On the Christian Religion

and his successors, and in a long order right up to the times of the Emperor Julian, defended Christ amid swords and fire with holiness, voice, letters, and daily labor, peril, and death, the work would require me to compose a volume by no means short; not to mention the thousands upon thousands of orators and philosophers who, among the Greeks, barbarians, and Latins after Julian, consumed their whole lives most holily in the Christian work.

The Christian religion is founded in the power of God alone. Chapter 8.

IF the Christian religion was by no means founded on human power, or wisdom, or pleasure—nay, rather, it arose so suddenly and was propagated so rapidly throughout the whole world in spite of many powerful and learned men struggling against it, and despite human delights—whence Paul writes to the Romans that their faith is announced in the whole world, and to the Colossians that the Gospel is in the whole world. John also: “Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” It is necessary that this very religion was founded in divine power, wisdom, and hope. What of the fact that many centuries before, in a long order, these individual things were predicted by many prophets and Sibyls, which we shall show in what follows? What of the fact that Christ, the teacher of life, both predicted His own death, the persecution that would be everywhere against His disciples, the propagation and immutability of His religion, the miserable ruin of the Jews that would shortly come, the conversion of the Gentiles, and the obstinacy of certain Jews that would last until the end of the world, and also inspired His disciples so that they might speak? And that, which is wondrous, Christ predicted the siege that would take place on the Sabbath, and the destruction to be brought upon them by the Gentiles by famine and sword, and an unheard-of slaughter, and furthermore the captivity of the Jews into all nations, not otherwise