yet they cannot deny that there were, even among other nations, certain men who belonged to the true Israelites, citizens of the heavenly homeland above, not by earthly but by heavenly fellowship. For if they deny it, they are most easily refuted by the holy and wonderful man Job, who was neither a native nor a proselyte—that is, a newcomer to the people of Israel—but drew his descent from the nation of Idumaea, was born there and died there; who is so praised by the divine word that, as concerns righteousness and piety, no man of his times can be matched with him. Although we do not find his times in the Chronicles, we nevertheless gather from his book, which the Israelites, for its merit, received into canonical authority, that he was later by three generations than Israel.
I do not doubt, moreover, that it was divinely provided that from this one instance we might know that there could also be, among other nations, those who lived according to God and pleased him, belonging to the spiritual Jerusalem. This must be believed to have been granted to no one save to him to whom was divinely revealed the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who, as one who was to come in the flesh, was foretold to the ancient saints just as he has been announced to us as having come, so that one and the same faith through him might lead to God all who are predestined to the city of God, the house of God, the temple of God. But whatever prophecies of others are brought forward concerning the grace of God through Jesus Christ can be supposed to have been fabricated by Christians.
Therefore nothing is more effective for convincing any outsiders whatsoever, should they contend about this matter, and for making them our own, if they come to a right understanding, than that those divine predictions concerning Christ be brought forward which are written in the codices of the Jews; who, torn from their proper seats and, on account of this very testimony, dispersed throughout the whole world, have caused the Church of Christ to grow everywhere. This house of God is of greater glory than was that first house, constructed of wood and stone and other precious things and metals. The prophecy of Haggai, therefore, was not fulfilled in the restoration of that temple. For from the time it was restored, it is never shown to have had so great a glory as it had in the days of Solomon;
rather, it is shown that the glory of that house was first diminished by the cessation of prophecy, then by such great disasters of the nation itself, right up to that final overthrow which was wrought by the Romans, as those things attest which have been recorded above. But this house, belonging to the New Testament, is assuredly of glory so much the greater as the living stones are better, of which, as they believe and are renewed, it is built up. Yet it was signified through the restoration of that temple for this reason: because the very renovation of that building signifies, in prophetic speech, the other testament, which is called new. Therefore that which God said through the aforementioned prophet:
'And I will give peace in this place,' the place which is signified must be understood through the signifying place; so that, since by the restoration of that place the Church was signified, which was to be built through Christ, nothing else is to be taken by what was said, 'I will give peace in this place,' than 'I will give peace in the place which this place signifies.' For all things that signify seem in a certain manner to sustain the persons of those things which they signify; just as it was said by the apostle, 'The rock was Christ,' since that rock, of which this was said, certainly signified Christ. Greater, then, is the glory of this house of the New Testament than of the former house of the Old Testament, and it will then appear greater when it shall be dedicated.
For then shall come he who is desired by all nations, as it is read in the Hebrew. For his first coming was not yet desired by all nations. For they did not know whom they ought to desire, since they had not believed in him. Then also, according to the Septuagint translators (since that too is a prophetic sense), 'there shall come the things that are chosen of the Lord from all nations.' For then indeed there shall come none but the chosen, of whom the apostle says: 'As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.' For that same architect, who said, 'Many are called, but few are chosen,' will show a house built not of those who were called and so came as to be cast out of the banquet, but of the chosen—a house which shall thenceforth dread no ruin.
But now, when even those fill the churches whom the winnowing shall separate as if on a threshing-floor, so great a glory of this house does not appear as shall then appear, when whoever shall be there shall be there for ever.
In this malignant age, then, in these evil days, wherein by present lowliness the Church prepares for future exaltation and is trained by the goads of fears, the torments of sorrows, the troubles of labours, and the perils of temptations, rejoicing in hope alone when she rejoices soundly, many reprobates are mingled with the good, and both are gathered together as into the gospel net, and both, enclosed in this world as in a sea, swim indiscriminately within the nets until the shore is reached, where the evil shall be separated from the good, and in the good, as in his temple, God shall be all in all. Accordingly, we now recognise fulfilled the voice of him who spoke in the psalm and said: 'I have declared and spoken; they are multiplied above number.'
This comes to pass now, from the time he first declared and spoke, first through the mouth of his forerunner John, then through his own mouth, saying: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' He chose disciples, whom he also named apostles—men humbly born, unhonoured, unlettered—so that whatever they should be and do that was great, he himself might be and do it in them. He had among them one whom, using his wickedness for good, he might both fulfil the appointed course of his own passion and furnish to his Church an example of evils to be endured.
When the holy gospel had been sown, so far as his bodily presence required, he suffered, died, and rose again—by his passion showing what we ought to endure for the truth, by his resurrection what we ought to hope for in eternity—apart from the depth of the sacrament, whereby his blood was poured out for the remission of sins. He dwelt on earth forty days with his disciples, and while they looked on ascended into heaven, and after ten days sent the promised Holy Spirit; whose coming upon those who had believed was then attended by a sign most great and most needful, namely that each one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations;
thus signifying the unity of the catholic Church which was to be throughout all nations, and so to speak in all tongues. Then, according to that prophecy, 'Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,' and according to the predictions of the Lord Christ himself—where, after his resurrection, while his disciples were astonished, he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them that thus it was written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem—and where, when they again inquired of him concerning his last coming, he answered and said:
'It is not for you to know the times which the Father hath put in his own power; but ye shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth.' First the Church spread itself out from Jerusalem, and when very many had believed in Judaea and Samaria, it went also to the other nations, those announcing the gospel whom he himself, like lights, had both fitted with the word and kindled with the Holy Spirit. For he had said to them: 'Fear not them who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.' And that they might not be cold with fear, they burned with the fire of charity.
Finally, not only through those who had seen and heard him both before his passion and after his resurrection, but even after their death, through their successors, amid horrendous persecutions and various tortures and the deaths of martyrs, the gospel was preached throughout the whole world, God bearing witness by signs and portents and various mighty works and gifts of the Holy Spirit; so that the peoples of the nations, believing in him who was crucified for their redemption, might venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs
which they had shed in diabolical fury; and so that the very kings, by whose laws the Church was laid waste, might submit themselves for their salvation to that name which they had cruelly striven to take away from the earth, and might begin to persecute the false gods, for whose sake they had before persecuted the worshippers of the true God. Now the devil, seeing the temples of the demons deserted and the human race running to the name of the liberating Mediator, stirred up heretics who, under the name of Christian, should resist Christian doctrine, as though they could be held indifferently, without any correction, in the city of God, just as the city of confusion held indifferently the philosophers who thought things diverse and adverse among themselves.
Those, therefore, in the Church of Christ who savour of anything diseased and perverse, if, when corrected that they may savour what is sound and right, they resist obstinately and are unwilling to amend their pestilent and deadly dogmas but persist in defending them, become heretics, and going forth outside are reckoned among the exercising enemies. For even thus indeed do they profit those true catholic members of Christ by their own evil, while God uses even the evil well and works all things together for good to them that love him. For all the enemies of the Church, by whatever error they are blinded or by whatever malice they are depraved, if they receive power to afflict bodily, exercise her patience; if they oppose only by thinking evil, exercise her wisdom;
but that even enemies may be loved, they exercise her benevolence, or even her beneficence, whether she deals with them by persuasive teaching or by terrible discipline. And by this, the devil, prince of the impious city, by stirring up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm; for her, without doubt, both consolation in prosperous circumstances is provided by divine providence, that she be not broken by adversity, and exercise in adverse circumstances, that she be not corrupted by prosperity; and thus each is so tempered by the other that we recognise the voice in the psalm to have arisen from no other source: 'According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy consolations have gladdened my soul.' Hence too is that saying of the apostle:
'Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.' For that too which the same teacher says—'All who wish to live godly in Christ suffer persecution'—must be thought to be lacking in no times. For even when there seems to be tranquillity from those who are outside, since they are not raging—and there truly is such, and it brings very much consolation, especially to the weak—yet there are not lacking, nay rather there are many within, who torment the hearts of those living godly by their own ruinous morals; for through them the Christian and catholic name is blasphemed; and the dearer that name is to those who wish to live godly in Christ, the more they grieve that, through the evil placed within, it comes about that it is loved less than the minds of the godly desire.
The heretics themselves too, since they are thought to have the Christian name and sacraments and Scriptures and profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the godly; because many who wish to be Christians are compelled to hesitate on account of their dissensions, and many slanderers even find in these a pretext for blaspheming the Christian name, since they too are in some way called Christians. By these and suchlike perverse morals and errors of men, those who wish to live godly in Christ suffer persecution, even when no one is molesting or vexing their body. For they suffer this persecution not in their bodies, but in their hearts. Whence is that voice: 'According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart.' For he does not say:
'In my body.' But again, since the immutable divine promises are considered, and that which the apostle says—'The Lord knoweth them that are his' (for of those whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, none can perish)—therefore there follows in that psalm: 'Thy consolations have gladdened my soul.' But that very grief which arises in the hearts of the godly, whom the morals of evil or false Christians persecute, profits the grieving, since it descends from charity, whereby they do not wish those men to perish nor to hinder the salvation of others. And finally, great consolations arise even from the correction of such persons, which suffuse the souls of the godly with as much joy as the sorrows with which they had been tormented over their ruin.
Thus in this age, in these evil days, the Church runs her pilgrim course amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God—not only from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and his apostles, but from Abel himself, whom, as the first righteous man, his impious brother slew, and thenceforward even to the end of this age. Accordingly, I do not think that even that ought rashly to be said or believed which has seemed, or seems, to some—that the Church shall suffer no more persecutions up to the time of Antichrist than she has already suffered, that is, ten, so that the eleventh and that the last shall be from Antichrist.
For they reckon the first to be that which was made by Nero, the second by Domitian, the third by Trajan, the fourth by Antoninus, the fifth by Severus, the sixth by Maximinus, the seventh by Decius, the eighth by Valerian, the ninth by Aurelian, and the tenth by Diocletian and Maximian. For the plagues of the Egyptians, since they were ten before the people of God began to go forth thence, they think are to be referred to this understanding, so that the last persecution of Antichrist may seem like the eleventh plague, by which the Egyptians, while pursuing the Hebrews as enemies, perished in the Red Sea as the people of God passed over on dry ground. But I do not judge that those persecutions were prophetically signified by that event enacted in Egypt;
although by those who think this, those individual events seem to have been compared with these individual ones exquisitely and ingeniously—not by a prophetic spirit, but by the conjecture of the human mind, which sometimes arrives at the truth and sometimes is deceived. For what will those who hold this say concerning the persecution in which the Lord himself was crucified? In what number will they place it? But if they think it is to be excepted from the reckoning, as though those are to be numbered which pertain to the body, not that by which the Head himself was assailed and slain:
what will they do concerning that persecution which, after Christ ascended into heaven, was made at Jerusalem—where the blessed Stephen was stoned, where James the brother of John was slain with the sword, where the apostle Peter was imprisoned to be killed and freed by an angel, where the brethren were put to flight and dispersed from Jerusalem, where Saul, who afterward became the apostle Paul, laid waste the Church, where he too, now himself preaching the faith which he had persecuted, suffered such things as he had done, whether throughout Judaea or throughout other nations, wherever he most fervently preached Christ?
Why, then, does it seem to them that the beginning should be made from Nero, when the Church, growing amid the most atrocious persecutions—of which it would be far too long to tell all—had reached even to the times of Nero? But if they think that persecutions made by kings ought to be included in the number: Herod was a king, who even after the Lord's ascension made a most grievous persecution. Next, what do they answer also concerning Julian, whom they do not number among the ten? Did he not persecute the Church, who forbade Christians to teach or learn liberal letters? Under whom Valentinian the elder, who after him was the third emperor, stood forth as a confessor of the Christian faith and was deprived of his military office;
to say nothing of what he had begun to do at Antioch, had he not shuddered at the liberty and cheerfulness of a most faithful and most steadfast young man—who, of many seized to be tortured, was the first tortured throughout a whole day—and, amid the hooks, singing psalms in his torments, and had he not feared to blush more shamefully in the case of the rest. Finally, within our own memory, did not Valens, the brother of the aforesaid Valentinian, an Arian, lay waste the catholic Church throughout the regions of the East with a great persecution? And what kind of thing is it, not to consider that the Church, bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, can suffer persecution from kings in some nations, and at the same time not suffer it in others?
Unless perhaps a persecution is not to be reckoned, when the king of the Goths, in Gothia itself, persecuted the Christians with wondrous cruelty, when there were none there but catholics, very many of whom were crowned with martyrdom, as we have heard from certain brethren who at that time had been boys there and unhesitatingly recalled that they had seen these things? And what of late in Persia? Did not persecution so boil up against the Christians (if indeed it has now subsided) that some, fleeing thence, reached even the towns of the Romans? To me, considering these and suchlike things, it does not seem that a number of persecutions is to be defined by which the Church ought to be exercised.
But again, to affirm that there will be certain future persecutions by kings besides that last one, about which no Christian is in doubt, is of no less rashness. And so we leave this in the middle, neither building up nor tearing down either side of this question, but only calling men back from the bold presumption of affirming any one of these. That last persecution indeed, which is to come from Antichrist, Jesus himself shall extinguish by his presence. For thus it is written, that he shall slay him with the spirit of his mouth and shall bring him to nought by the illumination of his presence. Here it is wont to be asked: When shall this be? Most importunately. For if it profited us to know this, from whom could it better be told, to the disciples asking, than from God the master himself?
For they did not keep silence about this with him, but asked him while he was present, saying: 'Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' But he answered: 'It is not for you to know the times which the Father hath put in his own power.' It was not indeed about the hour or day or year, but about the time that they had inquired, when they received this answer. In vain, therefore, do we attempt to compute and define the years that remain to this age, since we hear from the mouth of Truth that it is not ours to know this; which years, nevertheless, some have said could be completed as four hundred, others five hundred, others even a thousand, from the ascension of the Lord to his last coming. But it would be long, and not necessary, to demonstrate how each of them builds up his own opinion.
For they use human conjectures, nor is anything certain adduced by them from the authority of the canonical Scripture. But the fingers of all who calculate about this matter are relaxed, and he bids them be still, who says: 'It is not for you to know the times which the Father hath put in his own power.' But since this is an evangelical sentence, it is no wonder that the worshippers of the many false gods were not restrained by it from feigning that it had been defined by the responses of the demons—whom they worship as gods—for how long a time the Christian religion should endure.
For when they saw that it could not be consumed even by so many and such great persecutions, but had rather from these taken wondrous increase, they devised I know not what Greek verses, as though poured forth to a certain inquirer by a divine oracle, in which they indeed make Christ innocent of this charge of sacrilege as it were, but add that Peter had wrought sorceries, so that the name of Christ should be worshipped for three hundred and sixty-five years, and then, that number of years being completed, should without delay come to an end. O hearts of learned men!
O lettered talents worthy to believe such things concerning Christ, which you are unwilling to believe in Christ: namely, that his disciple Peter did not learn magic arts from him, but, while he himself was innocent, was nevertheless his sorcerer, and chose that Christ's name rather than his own should be worshipped by his magic arts, by his great labours and perils, and finally even by the shedding of his own blood! If Peter by sorcery brought it about that the world should so love Christ, what did the innocent Christ do, that Peter should so love him?
Let them, therefore, answer this to themselves, and, if they can, let them understand that it was brought about by that heavenly grace that the world should love Christ for the sake of eternal life—by which same grace it was brought about that Peter too should love Christ both for the sake of the eternal life to be received from him and even unto the temporal death to be suffered for him.
Next, what sort of gods are these, who can foretell such things yet cannot avert them, so utterly do they succumb to a single sorcerer and a single magical crime — the crime by which, so they say, a year-old boy was slain and torn apart and buried by an abominable rite — that they permit a sect opposed to them to grow strong over so long a stretch of time, to overcome by not resisting but by enduring the dreadful cruelties of so many and so great persecutions, and to arrive at the overthrow of their images, their temples, their rites, and their oracles? And who, in the end, is the god — surely not ours, but their own — who was either enticed by so great a crime or driven to grant these things? For it is not to some demon but to a god that they say those verses declared that Peter had bound these things fast by the magic art.
Such a god they have who do not have Christ. [LIV] These things and many of this kind I would have collected, had not the very year already passed which false divination promised and deluded vanity believed. But since, from the time the worship of Christ's name was established through His presence in the flesh and through the apostles, three hundred and sixty-five years were completed several years ago, what else do we seek by which this falsehood may be refuted?
For even if we do not place the beginning of this matter at Christ's nativity — since as an infant and a boy He had no disciples — nevertheless, when He did begin to have them, then beyond doubt Christian doctrine and religion became known through His bodily presence, that is, after He was baptized in the river Jordan by the ministry of John. For it was concerning this that the prophecy had gone before: «He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.» But since, before He had suffered and had risen from the dead, the faith had not yet been established for all (for it was established in the resurrection of Christ, for so the apostle Paul speaks to the Athenians, saying:
«He now commands men that they should all everywhere repent, because He has appointed a day in which to judge the world in equity, by the man by whom He has established faith for all, raising Him from the dead»): it is better, in resolving this question, that we take our beginning from that point; especially since then too the Holy Spirit was given, as it was fitting that He be given after Christ's resurrection, in that city from which the second law, that is the new testament, was to begin. For the first was from Mount Sinai through Moses, which is called the old testament. But concerning this one, which was to be given through Christ, it had been foretold: «Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.»
Whence He Himself also said that repentance was to be preached among all nations in His name, yet beginning from Jerusalem. There, then, the worship of this name took its rise, so that men might believe in Jesus Christ, who had been crucified and had risen again. There this faith blazed up with beginnings so remarkable that several thousands of men, converted to Christ's name with wondrous eagerness, sold their goods so that they might be distributed to the needy, and by a holy resolve and most ardent charity attained to voluntary poverty; and amid the raging and blood-thirsty Jews they prepared themselves to contend even unto death for the truth, not with armed force but with a mightier patience.
If this was done by no magic arts, why do they hesitate to believe that by the same divine power by which this was done, it could be done throughout the whole world? But if, as at Jerusalem, so also elsewhere so great a multitude of men was kindled to the worship of Christ's name — that same multitude which had either seized and fixed Him to the cross or had mocked Him fixed there — then Peter had already worked that sorcery, and we must reckon from that very year when the three hundred and sixty-five were completed. Christ therefore died when the two Gemini were consuls, on the eighth day before the Kalends of April. He rose again on the third day, as the apostles proved even by their own senses. Then, after forty days, He ascended into heaven; and after ten days, that is, on the fiftieth day after His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit.
Then three thousand men believed when the apostles preached Him. Then, therefore, the worship of that name took its rise — as we believe and as the truth holds, by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit; but as impious vanity feigned or supposed, by the magic arts of Peter. A little later, too, when a wondrous sign had been wrought — when at the very word of Peter a certain beggar, so lame from his mother's womb that he was carried by others and set at the temple gate to ask for alms, leaped up healed in the name of Jesus Christ — five thousand men believed; and thereafter, by ever new accessions of believers, the Church grew.
And by this the day is also reckoned from which that very year took its beginning, namely when the Holy Spirit was sent, that is, about the Ides of May. Counting the consuls accordingly, three hundred and sixty-five years are found to have been completed on those same Ides, in the consulship of Honorius and Eutychianus. Moreover in the following year, when Malius Theodorus was consul, when now according to that oracle of demons or that fabrication of men there ought to have been no Christian religion, what perhaps was done in other parts of the earth it was not necessary to investigate;