Let these things, then, be set down here by me of necessity, before the history, lest anyone should suppose our Saviour and Lord Jesus the Christ to be recent because of the times of his life in the flesh. And that no one may suspect his teaching to be new and strange, as though composed by a young man no different from the rest, come, let us treat briefly of this also.
Now though the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ has, by general confession, but newly shone forth upon all men, yet a new nation—confessedly neither small nor settled in some corner of the earth, but the most populous and most God-fearing of all the nations, and on that account indestructible and unconquerable, in that it ever obtains help from God—has thus suddenly appeared, at the times appointed by ineffable reckonings: the nation honoured among all by the appellation of Christ.
At this one of the prophets too was amazed, foreseeing with the eye of the divine Spirit what was to come, so that he cried out even thus: 「Who hath heard such things, and who hath spoken thus? Did the earth travail in one day, and was a nation born at once?」 And the same prophet somehow intimates also the appellation that was to be, saying: 「But to those who serve me a new name shall be called, which shall be blessed upon the earth.」
But even if we are clearly new, and this name of Christians is indeed truly new, recently come to be known among all nations, nevertheless our manner of life and the mode of our conduct, in accord with the precepts of piety, has not been but lately fabricated by us; rather, it was rightly practised, from the first creation of mankind, so to speak, through the natural conceptions of the God-beloved men of old—as we shall now show.
The nation of the Hebrews is not new, but is honoured among all men for its antiquity, and is itself well known to all. Now its discourses and writings comprise men of old—few indeed and scant in number, yet excelling in piety and righteousness and in all the rest of virtue: before the flood, some of various kinds; and after it, others, both of the children and the descendants of Noah, and in particular Abraham, whom the children of the Hebrews boast of as their founder and forefather.
All those, then, who are testified to for righteousness—from Abraham himself going back to the first man—if one were to call them Christians in deed, even if not in name, one would not depart from the truth.
For what the name 「Christian」 means to declare is this: that a man, through the knowledge and teaching of Christ, is distinguished by temperance and righteousness, by endurance of life and the manliness of virtue, and by the confession of piety toward the one and only God who is over all. All this was pursued by them no less zealously than by us.
They had no concern, then, for bodily circumcision—as neither have we; nor for the observance of sabbaths—as neither have we; nor again for abstinence from such-and-such foods, nor for the distinction of the others which Moses first of all handed down to those who came after, to be performed in symbols—as neither now do Christians observe such things. But they knew plainly the Christ of God himself, seeing that it has been shown that he appeared to Abraham, gave oracles to Isaac, spoke to Jacob, and conversed with Moses and the prophets after him.
Hence you would find those God-beloved men themselves accounted worthy even of the appellation of Christ, according to the saying that speaks of them: 「Touch not mine anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm.」
So that one must clearly regard the discovery of piety practised by those very God-beloved men around Abraham as the first, the most ancient and primeval of all—the same that has now been proclaimed to all nations through the teaching of Christ.
And if it be said that long afterward Abraham received the commandment of circumcision, yet it is recorded that before this he was testified to have righteousness through faith, the divine word declaring somewhat thus: 「And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.」
And indeed to him, having become such a man before circumcision, an oracle was given by God who revealed himself to him—and this was Christ himself, the Logos of God—concerning those who in later times should be justified in the same manner as he, foretold in these very words: 「And in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed」; and that 「he shall become a great and numerous nation」; and 「in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.」
And it is possible to perceive this fulfilled in us. For he was justified by faith in the Logos of God who appeared to him, the Christ—having forsaken his ancestral superstition and his former erring manner of life, and having confessed the one God over all, and having served him by works of virtue, not by the worship of the Law of Moses which came afterward. To such a man it was said that all the tribes of the earth and all the nations should be blessed in him.
And by works more telling than words, that very manner of the piety of Abraham has at the present time appeared, practised throughout the whole inhabited world among Christians alone.
What, then, could henceforth stand in the way of our confessing one and the same life and manner of piety for us who are of Christ and for those God-beloved men of long ago? So that it is shown that the religion handed down to us through the teaching of Christ is not new and strange, but, if one must speak truly, the first and only and true attainment of piety. And let these things be so.