in silver or gold, and said: (119) "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I unto thee: In the Name of Jesus Christ,⁶² arise and walk." [[Acts iii. 6.]] 

When the Master gave them gloomy prophecies, if they |137 gave heed to the things He said to them: "Ye shall have tribulation," [[John xvi. 33.]] and again: "Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice" [[John xvi. 20]]—the strength and depth of their nature is surely plain, since they did not fear the discipline of the body, nor run after pleasures. And the Master also, as One Who would not soothe them by deceit Himself, was like them in renouncing His property, and in His prophecy of the future, so open and so true, fixed in their minds the choice of His way of life. These were (b) the prophecies of what would happen to them for His Name's sake—in which He bore witness, saying that they should be brought before rulers, and come even unto kings, and undergo all sorts of punishments, not for any fault, nor on any reasonable charge, but solely for this—His Name's sake. And we who see it now fulfilled ought to be struck by the prediction; for the confession of the Name of Jesus ever inflames the minds of rulers. And (c) though he who confesses Christ has done no evil, yet they punish him with every contumely "for His Name's sake," as the worst of evil-doers, while if a man swears away the Name, and denies that he is one of Christ's disciples, he is let off scot-free, though he be convicted of many crimes.⁶³ But why need I attempt to describe further the character of our Saviour's disciples? Let what I have said suffice to prove my contention. I will add a few words (d) more, and then pass to another class of slanderers.

The Apostle Matthew, if you consider his former life, did not leave a holy occupation, but came from those occupied in tax-gathering and over-reaching one another. [[Luke v. 27: Mark]] None of the evangelists has made this clear, neither his fellow-apostle John, nor Luke, nor Mark, but [[Matthew ii. 14.]] himself,⁶⁴ who brands his own life, and becomes his own accuser. Listen how he dwells emphatically on his own name in the Gospel written by him,⁶⁵ when he speaks in this way: |138 

(120) "9. And as Jesus passed by from thence, he saw a man, called Matthew, sitting at the place of toll, and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him. 10. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples." [[Matt.ix.9.]]

And again further on, when he gives a list of the disciples, he adds the name "Publican" to his own. For he says:

(b) "Of the twelve apostles the names are these: First, Simon, called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican." [[Matt. x.2-3.]]

Thus Matthew, in excess of modesty, reveals the nature of his own old life, and calls himself a publican, he does not conceal his former mode of life, and in addition to this he places himself second after his yoke-fellow. For he is paired with Thomas, Peter with Andrew, James with John, and Philip with Bartholomew, and he puts Thomas before himself, preferring his fellow-apostle to himself, while the (c) other evangelists have done the reverse. If you listen to Luke, you will not hear him calling Matthew a publican, nor subordinating him to Thomas, for he knows him to be the greater, and puts him first and Thomas second. Mark has done the same. Luke's words are as follows:

"And when it was day, he called his disciples unto him, and chose twelve whom he also named apostles, Simon whom he also called Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, and Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas." [[Luke vi.13]]

(d) So Luke honoured Matthew, according to what they delivered, who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word. And you would find John like Matthew. For in his epistles he never mentions his own |139 name, or call himself the Elder, or Apostle, or Evangelist; and in the Gospel, though he declares himself as the one whom Jesus loved, he does not reveal himself by name. Neither did Peter permit himself to write a Gospel through (121) his excessive reverence.⁶⁶ Mark, being his friend and companion, is said to have recorded the accounts of Peter about the acts of Jesus, and when he comes to that part of the story where Jesus asked whom men said that He was, and what opinion His disciples had of Him, and Peter had replied that they regarded Him as (the) Christ, he writes that Jesus answered nothing, and said naught to him, except that He charged them to say nothing to any one about Him.

For Mark was not present when Jesus spoke those words; and Peter did not think it right to bring forward on his own testimony what was said to him and concerning him by Jesus. But Matthew tells us what was actually said to him, in these words:

"15. But whom say ye that I am? 16. And Simon (b) Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18. And I also say unto thee. That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven: and whatsoever things ⁶⁷ thou shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever things thou shall loose on earth shall be [[Matt. xvi.15]] loosed in heaven." 

Though all this was said to Peter by Jesus, Mark does not record it, because, most likely, Peter did not include it in his teaching—see what he says in answer to Jesus' question: (c) "Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ. And [[Mark viii.29.]] he straitly charged them that they should tell no man." About this event Peter for good reasons thought it best to keep silence. And so Mark also omitted it, though he made known to all men Peter's denial, and how he wept |140 about it bitterly. You will find Mark gives this account of him:

"66. And as Peter was in the court,⁶⁸ there cometh one of the maids of the high priest; 67. and when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked upon him and said, And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth. 68. But he denied saying (I know not) ⁶⁹ neither understand what thou sayest; and he went into the outside porch, and the cock crew. 69. And the maid saw him again, and began to say to them that stood by, This is one of them. 70. And he denied it again. And a little after, they that stood by said again to Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean. 71. But he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak. 72. And the second time the cock crew." [[Mark xiv.66.]]

(122) Mark writes thus, and Peter through him bears witness about himself. For the whole of Mark's Gospel is said to be the record of Peter's teaching. Surely, then, men who refused (to record) what seemed to them to spread their good fame, and handed down in writing slanders against themselves to unforgetting ages, and accusations of sins, which no one in after years would ever have known of unless he had heard it from their own voice, by thus placarding themselves, may justly be considered to have (b) been void of all egoism and false speaking, and to have given plain and clear proof of their truth-loving disposition. And as for such people who think they invented and lied, and try to slander them as deceivers, ought they not to become a laughing-stock, being convicted as friends of envy and malice, and foes of truth itself, who take men that have exhibited in their own words good proof of their integrity, and their really straightforward and sincere (c) character, and suggest that they are rascals and clever sophists, who invent what never took place, and ascribe gratuitously to their own Master what He never did?

I think then it has been well said: "One must put complete confidence in the disciples of Jesus, or none at all." And if we are to distrust these men, we must distrust |141 all writers, who at any time have compiled, either in Greece or other lands, lives and histories and records of men of their own times, celebrated for noble achievements,⁷⁰ or else we should be considering it reasonable to believe others, (d) and to disbelieve them only.⁷¹ And this would be clearly invidious. What! Did these liars about their Master, who handed down in writing the deeds He never did, also falsify the account of His Passion? I mean His betrayal by one of His disciples, the accusation of the false witnesses, the insults and the blows on His face, the scourging of His back, and the crown of acanthus set on His head in contumely, the soldier's purple coat thrown round Him like a cloak, and finally His bearing⁷² the very trophy of the Cross, His being nailed to it, His hands and feet pierced, His being given vinegar to drink, struck on the cheek with a reed, and reviled by those who looked on. Were these things and everything like them in the Gospels, (123) also invented by the disciples, or must we disbelieve in the glorious and more dignified parts, and yet believe in these as in truth itself? And how can the opposite opinion be supported? For to say that the same men both speak the truth, and at the same time lie, is nothing else but predicating contraries about the same people at the same time.

What, then, is the disproof? That if it was their aim to deceive, and to adorn their Master with false words, they would never have written the above accounts, neither would they have revealed to posterity that He was pained and (b) troubled and disturbed in spirit, that they forsook Him and fled, or that Peter, the apostle and disciple who was chief of them all, denied Him thrice though untortured and |142 unthreatened by rulers. For surely if their aim was solely to present the more dignified side of their Master they would have had to deny the truth of such things, even when stated by others. And if their good faith is evident in (c) their gloomier passages about Him, it is far more so in the more glorious. For they who had once adopted the policy of lying would have the more shunned the painful side, and either passed it over in silence, or denied it, for no man in an after age would be able to prove that they had omitted them.

Why, then, did they not lie, and say that Judas who betrayed Him with a kiss, when he dared to give the sign of treachery, was at once turned into a stone? ⁷³ and that the man who dared to strike Him had his right hand at once dried up; and that the high priest Caiaphas, as he conspired with the false witnesses against Him, lost the (d) sight of his eyes? And why did they not all tell the lie that nothing disastrous happened to Him at all, but that He vanished laughing at them from the court, and that they who plotted against Him, the victims of an hallucination divinely sent, thought they were proceeding against Him still though He was no longer present? ⁷⁴ But what? Would it not have been more impressive, instead of making up these inventions of His miraculous deeds, to have written that He experienced nothing of the lot of human beings or mortals, but that after having settled all things with power (124) divine He returned to heaven with diviner glory? For, of course, those who believed their other accounts would have believed this.

And surely they who have set no false stamp ⁷⁵ on anything that is true in the incidents of shame and gloom, ought to be regarded as above suspicion in other accounts wherein they have attributed miracles to Him. Their evidence then may be considered sufficient about our (b) Saviour. And here it will not be inappropriate for me to make use of the evidence of the Hebrew Josephus ⁷⁶ as |143 well, who in the eighteenth chapter of The Archaeology of the Jews, in his record of the times of Pilate, mentions our Saviour in these words:

"And Jesus arises at that time, a wise man, if it is befitting to call him a man. For he was a doer of no common works, a teacher of men who reverence truth. And he gathered many of the Jewish and many of the Greek race. This was Christus; and when Pilate (c) condemned him to the Cross on the information of our rulers, his first followers did not cease to revere him. For he appeared to them the third day alive again, the divine prophets having foretold this, and very many other things about him. And from that time to this the tribe of the Christians has not failed." ⁷⁷

If, then, even the historian's evidence shews that He attracted to Himself not only the twelve Apostles, nor the seventy disciples, but had in addition many Jews and Greeks, He must evidently have had some extraordinary power beyond that of other men. For how otherwise could (d) He have attracted many Jews and Greeks, except by wonderful miracles and unheard-of teaching? And the evidence of the Acts of the Apostles goes to shew that there were many myriads of Jews who believed Him to be the Christ of God foretold by the prophets. And history also assures us that there was a very important Christian Church in Jerusalem, composed of Jews, which existed until the siege of the city under Hadrian.⁷⁸ The bishops, too, who stand first in the line of succession there are said to have been Jews, whose names are still remembered by |144 (125) the inhabitants.⁷⁹ So that thus the whole slander against His disciples is destroyed, when by their evidence, and apart also from their evidence, it has to be confessed that many myriads of Jews and Greeks were brought under His yoke by Jesus the Christ of God through the miracles that He performed.

Such being my answer to the first division of the unbelievers, now let us address ourselves to the second body, (b) This consists of those, who while they admit that Jesus worked miracles, say that it was by a species of sorcery that deceived those who looked on, like a magician or enchanter. He impressed them with wonder.

CHAPTER 6

Against Those who think that the Christ of God was a Sorcerer.

OF course, such opponents must first of all be asked how they would reply to what has been already said. The question is about the possibility of a teacher of a noble and virtuous way of life, and of sane and reasonable doctrines, such as I have described, being a mere sorcerer in character. And supposing He was a magician and (c) enchanter, a charlatan and a sorcerer, how could He have become the source to all the nations of such teaching, as we ourselves see with our eyes, and hear even now with our ears? What sort of a person was He Who undertook to unite things which have never before been united? For a sorcerer being truly unholy and vile in his nature, dealing with things forbidden and unholy, always acts for the sake of base and sordid gain. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus, the Christ of God, was surely not open to such a charge. In (d) what sense could such a thing be said of One Who said to His disciples, according to their written record: " Provide neither gold nor silver in your girdles, nor a staff for the Matt.x.10. road, nor shoes"? How could they have heeded His sayings, and thought fit to hand them down recorded in |145 writing, if they had seen their Master bent on making money, and Himself doing the opposite of what He taught others? They would soon have ridiculed Him and His words and left their discipleship in natural disgust, if they had seen Him laying down such noble laws for them, and Himself the Lawgiver in no way following His own words. Once more, sorcerers and real charlatans devote themselves (126) to the forbidden and the unholy in order to pursue vile and unlawful pleasures, with the object of ruining women by magic, and seducing them to their own desires. But our Lord and Saviour is devoted to purity beyond the power of words to say, for His disciples record that He forbade them to look on a woman with unbridled lust, saying:

" It was said to them of old time, Thou shall not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." [[Matt. v.27]] 

And on one occasion when they saw Him conversing with (b) a woman of Samaria when it was the only possible way to aid and save many, they wondered that He spoke with the woman, thinking they saw something marvellous, such as they had never before seen. And surely our Saviour's words commend a serious and severe tone of behaviour: while of His purity the great evidence is that teaching of His, in which He taught men to attain purity by cutting away from the depth of the heart the lustful desires:

"There are some eunuchs who so were born, and there are eunuchs who we're made eunuchs of men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." [[Matt, xii.19.]] 

The sorcerer again and the true charlatan courts notoriety (c) and ostentation in all his enterprises and actions, and always makes a boast of knowing more and having more than other people. But that our Lord and Saviour was not thirsty for notoriety, or a braggart or ostentatious, is shewn by His bidding those He cured to tell no one, and not to reveal Him to the crowd, so that He might escape notice, and also from His seeking periods of retirement in |146 (d) the mountains, and shunning the vicious society of the crowd in cities. If then He neither devoted Himself to teaching for glory, nor money, nor pleasure, what ground of suspicion remains for considering Him a charlatan and a sorcerer? But once more think of this point. A sorcerer, when he shares the fruits of his wickedness with others, makes men resemble himself: how can he help making sorcerers and charlatans and enchanters in all ways like himself? But who has ever so far found the whole body of Christians from His teaching given to sorcery or enchantment? (127) No one would suggest that, but rather that it has been concerned with philosophic words, as we have shewn. What, then, could you rightly call One Who was the source to others of a noble and pure life and of the highest holiness, but the prince of philosophers and the teacher of holy men? And I suppose so far as every master is better than his pupils, our Lord and Saviour must be considered, so far from being a charlatan and a sorcerer, but philosophic and truly holy (b) If, then, He was such, He could only have attempted His miracles by divine and unspeakable power and by the highest piety towards the Supreme God, Whom He is proved to have honoured and worshipped as His Father in the highest degree, from the accounts of Him. And the disciples, who were with Him from the beginning, with those who inherited their mode of life afterwards, are to such an incalculable extent removed from base and evil suspicion (of sorcery), that they will not allow their sick (c) even to do what is exceedingly common with non-Christians, to make use of charms written on leaves or amulets, or to pay attention to those promising to soothe them with songs of enchantment, or to procure ease for their pains by burning incense made of roots and herbs, or anything else of the kind. |147 

All these things at any rate are forbidden by Christian teaching, neither is it ever possible to see a Christian using an amulet, or incantations, or charms written on curious leaves, or other things which the crowd consider quite permissible. What argument, then, can rank the disciples of such a Master with the disciples of a sorcerer and charlatan?

And yet the one great proof of the worth of any one who (d) promises to effect anything is found in the circle of his pupils. In the arts and sciences it is so, men always claim him who was the source of their skill to be greater than themselves; so medical students would witness to the excellence of their instructor in their own subject, geometricians will not regard any other as their master but a geometrician, and arithmeticians any but one skilled in arithmetic. In the same way, also, the best witnesses to a sorcerer are his pupils, who it may be presumed will themselves share in the character of their master. And yet through all these (128) years no disciple of Jesus has been proved a sorcerer, although rulers and kings from time to time have attempted by means of torture to extract the exactest information about our religion. No, in spite of all, none has admitted himself to be a sorcerer, though had he done so he might have gone free, and without any danger, only being compelled by them to offer sacrifice. And if not one of our own people has ever been convicted of sorcery, nor any of those ancient disciples of Jesus, it follows that their Master could not have been a sorcerer.

But that my argument may not be based solely on the (b) unwritten, hear the proofs also that I draw from the written record. The first disciples of Jesus in the Book of their own Acts, describe without doubt how the Gentiles thronging to their teaching (were so impressed), that many of those |148 with a bad reputation for sorcery, changed their ways to such an extent that they had the courage to bring the forbidden books into the midst, and commit them to the fire in the sight of all. Hear how the Scripture describes it:

"And many of those who used curious arts, brought their books, and burned them before all, and they reckoned the price of the books, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver." [[Acts xix 19]]

It shews what our Saviour's disciples were, it shews the extraordinary influence of their words when they addressed their audience, that they so touched the depths of their souls, caught hold of and pierced the individual conscience, that men no longer hid anything away in concealment, but brought their forbidden things to light, and (d) themselves completed the indictment of themselves and their own former wickedness. It shews what their pupils were like, how pure and honourable in disposition, determined that nothing evil in them should lurk below the surface, and how boldly they prided themselves on their change from the worse to the better. Yes, they who gave their magic books to the flames, and voted for their complete destruction, left no one in any doubt that they would never again have anything to do with sorcery, and from that day forth were pure from the slightest suspicion of it.

If, then, our Saviour's disciples are seen to have been like this, must not their Master have been so long before them?

(129) And if in the widest sense you wish to deduce from the character of His followers the character of their Head, you have to-day a myriad disciples of the teaching of Jesus, great numbers of whom have declared war against the natural pleasures of the body, and guard their minds from the stroke of every base passion, and when they grow old in temperance provide bright evidence of the nurture of His words. And not men only live the life of wisdom in this wise for His sake, but innumerable myriads of women, too, throughout the world, like priestesses of the Supreme God, embracing the highest wisdom, enraptured with the love of (b) heavenly wisdom, have lost all joy of bodily progeny, and spending all their care on the soul, have devoted themselves entirely body and soul alike to the King of kings, the Supreme God, practising complete purity and virginity. |149 

Of one shepherd, we know, who left his own country for the sake of philosophy the sons of Greece are ever carrying the story hither and thither. This was their Democritus. And Krates is the second man who is a miracle among (b) them, because, forsooth! he resigned his property to the citizens, and boasted that "Krates himself had freed himself." But the zealots of the teaching of Jesus are myriads in number, not one or two, who have sold their goods and given them to the poor and needy, a fact to which I can witness, as I am specially concerned in such matters, and can see the results of the discipleship of Jesus not only in their words, but in their works as well.

But why need I tell how many myriads of actual barbarians, and not Greeks only, learning from the teaching of Jesus to despise every form of polytheistic error, have borne witness to their knowledge of the one God as Saviour and Creator of the Universe? Whom long ago, Plato was the only philosopher who knew, but confessed that he dare not carry His Name to all, saying in so many words: "To discover the Father and Creator of the Universe is a hard matter, and when He is found it is impossible to tell of Him to all." [[Timaeus p. 28]] Yes, to him the discovery seemed a |150 hard matter, for it is indeed the greatest thing of all, and it seemed to him impossible to speak of Him to all, because he did not possess so great a power of holiness as the (130) disciples of Jesus, to whom it has become easy by the cooperation of their Master to discover and to know the Father and Creator of all, and having discovered Him to bear forth that knowledge, to unveil it, to supply it, and to preach it to all men among all races of the world, with the result that even now at the present time owing to the instruction given by these men there are among all the nations of the earth many multitudes not only of men, but of women and children, slaves and country-folk, who are so far away from fulfilling Plato's dictum, that they know (b) the One God to be the Maker and Creator of the Universe, worship Him only, and base their whole theology on Christ. This, then, is the success of the new modern sorcerer; such are the sorcerers who spring from Him Who is reckoned a charlatan; and such are the disciples of Jesus, from whose character we may deduce that of their Master.

But once more, let us follow the argument in this direction: You say, my friend, that He was a sorcerer, and dub Him a clever enchanter and deceiver. Would . you say, then, that He was the first and only discoverer of the (c) business, or that we must not, as would be done in similar cases, look for the original source of His work directly in His own teaching? For if nobody taught Him, and He was Himself the first and only discoverer of the enterprise, if He had no benefit at all from the teaching of others, if he did not share in the feast of the ancients, we ought surely to ascribe divinity to Him, as One Who (d) without books, or education, or teachers, self-taught, self-educated, is assumed to have discovered such a new world. We know that it is impossible to acquire the knowledge of a lower-class trade, or of the art of reasoning, or indeed of the elements of knowledge without the help of a guide or teacher, unless the learner transcends the powers of ordinary people. I am sure we have not yet had a teacher of literature who was self-taught, nor an orator who had not been to school, nor a physician "born and not made," nor a carpenter, nor any other kind of craftsman; and these |151 things are relatively insignificant and human; what does it mean, then, to suggest that the Teacher of true religion to men, Who worked such miracles in the period of His earthly life, and did the extraordinary prodigies which I have lately described, was born actually endowed with (131) such power, and had not to share the feast of the ancients, nor to take advantage of the instruction of modern teachers, who had done like things before Him? What is it but to witness and confess that He was indeed divine, and that He altogether transcended humanity?

And supposing you say that He had foregathered with masters of deceit, and was acquainted with the wisdom of the Egyptians, and the secret knowledge of their ancient teachers, and that collecting His equipment from them, He appeared in the character that His story exhibits. (b) How is it, then, I reply, that no others have appeared greater than He, and no teachers antecedent to Him in time, either in Egypt, or anywhere else? Why has not their fame among all men preceded this accusation of Him, and why is not their glory even now celebrated in strains like ours? And what enchanter from the remotest age, either Greek or Barbarian, has ever been the Master of so many pupils, the prime mover of such laws and (c) teaching, as the power of our Saviour has shewn forth, or is recorded to have worked such cures, and bestowed such marvellous blessings, as our Saviour is reported to have done? Who has had friends and eye-witnesses of his deeds, ready to guarantee by the proof of fire and sword the truth of their witness, like the disciples of our Saviour, who have borne all insults, submitted to all forms of torture, and at last have sealed their witness about Him with their very blood?

Then, moreover, let him who supports the contention opposed to mine, inform me if any enchanter that ever existed has ever even taken it into his head to institute a new nation called after his own name? To go beyond the (d) mere conception, and to succeed in effecting it, is surely beyond the power of humanity.

What sorcerer has ever thought of establishing laws against idolatry in direct opposition to the decrees of kings, |152 ancient legislators, poets, philosophers, and theologians, and of giving them power, and of promulgating them so that they should last on unconquered and invincible for long ages? But our Lord and Saviour did not conceive and not dare to attempt, neither did he attempt and not succeed.

(132) With one word and voice He said to His disciples: "Go, and make disciples of all the nations in My Name, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you," [[Matt. xxviii. 19.]] and He joined the effect to His Word; and in a little while every race of the Greeks and Barbarians was being brought into discipleship, and laws were spread among all nations opposed to the superstition of the ancients, laws inimical to daemons, and to all the deceits of polytheism, laws that have made Scythians, Persians, and the other barbarians temperate, and revolutionized every lawless and uncivilized custom, laws that have overturned the immemorial habits of the Greeks themselves, (b) and heralded a new and real religion. What similar daring has been shewn by the ancient sorcerers before the time of Jesus, or even after Him, which would make it plausible that He was assisted in His sorcery by others? And if the only answer to this is that no one has ever been like Him, for no one was the source of His virtue, surely it is time to confess that a strange and divine Being has sojourned in our humanity, by Whom alone, and for the first time in (c) man's history, things unrecorded before in human annals have been effected.

In such wise I will conclude this part of the subject. But I must again attack my opposer, and inquire if he has ever seen or heard of sorcerers and enchanters doing their sorcery without libations, incense, and the invocation and presence of daemons. But no one surely could venture to cast this aspersion on our Saviour, or on His teaching, or on those even now imitating His life. It must be clear even to the blind that we who follow Jesus arc totally opposed to such agencies, and would sooner dare to sacrifice our (d) soul to death than an offering to the dremons, yea, would |153 sooner depart from life than remain alive under the tyranny of evil daemons. Who does not know how we love by the mere Name of Jesus and the purest prayers to drive away all the work of the daemons? The mere word of Jesus and His teaching has made us all far stronger than this invisible Power, and has trained us to be enemies and foes of daemons, not their friends or associates, and certainly not their slaves and tributaries. And how could He Who (133) has led us on to this, Himself be the slave of the daemons? How could He sacrifice to evil spirits? Or how could He have invoked the daemons to aid Him in His Miracles, when even to-day every daemon and unclean spirit shudders  at the Name of Jesus as at something that is likely to punish and torment its own nature, and so departs and yields to the power of His Name alone? So was it of old in the days when He sojourned in this life: they could not bear His Presence, but cried, one from, one side and one from another: "Come, what have we to do with thee, Jesus, (b) Son of God? Art thou come to torment us before the time?" [[Matt. viii.29.]]

And a man whose mind was wholly devoted to sorcery, and in every way involved in the quest of the forbidden, would surely be (would he not?) unholy in his ways; scandalous, base, atheistic, unjust, irreligious. And if He were such, from what source, or by what means, could He teach others about religion, or temperance, or the knowledge of God, or about the tribunal and judgment of Almighty God? Would He not rather commend the (c) opposites of these, and act according to His own wickedness, deny God and God's Providence, and God's Judgment, and revile teaching about virtue and the immortality of the soul? And if one could see such a character in our Lord and Saviour, there would be no more to say. But (d) if instead we see Him calling on God the Father, the Creator of all things, in every act and word, and training His pupils to resemble Him, if He being pure Himself teaches purity, if He is a maker and herald of justice, truth, philanthropy, and every virtue, and the introducer of the worship of God the King of kings, surely it follows from this that He cannot be suspected of working His |154 miracles by sorcery, and that we must admit that they were the result of unspeakable and truly inspired power. (134) 

But if you are so far gone in folly as not to pay any heed to temperate argument and logical consistency of thought, and are not impressed by probable proofs, because you suspect me perhaps to be a special pleader—at least you will hear your own daemons, the gods I mean who give the oracles, hear them bearing witness to our Saviour, not like you of His sorcery, but of His holiness, His wisdom, and His Ascension into Heaven. What could be a more persuasive testimony than that written by our enemy ⁸⁰ in the third chapter of his book, Concerning Philosophy from Oracles, where he thus speaks in so many words.

CHAPTER 7 

Oracles about Christ.

"WHAT I am about to say may seem surprising to some. It is that the gods have pronounced Christ to have been most holy and immortal, and they speak of Him reverently."

And lower down he adds:

"To those asking the question, 'Is Christ a God?' the oracle replied:

That the soul goes forth immortal after (its severance from) the body.
Thou knowest, severed from wisdom it ever roams. 
That soul is the soul of a man signal in holiness." |155 

He certainly says here that He was most holy, and that His soul, which the Christians ignorantly worship, like the souls of others, was made immortal after death. And when asked, "Why did He suffer?" the oracle replied:

The body of the weak has ever been exposed to torments,
But the soul of holy men takes its place in heaven."

And he adds after the oracle:

"Christ, then, was holy, and like the holy, went to the (d) heaven. Wherefore you will say no evil about Him, but pity the folly of men."

So says Porphyry even now. Was He then a charlatan, my friend? Perhaps the friendly words of one of your kidney may put you out of countenance. For you have our Saviour Jesus, the Christ of God, admitted by your own teachers to be, not an enchanter or a sorcerer, but holy, wise, the justest of the just, and dwelling in the vaults of heaven. He, then, being such, could only have done |156 His miracles by a divine power, which also the holy writings bear witness that He had, saying that the Word of God and the highest Power of God dwelt in man's shape and form, nay, even in actual flesh and body therein, and performed all the functions of human nature. (135) And you yourself may realize the divine elements of this power, if you reflect on the nature and grandeur of a Being who could associate with Himself poor men of the lowly fisherman's class, and use them as agents in carrying through a work that transcends all reason. For having conceived the intention, which no one ever before had done, of spreading His own laws and a new teaching among all nations, and of revealing Himself as the teacher of the religion of One Almighty God to all the races of men, He (b) thought good to use the most rustic and common men as ministers of His own design, because maybe He had in mind to do the most unlikely things. For how could men unable even to open their mouths be able to teach, even if they were appointed teachers to only one person, far less to a multitude of men? How should they instruct the people, who were themselves without any education?

But this was surely the manifestation of the divine will and of the divine power working in them. For when He called them, the first thing He said to them was: " Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." [[Mark i. 17.]] And (c) when He had thus acquired them as His followers, He breathed into them His divine power, He filled them with strength and bravery, and like a true Word of God and as God Himself, the doer of such great wonders, He made them hunters of rational and thinking souls, adding power to His words: "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," and sent them forth fitted already to be workers and teachers of holiness to all the nations, declaring (d) them heralds of His own teaching. And who would not be amazed and naturally inclined to disbelieve a thing so extraordinary, for none of those who have ever won fame among men—no king, no legislator, no philosopher, no Greek, no barbarian—are recorded to have ever conceived such a design, or dreamed of anything at all resembling it? For each one of them has been satisfied, if he could establish his own system over his own land only, and if he were able to enforce desirable laws within the limits of his own race. |157 Whereas He, who conceived nothing human or mortal, see (136) how truly He speaks with the voice of God, saying in these very words to those disciples of His, the poorest of the poor: "Go forth, and make disciples of all the nations." [[Matt.xxviii. 19.]] "But how," the disciples might reasonably have answered the Master, "can we do it? How, pray, can we preach to Romans? How can we argue with Egyptians? We are men bred up to use the Syrian tongue only, what language shall we speak to Greeks? How shall we persuade Persians, Armenians, Chaldrearis, Scythians, Indians, and other (b) barbarous nations to give up their ancestral gods, and worship the Creator of all? What sufficiency of speech have we to trust to in attempting such work as this? And what hope of success can we have if we dare to proclaim laws directly opposed to the laws about their own gods that have been established for ages among all nations? By what power shall we ever survive our daring attempt?"

But while the disciples of Jesus were most likely either saying thus, or thinking thus, the Master solved their difficulties, by the addition of one phrase, saying they should (c) triumph "In MY NAME." For He did not bid them simply and indefinitely make disciples of all nations, but with the necessary addition of " In my Name." And the power of His Name being so great, that the apostle says: "God has given him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth," [[Phil. ii. 9.]] He shewed the virtue of the power in His Name concealed (d) from the crowd when He said to His disciples: "Go, and make disciples of all nations in my Name." He also most accurately forecasts the future when He says: "For this gospel must first be preached to all the world, for a witness to all nations." [[Matt.xxiv.14.]]

These words were said in a corner of the earth then, and only those present heard it. How, I ask, did they credit them, unless from other divine works that He had done they had experienced the truth in His words? Not one of them disobeyed His command: but in obedience to (137) His Will according to their orders they began to make disciples of every race of men, going from their own country to all races, and in a short time it was possible to see His words realized. |158 

The Gospel, then, in a short time was preached in the whole world, for a witness to the heathen, and Barbarians and Greeks alike possessed the writings about Jesus in their ancestral script and language. And yet who would not quite reasonably be at a loss to explain how the disciples of Jesus gave this teaching? Did they go into the (b) middle of the city, and stand there in the Agora, and call on the passers-by with a loud voice, and then address the populace? And what were the arguments in their address, which would have any chance of persuading such an audience? How could untrained speakers, quite deficient in education, give addresses at all?

Perhaps you suggest they did not speak in public, but in private to those they met. If so, with what arguments could they have persuaded their hearers?—for they had (c) a most difficult task, unless they were ready to deny the shameful death of Him they preached. And suppose they concealed it, and passing over the nature and number of His sufferings at the hands of the Jews, retailed simply the noble and the glorious incidents (I mean His miracles and mighty works, and His philosophic teaching), they had even so no light problem to solve in gaining easily the adherence of listeners, who spoke strange tongues, and then for the first time heard novelties talked of by men who brought with them nothing sufficient to authenticate |159 what they said. Yet such a Gospel would, perhaps, have (d) seemed more plausible.

But in fact they preached, first, that God came on an embassy in a man's body, and was actually the Word of God by nature, and had wrought the wonders He did as God. And next—a tale opposed to this, that He had undergone insult and contumely, and at last the Cross, the most shameful punishment and the one reserved for the most criminal of mankind; who would not have had ground for despising them as preaching an inconsistent message?

And who could be so simple, as to believe them easily when they said that they had seen Him after His death risen to life from the dead, One Who was unable to defend Himself when alive? Who would have believed common and uneducated men who told them they must (138) despise their fathers' gods, condemn the folly of all who lived in the ages past, and put their sole belief in them and the commands of the Crucified—because He was the only-beloved and only-begotten Son of the One Supreme God? I myself, when I frankly turn the account over in my own mind, have to confess that I find in it no power to persuade, no dignity, no credibility, not even enough plausibility, to convince iust one of the most simple, (b) But when I turn my eyes away to the evidence of the power of the Word, what multitudes it has won, and what enormous churches have been founded by those unlettered and mean disciples of Jesus, not in obscure and unknown places, but in the most noble cities—I mean in Royal Rome, in Alexandria, and Antioch, throughout the whole of Egypt and Libya, Europe and Asia, and in villages and (c) country places and among the nations—I am irresistibly forced to retrace my steps, and search for their cause, and to confess that they could only have succeeded in their daring venture, by a power more divine, and more strong than man's, and by the co-operation of Him Who said to them: "Make disciples of all the nations in my Name."

And when He said this He appended a promise, that would ensure their courage and readiness to devote themselves to carrying out His commands. For He said to |160 them: "And lo! I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the world." Moreover, He is said to have breathed into them a holy Spirit, yea to have given them divine and miraculous power—first saying: "Receive ye Holy Spirit," [[John xx.22]] and then: "Heal the sick, cleanse lepers, cast out demons; freely ye have received, freely give.'' [[Matt. x. 8.]]

You yourself will recognize what power their word has had, for the Book of the Acts agrees with their having these powers, and gives consistent evidence, where these men are reported by their power of working miracles by (139) the Name of Jesus to have astonished the spectators present.

They amazed the spectators first most probably by the miracles themselves; they then found men bent on inquiring Who He was, Whose power and Name had caused the wonder; then they taught them and found that their faith had preceded the teaching. For without persuasion by words, being first convinced by works, they were easily brought into the state that the words required. For some are said to have been about to offer sacrifices and libations to the disciples of Jesus, as if they had been gods. [[Acts xiv. 12.]] And the exhibition of their miracles so struck their minds, that they called one (b) Hermes and the other Zeus. And, of course, whatever they told about Jesus to men in such a state, was naturally after that considered the truth, and thus their evidence for His Resurrection after death was not given by simple or unproven words, but came with the persuasion of the very working, since they could shew forth the works of One living still.

And if they preached that He was God, and the Son of God, being with the Father before He came to earth, to this truth they were equally open, and would certainly have (c) thought anything opposed to it incredible and impossible, reckoning it impossible to think that what was done was the work of a human being, but ascribing it to God without any one telling them.

Here, then, in this and nothing else is the answer to our question, by what power the disciples of Jesus convinced |161 their first hearers, and how they persuaded Greeks as well as barbarians to think of Him as of the Word of God, and how in the midst of cities, as well as in the country, they (d) instituted places of instruction in the religion of the One Supreme God.

And yet all must wonder, if they consider and reflect, that it was not by mere human accident, that the greater part of the nations of the world were never before under the one empire of Rome, but only from the times of Jesus. For His wonderful sojourn among men synchronized with Rome's attainment of the acme of power, Augustus then first being supreme ruler over most of the nations, in whose time, Cleopatra being captured, the succession of the Ptolemies was dissolved in Egypt. And from that day (140) to this, the kingdom of Egypt has been destroyed, which had lasted from immemorial time, and so to say from the very beginnings of humanity. Since that day the Jewish people have become subject to the Romans, the Syrians likewise, the Cappadocians and Macedonians, the Bithynians and Greeks, and in a word all the other nations who are under Roman rule. And no one could deny that the synchronizing of this with the beginning of the teaching about our Saviour is of God's arrangement, if he considered the difficulty of the disciples taking their journey, had the (b) nations been at variance one with another, and not mixing together because of varieties of government. But when these were abolished, they could accomplish their projects quite fearlessly and safely, since the Supreme God had smoothed the way before them, and subdued the spirit of the more superstitious citizens under the fear of a strong central government.

For consider, how if there had been no force available to hinder those who in the power of polytheistic error were contending with Christian education, that you would have long ago seen civil revolutions, and extraordinarily bitter persecutions and wars, if the superstitious had had (c) the power to do as they willed with them.

Now this must have been the work of God Almighty, this subordination of the enemies of His own Word to a |162 greater fear of a supreme ruler. For He wills it daily to advance, and to spread among all men. And, moreover, that it might not be thought to prosper through the leniency of rulers, if some of them under the sway of evil designed (d) to oppose the Word of Christ, He allowed them to do what was in their hearts, both that his athletes might display their holiness, and also that it might be made evident to all that the triumph of the Word was not of the counsel of men, but of the power of God. Who would not wonder at what ordinarily happened in times like those? For the athletes of holiness of old shone forth clear and glorious to the eyes of all, and were thought worthy of the prizes of God; while the enemies of holiness paid their meet penalty, driven mad with divine scourges, afflicted with (141) terrible and vile diseases in their whole body, so that at last they were forced to confess their impiety against Christ. And all the rest who were worthy of the Divine Name, and gloried in their Christian profession, passing through a short discipline of trial, exhibited the nobility and sincerity of their hearts, received back again once more their own liberty, while through them the word of salvation shone out daily more brightly, and ruled even in the midst of foes.

And not only did they struggle against visible enemies, (b) but against the invisible, such evil daemons and their rulers as haunt the nebulous air around the earth, whom also Christ's true disciples by purity of life and prayer to God and by His Divine Name drove off, giving proofs of the miraculous signs, which of old were said to have been done by Him, and also, to eyes that could see, of His divine power still active.

And now that these preliminary topics are concluded, in their right order, I must proceed to handle the more mystical theology about Him, and consider Who He was that performed miracles through the visible humanity (of Jesus).

[Footnotes up to p.145 renumbered and placed here at the end.  Footnotes after that omitted as tedious to transcribe and of limited value to the general reader.]

1. ¹ Books I. and II. are the "prolegomena." The Demonstratio itself begins here. Eusebius claims by his arguments to have established the Christian use of the O.T., since Christianity is its real fulfilment. The way is now clear for the work itself, h9 au0th_ 9upo&qesij, which is an examination of the prophetic witness to Christ, and of the correspondence of Jesus Christ with that witness, as described in the Gospels, and as evident in the effects of His coming on the world of heathenism.

2. ² pare/labon = state concisely.

3. ¹ Following Gaisford, who for a0nable/pousi suggests a0mbluw&ttousi. Diodatus had evidently read—a0naph&roij ou]si.

4. ¹ LXX: i0dou_ ku&rioj. ku&rioj meta_ i0sxu&oj e1rxetai.

5. ¹ S.: oi9 a1nqrwpoi. Prayer Book Version: " Put them in fear."

6. ¹ S. reads for di/dwmi ("give"), u3w—"rain down."

7. ¹ W.H. add kat0 i0di/an.

8. ² E.: e0n daktu&lw| Qeou~. W.H.: e0n pneu&mati Qeou~. 

9. ³ S. adds: "whom you yourself know to be elders of the people and their scribes, and thou shall bring them to the tabernacle of witness, and they shall stand there with thee. And I will descend and speak there with thee."

10. ¹ S. "He brought the seventy men" follows in verse 24.

11. ² E.: maqhta&j. W.H.: e9te/rouj. 

12. ³ E. omits autou&j.

13. ⁴ S. reads: "Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shall not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness (yeudomarturu&seij for e0piorkh&seij) against thy neighbour."

14. ¹ h9 palaia_ grafh&, or "ancient records."

15. ² diaqe/sei gnhsiwta&th.

16. ³ See note, page 21.

17. ¹ The ancestor of the Herods was Antipater, governor of Judaea under Alexander Jannaeus (104-78 B.C.). Nicolaus of Damascus, Herod's minister, represented him as a Jew, but Josephus states that he was an Idumaean of high birth. (Jos., B.J. i. 6. 2; Ant. xiv. 8. 1.) The stories of his servile and Philistine origin, common among Jews and Christians, have no foundation: e.g. Just. Mart., Tryph. 52: 9Hrw&dhn 0Askalwi/tthn: Julius Africannus ap Eus., H.E. i. 7. 11. See Schürer, History of the Jewish People, i. 314 n.

18. ¹ Cf. I. i.

19. ² o0ligosto_j ei] tou~ ei]nai; cf. Origen, contra Celsum, l. i. §51. "The cave is shewn where He was born, and the manger in which He was swaddled; and that which is widely spoken of in those places, even among aliens from the faith, viz. that Jesus . . . was born in that cave.' Earlier Apologists, e.g. Justin, do not mention the cave. Helena, A.D. 326, "left a fruit of her piety to posterity" in two churches which she built, "one at the cave of the nativity." Eus., Vita Const, cc. 42, 43; cf. Dem. p. 1.

20. ¹ E. omits: o3ti a0pe/straptai to& pro&swpon au0tou~.

21. ² E. omits: a1nqrwpoj th~| o9dw~| au0tou~ e0planh&qh.

22. ³ E. omits: 0En th~| tapeinw&sei h9 kri/sij au0tou~ h0rqh.

23. ¹ a0ntible/yai. Cf. P.E. 289 B, from Orig., Tom. iii. in Gen. a0ntible/pein h9donh~| — to resist pleasure.

24. ² LXX: kai\ tw~n au0lai/wn sou.

25. ³ E.: kai\ ta_j de/rreij tw~n au0lai/wn.

26. ¹ Unbelievers in the prophecies must be approached by another method. To them E. must speak of Christ, w9j peri\ a0ndro_j koinou~ kai\ toi~j loipoi~j paraplhsi/ou. The uniqueness of His Humanity will point the way to the revelation of His Divinity, as foretold by the prophets. Of what nature then was His power? Was it wizardry?

27. ¹ e0pieikei/aj. 

28. ² Or "reassembled." 

29. ³ Reading a0nqrw&pouj au0tou_j kaq (Paris ed.), and supplying, "are following the way of": "Plura mihi videnter emendationis egere" (Gaisford).

30. ¹ e0pi\ spei/raj: spei~ra, equivalent of Roman "manipulus" (Polyb. xi. 23. 1). In Acts x. 1 a larger body, probably "a cohort."

31. ² traxhlisqe/nta. Cp. Heb. iv. 13. The spirit of Heathenism was the true deceiver which had deluded an originally monotheistic world into polytheism.

32. ³ i.e. followers of Porphyry.

33. ⁴ Cf. Sib. Or. iii. 218 seq. for an eulogy of the Jews: "There is on earth a city, Ur of the Chaldees, from which springs a race of upright men, ever given to wise counsel and good works." See Bate, The Sibylline Oracles, S.P.C.K., pp. 31-36, for an account of the Sibyl in early Christian literature.

34. ¹ Porphyry (Malchus, Vit. Plot. vii. 107) "the soberest of the Neoplatonic philosophers" (Cheetham), succeeded Plotinus. He was born A. D. 232 at Batanea, probably of a Tyrian family, Vit. Plot. 8; Jerome, Praef. in Gal.; Chrysost. Hom. on 1 Cor. vi. p. 58. He met Origen (Vincent Lerin. Commonit. i. 23) and afterwards ridiculed his method (Eus., HE. vi. 19). He was a pupil of Longinus at Athens (Eus., P. E. x. 3. 1). He joined Plotinus at Rome, and earlier in Eusebius' life lived in Sicily. He died about 305. His philosophy was intensely ethical, and emphasized personal access to God, in faith, truth, love, and hope. He was hostile to Christianity, though he reverenced Christ as a man, and wrote a work called To the Christians, His chief remaining works are De Abstinentia, Lives of Plotinus and Pythagoras, Letters to Marcellus, Anebo and Sententiae. See also note p. 155.

35. ¹ a0gwgh&n.

36. ² Philostratus' Life of Apollonius. See Praep. Evan. p. 150, where G. quotes from Ritter and Preller "a brief summary of Suidas of the life of this notorious philosopher and imposter." He flourished in the reigns of Caius, Claudius, and Nero, and until the time of Nerva, in whose reign he died. After the example of Pythagoras he kept silence five years: then he sailed away to Egypt, afterwards to Babylon to visit the Magi, and thence to the Arabians: and from all those he collected the innumerable juggleries ascribed to him. He composed Rites, or concerning Sacrifice, A Testament, Oracles, Epistles, Life of Pythagoras. The life by Philostratus, written at the request of the wife of the Emperor Septimius Severus, is accessible in Phillimore's edition and in the Loeb Series. (See Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, pp. 40, 399, 472, 518.) "As against unmodified Judaism the Christians could find support for some of their own positions in the appeal to religious reformers like Apollonius of Tyana; who condemning blood-offerings as he did on more radical grounds than themselves was yet put forward by the apologists of paganism as a half-divine personage."—T. WHITTAKER, The Neo-Platonists, p. 138.

37. ¹ Gifford's translation.

38. ² genhto_j o9 ko&smoj, cf. note by Gifford in P. E. 18 c. 3 on distinction between a0ge&nhtoj (uncreated) and a0ge/nnhtoj (unbegotten).

39. ³ E. quotes Phaedo, 96 A. (P. E. 26) on the research into the natural laws of growth and decay; cf. Republ. viii. 546.

40. ¹ taj o0fru~j a0naspako&twn, cf. P. E. 135 d of theosophical philosophers, 224 a from Oenomaus — to draw up the eyebrows, and so put on a grave important air. Ar. Ach. 1069, Dem. 442, 11, etc. (L. and S.) This satirical account echoes the irony of Plato.

41. ¹ See chiefly, P. E., Books iv. v. and vi.

42. ² Basiliko_j a0nh_r.

43. ¹ Or "choked by a cord."

44. ² to_ tro&paion: the other reading is to_n tro&pon which hardly yields sense.

45. ³ Or "buried in the fitting way."

46. ¹ l. c. The Lord's miracles have been tested both by their agreement with what the Christian recognizes as miraculous in a minor degree still, and also by a logical method that should appeal to the unbeliever. (There seems to be something corrupt in the text.) For the continuance of miraculous powers in the third century, cf. Origen c. Cels. i. 13, also i. 9 (pp. 411, 405).

47. ¹ W.H. add mhde\ xalko&n.

48. ¹ e0fanta&sqhsan, cf: P.E. 17 c, of learning God's greatness from His works: here it has the Aristotelian sense of something imagined.

49. ¹ Kalindoume/noi; cf. e0kalindou~nto, P. E. 511, a, 1. Lit.: "rolling about," so in common idiom "busied.'' So Dem. 403, 9; Xen. Cyr. I. 4, 5; Isoc. 295 B.

50. ² e0f0 h9suxi/aj. Cf. Arist. Vesp. 1517.

51. ³ Cf. H.E. iii. i, which gives the tradition that the apostles evangelized the whole world: Thomas receiving Parthia, Andrew Scythia, John Asia, Peter the Jews of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia and Asia; Paul, preaching from Jerusalem to Illyricum, and ii. 16 makes Mark the apostle of Egypt, and v. 10 tells how Pantaenus (circa 160) went to India, and found a Church that had been founded by Bartholomew.

Harnack regards all traditions of apostolic missions as legendary, except those of Paul, Peter, and "perhaps John of Ephesus," but accepts the Mission of Pantaenus (Expansion of Christianity, I. pp. 439-441). For earlier statements of the diffusion of Christianity cf. Justin, Trypho, c. cxvii.; Tertullian Apol. xxxvii., adv. Jud. 7: "The haunts of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans subjugated to Christ." About A.D. 150 the Church of Edessa counted the king among its members (see F. C. Burkitt, Early Christianity outside the Roman Empire, p. 11, Cambridge, 1899) and Persia, Media, Parthia and Bactria were evangelized. Origen (185-254) visited the Arabian Churches more than once. In Africa, Egypt, Cyrene, and Carthage were evangelized before 200. In Gaul there were strong Churches, e. g. Lyons and Vienne. (G. P. Fisher, History of the Church, pp. 46, 47. London, 1892.)

52. ¹ oi[a mu&stai tw~n a0porrh&twn au0tou~ gegenhme/noi.

53. ¹ e0kqeiazo&menon; cf. P. E. 41 a, 780 b. 

54. ² w3spe/r ti fo&bhtron.  

55. ³ staurwqe/nta supplied by Gaisford.

56. ¹ u9p0 au0tou~ (P.). Amended to u9pe/r by Gaisford.

57. ¹ See Eus., H.E. ii. 23. 

58. ² Ibid. ii. 25.

59. ³ Ibid. iii. 23.

60. ⁴ peri/doj. Cf. HE. 72b.

61. ¹ S. (Deut. xix. 15): e0pi\ sto&matoj du&o martu&rwn, kai\ e0pi\ sto&matoj triw~n martu&rwn sth&setai pa~n r9h~ma.

W.H. (2 Cor. xiii. 1): e0pi sto&matoj du&o martu&rwn kai\ triw~n staqh&setai pa~n r9h~ma.

E.: e0pi\ sto&matoj d' ou]n du&o kai\ triw~n martu&rwn suni/statai pa~n r9h~ma.

62. ¹ W.H. add tou~ Nazwrai/ou.

63. ¹ Cf. Tertull., Apol. c. 2: "Illud solum expectatur quod odio publico necessarium est, confessio nominis, non examinatio criminis."

64. ² W.H.: lego&menon. E.: o0no&mati.

65. ³ That Matthew "wrote in Hebrew the Gospel that hears his name'' is stated by Eus., H.E. iii. 24. And the words of Papias that "Matthew compiled the Logia in Hebrew, while they were interpreted by each man according to his ability," are quoted, H.E. iii. 39. It is agreed that E. was wrong in thinking our Matthew a translation of the Hebrew Logia. But there is no doubt a strong Matthaean element in the non-Marcan, and even in some of the Marcan, constituents of our Matthew. See J. V. Bartlet (Hastings' D.B. vol. iii. p. 296 sq.), who postulates Palestinian catechetical Matthaean Logia, earlier than the matter used by Mark in its Petrine form, taking written form as the main constituent in our Gospel, which was composed either before or after A.D. 70, as the basis of them and the Marcan memoirs of Peter (ib. p. 304). If this be so, the argument of E. as to Matthew's modesty would to a slight extent hold good.

66. ¹ eu0la&beia: cf. Hebrews xii. 29, meta_ eu)labei/aj kai\ de/ouj.

67. ² W.H.: o# e0a&n and singular participles. E.: o#sa a!n and pl.

68. ¹ E. changes order of words: Verses 67 and 69 read ei0j th_n e1cw pro&aulin, for e1cw ei0j to_ proau&lion (68). W.H. add ka&tw (66).

69. ² Paris Text adds ou!te oi]da.

70. ¹ It is certainly true that modern Criticism has judged the Gospels by canons that would be considered unduly rigorous in other fields of history. But the enormous importance of the issues has made this inevitable, and the Church has not shrunk from the minutest examination of her documents. I do not know the author of the saying: " One must .... at all."

71. ² The xlamu&j was the short military cloak. It is used by Plutarch (Peric 35, Lysander 13) for the "paludamentum," or general's cloak, and also for the royal cloak. The xitw&n was the soldier's frock worn under the outer garment. E. says the "frock" was used in mockery for a (royal) cloak.

72. ³ e0pikomi/zonta. usually "carry to " There seems no force here in the e0pi/.

73. ¹ Possibly E. is condemning by implication some absurd tales in the Apocryphal Gospels.

74. ² As the Docetists taught.

75. ³ Paraxara&cantej cf. P.E. 495 a. A word used both literally and metaphorically of "marking with a false stamp," " falsifying."

76. ⁴ Josephus, Ant. XVIII. iii. 3. The passage is also quoted, H.E. I. 11. 6, 7. It is found in all MSS. of Josephus, none being earlier than

the eleventh century. But it is not quoted by Origen (contra Celsum, i. 47, and the extant part of Comm. in AJatt. Tom. x. 17), and his use of Ant. xx. 9, for Josephus' evidence to Christ seems to count against his knowledge of this passage. W. E. Barnes' recent reexamination of the question makes out a strong case for its authenticity. (See H. St. J. Thackeray in Hastings' D.B. extra vol., p. 471, and, on the other side, W. E. Barnes, The Testimony of Josephus to Christ, 1920, S.P.C. K.)

77. ¹ E. has e0kei=non for tou~ton. sebome/nwn for dexome/nwn. tou~ 'Ioudai/koi for 'Ioudai/ouj. tw~n par' h(mi=n a)rxo&ntwn for tw~n prw&twn a)ndrw~n par' h(mi=n.   d'qen ei0j e1ti for ei0s-e0ti de—and a0po_ tou~de tw~n xr: ou)k e0pi/lipe for tw~n xr: a)po_ tou~de w&nomasme/non ou)k e0pe/lipe. 

78. ² A.D. 130. Cf. H.E. iv. 6, "eighteenth year of Hadrian." In his Chronicon Eusebius puts the rebellion in Hadrian's sixteenth year. Hadrian reigned from A.D. 117 to A.D. 138.

79. ¹ See Eus., H.E. iv. 5.

[Note to the online text: From p.145 onwards I have omitted all but one of the footnotes as having very little value to the vast majority of the readers]

80. ² Porphyry: see notes, pp. 120 and 155. "The Neoplatonists praised Christ while they disparaged Christianity" (Aug., De Consensu Evang. i. 15), D.C.B. iv. 442. ... Augustine (De Civ. Dei, XIX. c. 23, 2).

BOOK IV

CHAPTER 1

Of the Mystical Dispensation of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus, (144) the Christ of God.

As I have treated at sufficient length the topics connected with the Incarnation of our Saviour in the preceding Book, (b) the third Book of the Proof of the Gospel, it is now the place to approach more recondite doctrine, I mean the more mystical theology of His Person.

Now common to all men is the doctrine of God, the First and the Eternal, Alone, Unbegotten and Supreme Cause of the Universe, Lord of lords, and King of kings. But the doctrine of Christ is peculiar and common to the Hebrews and ourselves, and, though following their (c) own scriptures, they confess it equally with us. yet they fall far asunder from us, in not recognizing His Divinity, nor knowing the cause of His coming, nor grasping at what period of time it was predicted that He should come. For while they look forward to His Coming even now, we preach that He has come once already, and believing the predictions and teaching of the inspired prophets, pray that we may behold His second Coming in divine glory.

The account of our Lord is of two kinds: the one may (d) be called the later, brought but recently before mankind, the other is older than all time and all eternity.

For since God, Who is alone good and the Source and Spring of everything good, had willed to make many partakers of His own treasures, He purposed to create the whole reasoning creation, (comprising) unembodied, intelligent and divine powers, angels and archangels, spirits immaterial and in all ways pure, and souls of men as well endued with undetermined liberty of Free-willed Choice |164 between right and wrong, and to give them whatever bodily organs they were to possess, suitable to the variety of their lives, with countries and places natural to them all. (For to those who had remained good He gave the best places, and to those who did not He gave fit abodes, places of discipline for their perverse inclinations.)

He, foreseeing the future in His foreknowledge, as God must, and aware that as in a vast body all these things about to be would need a head, thought that He ought to subordinate them all to One Governor of the Whole Creation, ruler and king of the Universe, as also the holy oracles of the earliest Hebrew theologians and prophets mystically teach. From which it is to be learned, that there is one principle of the Universe, nay more, one even before the principle, and born before the first, and of earlier being than the Monad, and greater than every Name, Who cannot be named, nor explained, nor sought out, the good, the cause of all, the Creator, the Beneficent, the Prescient, the Saving, Himself the One and Only God, from Whom are all things, and for Whom are all things: "For in him we live and move, and have our being."

And the fact that He wills it, is the sole cause of all things that exist coming into being and continuing to be. For it comes of His will, and He wills it, because He happens to be good by nature. For nothing else is essential by nature to a good person except to will what is good. And what He wills, He can effect. Wherefore, having both the will and the power, He has ordained for Himself, without let or hindrance, everything beautiful and useful both in the visible and invisible world, making His own Will and Power as it were a kind of material and substratum of the genesis and constitution of the Universe, so that it is no longer reasonable to say that anything that exists must have come from the non-existent, for that which came from the non-existent would not be anything. For how could that which is non-existent cause something else to exist? Everything that has ever existed or now exists derives its being from the One, the only existent and pre-existent Being, Who also said: "I am the existent," because, you will see, as the Only Being, and the Eternal |165 Being, He is Himself the cause of existence to all those to whom He has imparted existence from Himself by His Will and His Power, and gives existence to all things, and their powers and forms, richly and ungrudgingly from Himself.

CHAPTER 2

That we hold that the Son of God was before the Whole Creation.

AND then He makes first of all existences next to Himself (146) His child, the first-born Wisdom, altogether formed of Mind and Reason and Wisdom, or rather Mind itself, Reason itself, and Wisdom itself, and if it be right to conceive anything else among things that have come into being (b) that is Beauty itself, and Good itself, taking it from Himself, He lays it Himself as the first foundation of what is to come into being afterwards, lie is the perfect creation of a perfect Creator, the wise edifice of a wise Builder, the good Child of a good Father, and assuredly to them that afterwards should receive existence through Him, friend and guardian, saviour and physician, and helmsman holding the rudder-lines of the creation of the universe. In agreement with which the oracles in theological phrase call Him, "God-begotten," as alone bearing (c) in Himself the image of the Godhead, that cannot be explained in word, or conceived in thought, through which image (they say that) He is God, and that lie is called so, because of this primary likeness, and also for this reason, too, that He was appointed by the Father His good Minister, in order that as if by one all-wise and living instrument, and rule of art and knowledge, the universe might be guided by Him, bodies and things without body, things living and things lifeless, the reasoning with the irrational, mortal with immortal, and whatever else coexists and is woven in with them, and as if by one force running (d) through the whole, all things might be harmonized together, |166 by one living active law and reason existing in all and extending through all things, in one all-wise bond—yea, by the very Word of God and His law, united and bound in one.

CHAPTER 3

That we rightly teach that there are not many sons of the Supreme God, but One only, God of God.

(147) AND as the Father is One, it follows that there must be (b) one Son and not many sons, and that there can be only one perfect God begotten of God, and not several. For in multiplicity will arise otherness and difference and the introduction of the worse. And so it must be that the One God is the Father of one perfect and only-begotten Son, and not of more Gods or sons. Even so, light being of one essence, we are absolutely obliged to regard the perfect thing that is begotten of light to be one also. For what other thing would it be possible to conceive of as begotten of light, but the ray only, which proceeds from it, and fills and enlightens all things? Everything surely (c) that is foreign to this would be darkness and not light. And analogously to this there can be nothing like unto, nor a true copy of, the Supreme Father, Who is unspeakable light, except as regards this one thing only, Whom we are able to call the Son. For He is the radiance of the eternal light, and the unblurred mirror of the activity of God, and the image of His goodness. Wherefore it was said: " Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person." [[Heb. i. 3.]] Except that the radiance is inseparable from the light of sense, while the Son exists in Himself in His own essence apart from the Father. And the ray has its range of activity solely from the light, whereas (d) the Son is something different from a channel of energy, having His Being in Himself. And, moreover, the ray is coexistent with the light, being a kind of complement thereof; (for there could be no light without a ray:) they exist together and simultaneously. But the Father precedes |167 the Son, and has preceded Him in existence, inasmuch as He alone is unbegotten. The One, perfect in Himself and first in order as Father, and the cause of the Son's existence, receives nothing towards the completeness of His Godhead from the Son: the Other, as a Son begotten of Him that caused His being, came second to Him, Whose Son He is, receiving from the Father both His Being, and the character of His Being. And, moreover, the ray does (148) not shine forth from the light by its deliberate choice, but because of something which is an inseparable accident of its essence: but the Son is the image of the Father by intention and deliberate choice. For God willed to beget a Son, and established a second light, in all things made like unto Himself. Since, then, the unbegotten and eternal light is one, how could there be any other image of it, except the ray, which itself is light, preserving in all respects its likeness to its prototype? And how could (b) there be an image of the One itself, unless it were the same as it in being one? So that a likeness is implied not only of the essence of the first, but also one of numerical quantity, for one perfect Being comes of the one eternal light, and the first and only-begotten Issue was not different or many, and it is this very Being to Which, after that Being which had no origin or beginning, we give the names of God, the Perfect, the Good: for the Son of a Father who is One must be also One. For we should (c) have to agree that from the one fragrance of any particular object that breathes it forth, the sweet odour shed forth on all is one and the same, not diverse and many. So it is right to suppose that from the first and only Good, Which is Almighty God, is supplied an odour divine and life-giving, perceptible by mind and understanding, which is one and not many. For what variation could there be from this complete likeness to the Father, except one that was a declension and an inferiority; a supposition that we must not admit into our theology of the Son: for He is (d) a breath of the power of God, and a pure effluence of the glory of the Creator. For a fragrant breath is poured forth from any sweet-scented substance, say from myrrh or any of the flowers and odorous plants that spring from the earth, beyond the original substance into the surrounding atmosphere, and fills the air far and wide as it is shed |168  forth, without any deprivation, or lessening, or scission, or division of the said substance. For it still remains in its own place, and preserves its own identity, and though begetting this fragrant force it is no worse than it was before, while the sweet odour that is begotten, possessing its own character, imitates in the highest degree possible the nature (149) of that which produced it by its own [fragrance]. But these are all earthly images and touched with mortality, parts of this lower corrupt and earthly constitution, whereas the scope of the theology we are considering far transcends all illustrations, and is not connected with anything physical, but imagines with the acutest thought a Son Begotten, no