Those, then, who falsified nothing of the truth in the discordant and sorrowful matters -- how could they not be judged worthy, in the remaining matters also, in which they bore witness to his extraordinary works, to be free of any base suspicion? The testimony of these men concerning our Savior is, then, sufficient in itself. But there is nothing like also making use, over and above what is needful, of Josephus the Hebrew as a witness, who, in the eighteenth book of his Jewish Antiquities, narrating the events of the times of Pilate, makes mention of our Savior in the following terms:
'Now there arose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man; for he was a doer of extraordinary works, a teacher of men who receive the truth with pleasure. And he drew to himself many of the Jews, and many also of the Greek nation. This man was the Christ; and when, upon the indictment of the leading men among us, Pilate had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him from the first did not cease [to do so].'
'For he appeared to them alive again on the third day, the divine prophets having spoken these things and countless other things concerning him. Whence, even to this day, the tribe of the Christians, so named from him, has not disappeared.'
If, then, it is testified also by the historian that he had won over to himself not only the twelve apostles nor only the seventy disciples, but had drawn to himself many of the Jewish and many of the Greek nation, it would be clear that he possessed something surpassing other men.
For how else could he have drawn to himself the greater part of the Jewish and the Greek nation, unless he had employed certain marvelous and extraordinary works, and a strange and startling teaching? And the writing of the Acts of the Apostles also bears witness that there were many myriads of Jewish men persuaded that he was the Christ of God, the one proclaimed by the prophets. And history likewise records that there was a very great church of Christ in Jerusalem, composed of Jews, down to the times of the siege under Hadrian.
It is said, at any rate, that the first bishops who successively presided there were Jews, whose very names are still remembered to this day by the local inhabitants; so that from these facts too every slander against his disciples is refuted, since it is acknowledged, both by them and apart from their testimony, that Jesus himself, the Christ of God, brought countless multitudes of Jews and Greeks under his own sway through the extraordinary works he performed.
But since we have said this much to us against the first order of unbelievers, come, let us now take our stand also against the second band. This was the class of those who, while conceding that Jesus performed his extraordinary works, [held] that he did so, rather, by sorcery, to the deception of onlookers, astonishing those present as some wonder-worker or magician might.
And, first of all, these men must be asked what they would say to what has gone before. For is it possible to conceive that a man who was a teacher of a dignified and altogether virtuous manner of life, and of sound and true doctrines, such as we have already described, was in character a sorcerer? But if he really was some kind of trickster and magician, an impostor and a charlatan, how could he have become the cause of such teaching for all the nations -- the sort of teaching which we ourselves behold with our own eyes and receive with our ears down to the present day? And what sort of man would even choose to gather together things that cannot be gathered together? For a sorcerer, being in truth a man of impious and abominable character, engaged in forbidden and impious practices, does everything for the sake of shameful and sordid gain.
Was then, perhaps, our Savior and Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, guilty of any such things? How, or in what way, could he be -- he who, as has been testified concerning him by his own disciples, said to them, 'Do not acquire gold nor silver for your belts, nor a bag for the journey, nor sandals'? Would they have obeyed him when he said this, and would they have thought it right to hand these things down in written memoirs, if they had seen their teacher making money for himself, and pursuing the opposite of what he taught others?
Long ago they would rightly have laughed him to scorn, and spat upon his words, and withdrawn from his discipleship, had they seen him solemnly legislating such things for them, while the lawgiver himself in no way followed his own precepts.
Again, the sorcerer and truly deceiving impostor gives himself over to forbidden and unholy things for the sake of hunting unholy and unlawful pleasures, so that already through his magic arts he casts down and seduces certain women by his own wickedness; but as for our Savior and Lord, one cannot even say how he conducted himself with regard to chastity, since again his disciples bear witness that he exhorted them not even to look upon a woman with unbridled desire, saying: 'It was said to the men of old, You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman so as to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.'
And once, when out of necessity, for the benefit and salvation of many, he was seen conversing with a Samaritan woman, they marveled that he spoke with a woman -- as also on another occasion before. Now the account of our Savior thereby established the gravity and severity of his character; and a great proof of his chastity was also that teaching by which he taught that men should be chaste by cutting off passionate desires from the very depth of the mind, saying: 'There are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.'
Again, the sorcerer and truly people-deceiving impostor attempts and does everything, chasing after glory and show in most of his deeds, and boasting that he knows and possesses more than the many. But that our Savior and Lord was not mad for glory, nor a braggart, nor a show-off, is made evident both by the fact that, when he healed people, he charged them to tell no one and not to make him known to many, and by his pursuing retreats and withdrawals in the mountains and fleeing the harmful gatherings of the multitudes in the cities.
If then he applied himself to teaching neither for the sake of glory, nor of money, nor of pleasure, what room is left for suspecting him to be a deceiver and a sorcerer? Consider this too again: when a sorcerer imparts his wickedness to others, what sort of men does he produce? Are they not sorcerers and deceivers and poisoners, in all respects like himself? Who then has ever yet found the whole race of Christians, on the basis of his teaching, practicing sorcery or poisoning?
But it cannot be said [that they do]; rather, on the contrary, they pursue philosophical discourses, as has been demonstrated. He, then, who has become for others the cause of a solemn and sober life and of the loftiest piety -- who could rightly be reckoned other than the very first of philosophers and a teacher of pious men? For surely every teacher is better than those he teaches; therefore our Savior and Lord would be confessed to be a philosopher and truly pious -- far from being a deceiver and a sorcerer.
If, then, he was a man of this sort, how else could he have undertaken his wonder-working except by a divine and ineffable power, and by the loftiest piety toward the God of the universe, whom he shows himself, from his own sayings about him, to have honored and revered exceedingly as a father? To such a degree, indeed, were both his disciples who from the beginning attached themselves to him, and their successors afterward in that same discipline, removed farthest of all from base and wicked suspicion, that they did not so much as chant incantations over the sick, as many attempt to do many such things, nor make use of inscriptions on leaves and amulets, nor give heed to those who profess to charm away [illness], nor procure for themselves cures for their sufferings by fumigations of roots and herbs and certain other such devices.
All these things, at any rate, have been banished from the teaching of Christ; nor can one ever see a Christian using an amulet, or incantations, or the inscriptions of certain curious leaves, or the other things whose use the many have reckoned indifferent.
What argument, then, would lead one to think that the disciples of such a teacher had become disciples of a sorcerer and a deceiver? And indeed, for anyone who professes anything, the character of his students is a great proof.
Men skilled in a craft or a science, at any rate, invariably show that the one responsible for their skill is far superior to themselves; just as physicians would be witnesses to their teacher's excellence in the discipline, and geometers would inscribe as their master none other than a geometer, and arithmeticians an arithmetician. In the same way, the greatest witnesses to a man being a sorcerer would be his students, themselves pursuing the same things as their teacher.
But no disciple of Jesus has yet, in all these many years, been shown to be a sorcerer, although the governors and kings of successive periods have made a precise examination of our affairs through the trial of torments.
And indeed no one was so much a sorcerer that, once compelled by them merely to sacrifice, he could be released free and altogether beyond danger. And if none of those in our time, nor of those ancient disciples of Jesus, was ever convicted of sorcery, then the teacher too was not such a man. But so that our argument may not proceed from unwritten sources, receive the proofs also from written history.
The first disciples of Jesus are recorded, in the book of their own Acts, to have so affected those who came to their teaching from among the nations, that many who had formerly been implicated in sorcery so changed their own way of life as to dare to bring forth the forbidden books into the open and hand them over to the fire before all.
Hear also how the Scripture relates it: 'And many of those who had practiced curious arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all; and they reckoned up the value of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.'
Such, then, were the disciples of our Savior, displaying such power of speech in their discourses to their hearers that they reached the very depth of their souls, laying hold of and wounding the conscience of each one, so that they could no longer bear to conceal it, but brought their secret things into the open, becoming accusers of themselves and of their former wickedness.
And such too were those who became their disciples: pure and genuine in disposition, so that nothing deceitful lay hidden in them, but rather they took pride and spoke openly of their change from the worse to the better.
Those, then, who handed over the magic books to the fire and decreed their utter destruction -- how could they not be manifest to all as having no further zeal for sorcery, and as being from that time pure of all suspicion concerning it? If, then, the disciples of our Savior have been shown to have become such, how much more, and before them, was the teacher himself?
But if you wish to discern altogether, from those who know him, what sort of man the leader was, you have even now countless thousands of disciples of the words of Jesus, of whom the very great majority of men have arrayed themselves against the natural pleasures of the body, and have kept their mind unwounded by every base passion -- men who, growing old their whole life long in self-restraint, have furnished brilliant proofs of the nourishment they received from his words.
Nor is it only men who practice this philosophy with him; one cannot even say how many tens of thousands of women, throughout the whole inhabited world, embracing the loftiest wisdom like priestesses of the God of the universe, and seized by a longing for heavenly wisdom, have disregarded the offspring of the flesh, and, giving all their care to the soul, have dedicated their whole selves, in body and soul, to him, the great King and God of the universe, practicing complete purity and virginity.
The children of the Greeks, then, extol and parade about here and there one man who, on the pretext of philosophy, left his own land to become pasture for sheep -- this was their Democritus. And a certain Crates is likewise admired among them, because, having left his property to the citizens, Crates boasted of thereby freeing Crates.
But the zealots of the words of Jesus are countless in number -- not one or two -- who have sold off their possessions and given them to the poor and needy, of whom we ourselves also happen to be witnesses, having been in the company of such men, and having beheld with our own eyes, not merely heard in words, the achievements of discipleship to Jesus.
What need is there to speak of how many tens of thousands, even of barbarians and not only of Greeks, have testified that, through the words of Jesus, they have risen entirely above the error of polytheism, and know as God only the Father and Maker of this universe -- whom, of old, Plato alone among the philosophers, though he knew him, confessed he did not dare to declare to all, plainly saying: 'To find the Father and Maker of this universe is a task, and having found him, it is impossible to speak of him to all.'
But to him it seemed even a task to find the matter, and it truly was a very great one; yet it was impossible for him to declare it to all, because he did not possess so great a power of piety as did the disciples of Jesus, for whom, through the cooperation of their teacher, it became easy both to find and to know the Father and Maker of the universe, and, having found him, to bring the knowledge forth to every race of mankind, to unveil it, to fulfill it, and to proclaim it to all -- so that from that very teaching of theirs, even now at the present time, throughout all the nations upon the earth, countless multitudes not only of men but also of women and children, of servants and rustics, so refuse to be persuaded by Plato's saying, that they recognize as the only God the Maker and Creator of this universe, worship him alone, and speak of God only through Christ. These were the achievements of the new and novel sorcerer; such were the sorceries of him who is reckoned a deceiver; and such were the disciples of Jesus, from whom one must recognize what sort of man the teacher was.
Come, let us examine the argument further in this way too. You call him a sorcerer, my friend, and moreover you call him a terrible poisoner and a deceiver. Was he, then, himself the first and sole discoverer of the matter, or must the causes, following the natural sequence, altogether be traced back to teachers? For if, with no one having taught him, he himself became the first and sole discoverer of the undertaking, having learned nothing whatsoever from others nor having gathered anything from the ancients, how should one not confess him to be of a divine nature -- he who, without books and discourses and teachers, self-taught and self-instructed, has been shown to be the discoverer of such things? And indeed it is not possible to acquire the learning even of a menial craft, or of rational science, or even of the first rudiments, without a guide and some teacher, unless one has transcended common nature.
No one, at any rate, ever came before us as a self-taught teacher of grammar, nor a rhetor without having learned, nor a physician by nature alone, nor a builder, nor a craftsman of any other art; and yet these are small, human matters. But to say that the true teacher of human piety, having worked such wonders during the time he sojourned in this life, and having performed such astonishing marvels as we have just recounted, arose to be such a man of his own accord, neither having gathered anything from the ancients nor having profited from recent teachers who had done similar things before him -- what else is this than to bear witness and to confess that the one so described has truly become a divine thing, and has surpassed the whole nature of man?
But you say that he applied himself to deceiving teachers, and that the wisdom of the Egyptians, and the secret things anciently spoken among them, did not escape him -- from whom, having gathered his learning, he was shown to be such a man as our account represents. What then? Have certain others been shown to be greater than he, and prior to him in time, and his teachers, whether in Egypt or wherever it might be?
Why then did the fame of those men not reach all mankind before this man's accusation, or why is their renown not even now sung as widely as that of our own? What sorcerer, ever, from the beginning of time, barbarian or Greek, has become the teacher of such disciples, and the author of such laws and words, as the power of our Savior has displayed; and who is ever recorded as having accomplished such healings and such marvelous benefactions as our own teacher is remembered to have performed?
Whose acquaintances and eyewitnesses of the facts have confirmed, through the trial of fire and iron, the truth of what they testified -- as did the disciples of our Savior, who endured every kind of outrage and underwent every form of torment, and in the end, by their own blood, confirmed for themselves the things testified concerning him?
Still further, let him who stands forth on behalf of the opposing argument tell us: which of the sorcerers of any age ever so much as conceived the thought of forming a new nation under a name of its own? And that he should not only conceive this, but also accomplish what he had willed -- how would this not surpass every human nature? To set down, against the decrees of kings and ancient lawgivers, philosophers, poets, and theologians, laws directed against idolatry, and to establish these firmly, and to show them, for a long age, unassailable and unconquered -- which sorcerer ever devised such a thing? But our Savior and Lord not only conceived it -- nor was it that he did not dare to attempt it -- but neither did he merely attempt it without accomplishing it.
With one word and a single utterance, saying to his own disciples, 'Go, make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you,' he immediately joined deed to word; and forthwith, in a short time, every race of Greeks and barbarians alike was made disciples, and laws were sown among all the nations contrary to the superstition of the ancients -- laws hostile to demons and enemies of every polytheistic error, laws that corrected the Scythians and the Persians and the other barbarians, and turned them from every lawless and bestial manner of life, laws that overthrew customs held from time immemorial among the Greeks themselves, and proclaimed a new and true piety.
What then, among the sorcerers of old, before the time of Jesus or even afterward, has been dared that is such as this, or even comparable to it, so that one might reasonably say that he profited from others in the arts of sorcery? But if no one can name any who has been like him -- for no one was the cause of so great a virtue in him -- then it is time to confess that a certain strange and divine nature has sojourned in this life, by which alone, and for the first time, things never before recorded among men have been accomplished. But let this matter, then, have its conclusion here.
Let us go back again to our opponent, and ask whether he has ever seen with his own eyes, or heard by report, sorcerers and poisoners working sorcery apart from libations and sacrifices and the invocation and presence of demons. Can anyone, then, bring such an accusation against our Savior, or against his words, or against those who even now emulate his manner of life? Is it not clear even to a blind man that we who hold the mind of Jesus practice altogether the opposite of these things -- daring to give up the soul to death sooner than offer sacrifice to demons, and choosing to depart from life sooner than submit to being enslaved to the wicked demons?
And who does not know how it is our custom, by the very name of Jesus together with the purest prayers, to drive away every work of demons? This word of Jesus, and the teaching from him, has made us all far superior to this invisible power, rendering us enemies and foes of the demons -- and far, far indeed from being their friends or intimates, or being made subject and submissive to them.
How, then, could he who has brought us forward to be such as this have himself become a slave of demons? How could he have sacrificed to evil spirits? Or how could he have called upon demons as helpers in his wonder-workings, when even to this day every demon and every unclean spirit shudders at the name of Jesus, as though it were something punitive and tormenting to its own nature, and withdraws and yields before the power of that name?
Thus, indeed, even long ago, in the time when he sojourned in this life, unable to bear his presence, one demon after another cried out from here and there: 'Ah! What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come before the time to torment us?' But a man wholly given over to sorcery in his mind, and altogether occupied in forbidden practices -- would he not evidently be unholy in character, and vile and shameful and godless and unjust and impious? Being such, how or from where could he teach others concerning piety, or concerning chastity, or concerning the knowledge of God, or concerning the tribunal and judgment of the God over all? Does he not rather advocate the opposite of all these things, acting in accordance with his own wickedness -- denying God, and God's providence, and God's judgment, and mocking discourse about virtue and about the immortality of the soul?
If, then, such things as these were to be seen also in the case of our Savior and Lord, there would be nothing to say; but if he is shown, in every deed and word, to be calling upon the Father, the Maker of all, as God, and preparing his disciples to be such as this too; and if he himself is chaste and a teacher of chaste discourses, and if he is a doer and herald of righteousness and truth and philanthropy and every virtue, and an instructor in the piety of the all-sovereign God, how does it not follow from these things that one should think he has done none of his marvels by sorcery, but should agree that they were done by an ineffable and truly divine power?
But you drive your harshness to such a point that you do not attend your mind to sober reasonings and the coherence of the argument, nor do you yield to fitting proofs, perhaps suspecting us who speak. Well then, at least listen to your own demons -- those very oracle-speaking gods of yours -- bearing witness concerning our Savior, not of sorcery as you claim, but of piety and wisdom and ascent into the heavens. What confession of these things could be more trustworthy to you than the writing of that very enemy of ours, which he has set down in the third book of the treatise he entitled 'Philosophy from Oracles,' relating it there, more or less, word for word, as follows:
'What is about to be said by us might perhaps seem paradoxical to some. For the gods have declared Christ to have been most pious, and to have become immortal, and they make honorable mention of him.' And a little further on he adds: 'When, at any rate, they asked concerning Christ whether he is a god, Hecate said: "That the immortal soul goes on after the body you know well, but cut off from wisdom it ever wanders; that soul belongs to a man surpassing in piety."' So she declared him most pious, and that his soul, like that of others, was made immortal after death -- a soul which the Christians, in ignorance, worship. And when they further asked why he was punished, she gave this oracle: 'The body indeed is ever exposed to enfeebling torments, but the soul of the pious settles in the heavenly plain.'
And after the oracle he goes on to add: 'He himself, then, was pious, and passed into the heavens, as the pious do. So you will not blaspheme him, but will pity the folly of men.'
This, then, is what Porphyry himself has said, even now. Is he, then, a deceiver? Let, at least, the friendly words of your own people put you to shame. You have, then, our Savior Jesus, the Christ of God, confessed even by your own people not to be a sorcerer nor a poisoner, but pious and most righteous and wise and a dweller in the heavenly vaults.
How then could such a man have become a worker of marvelous deeds other than by a divine power -- the very power that the sacred oracles also bear witness to in him, testifying that the Word of God and the loftiest power of God dwelt in the form and shape of a man, or rather in flesh and body itself, and accomplished the whole dispensation among men?
And you yourself might learn the divine character of the power concerning him, if you were to consider what sort and how great a nature he must have possessed, in that, having attached to himself men of humble station from fishing and a lowly life, he made use of these as ministers for the accomplishment of an enterprise surpassing all description.
For having conceived what no one had ever conceived before -- to sow his own laws and a foreign teaching among all the nations, and to declare himself the teacher of every race of mankind in the piety of the one God over all -- he thought fit to make use, as ministers of his own counsel, of the most rustic and lowly of all men; and one might reasonably suppose that in this he acted most irrationally.
For how could men who could not even open their mouths have become teachers even of a single person, let alone of a gathering of men? How could those who were altogether without any education have addressed multitudes? But this, indeed, was precisely what demonstrated the divine counsel and the divine power working in them. Calling them, then, at first he said: 'Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.'
And when he had thereafter made them his followers, breathing into them a divine power, and filling them with vigor and courage, being indeed, in truth, as it were a Word of God, and himself God, a doer of such great wonders, he made them hunters of intelligent and rational souls; and having joined deed to the utterance 'Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,' having already made them at once workers and teachers of piety, he sent them out into all the nations, appointing them heralds of his own teaching.
And who would not be astounded, and might reasonably disbelieve, at the paradox of the wonder, seeing that not one of those who have ever become illustrious among men -- no king, no lawgiver, no philosopher, whether Greek or barbarian -- is recorded to have conceived any such thing, nor even to have come so much as to the fancy of anything of the sort? For each of them would have thought it enough if he had established his own profession over his own land alone, and been able to establish the laws that seemed good even over a single, his own, nation. But he who conceived nothing mortal or human -- consider whether he did not indeed once more put forth a truly divine utterance, saying in these very words to those most lowly disciples of his: 'Go, make disciples of all the nations.'
And how, the disciples might have altogether said in reply to the teacher, will this be possible for us? For how, tell me, shall we preach to the Romans? How shall we converse with the Egyptians? What manner of speech shall we use toward the Greeks -- we who have been brought up in the Syrian tongue alone?
And as for the Persians, Armenians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Indians, and whatever other nations of barbarians there may be, how shall we persuade them to abandon their ancestral gods, and instead to worship the Maker of all? With what sufficiency of speech, taking courage, shall we come forward to this task? Or what hope shall we have of success, we who dare to legislate against the laws laid down from time immemorial by all the nations concerning their own gods? And by what power shall it be possible to prevail in this daring undertaking?
When the disciples of Jesus had, reasonably enough, either said or thought these things, the teacher, by the addition of a single phrase, supplied them the solution to their difficulty, saying -- as the means of success -- 'in my name.' For he did not command them simply and without qualification to make disciples of all the nations, but with the necessary addition, 'in his name.'