IX.

Churches of God should be planted in such rude and CHAP. profane places. So the same author goes on to compare the Church's senate with that of the cities; the Church's officers with theirs; and appeals to themselves, that even those among them who were most lukewarm in their office, did yet far exceed all the city magistrates in all manner of virtues. From whence he rationally concludes, εἰ δὲ ταῦθ ̓ ὕτως ἔχει, πῶς οὐκ εὔλογον μὲν νομίζειν περὶ Id. p. 129. τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, τοσαῦτα συςῆσαι δεδυνημένε, ὅτι οὐκ ἡ τυχέσα θειότης yev auT; If these things be so, how can it but be most rational to adore the divinity of Jesus, who was able to accomplish such great things; and that not upon one or two, but upon such great multitudes as were then converted to the Christian faith? We read of one Phædon and one Polemon brought from their debaucheries by Socrates and Xenocrates; but what are these compared with those who were turned from their sins to God by the Gospel of Christ! καὶ παρὰ μὲν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, εἷς τις Φαίδων καὶ οὐκ οἶδα εἰ Origen. δεύτερος, καὶ εἰς Πολέμων, μεταβαλόντες ἀπὸ ἀσώτε καὶ μοχθηρο- cont. Cels. τάτε βία, ἐφιλοσόφησαν· παρὰ δὲ τῷ Ἰησοῦ ἐ μόνοι τότε οἱ δώδεκα, 1. i. p. 50. àλλ' deì xai woλλanλaoles, &c. the twelve Apostles were but the first-fruits of that plentiful harvest of converts which followed afterwards. And although Celsus (like an Epicurean) seems to deny the possibility of any such thing as conversion, because customary sins become a second nature, that no punishments can reform them; yet, saith Id. I. iii. Origen, herein he not only contradicts us Christians, but all P. 150. such as were γενναίως φιλοσοφήσαντες, who owned any generous principles of philosophy, and did not despair of recovering virtue, as a thing feasible by human nature; and gives instances, ad hominem, to prove the possibility of the thing from the ancient heroes, Hercules and Ulysses, from the two philosophers, Socrates and Musonius, and the two famous converts to philosophy, Phædon and Polemon but yet, saith he, these are not so much to be wondered at, that the eloquence aad reason of the philosophers should prevail on some very few persons, but that the mean and contemptible language of the Apostles should convert such multitudes from intemperance to sobriety, from injustice to fair-dealing, from cowardice to the highest constancy, yea so great as to lay down their lives for the sake of virtue: How can we but admire so divine a power as was seen in it? And therefore, saith he, we conclude, or T Dei Id. 1. iii. λόγῳ ἀμείψαι κακίαν φυσιώσασαν ἐςιν 3 μόνον οὐκ ἀδύνατον, ἀλλὰ Ρ. 1534 καὶ ἐ πανὺ χαλεπὸν, that it is so far from being impossible, that it is not at all difficult for corrupt nature to be changed

Cap. 26.

BOOK by the Word of God. Lactantius excellently manifests, II. that philosophy could never do so much good in the Lactant, de world as Christianity did, because that was not suited at Fals. Sap. all to common capacities, and did require so much skill 1. iii. c. 25. in the arts to prepare men for it, which it is impossible all should be well skilled in, which yet are as capable of being happy as any others are. And how inefficacious the precepts of philosophy were, appears by the philosophers themselves, who were far from having command by them over their masterless passions, and were fain sometimes to confess that nature was too headstrong to be kept in by such weak reins as the precepts of philosophy were: but, saith he, what great command Divine precepts have upon the souls of men, daily experience shews. Da mihi virum qui sit iracundus, maledicus, effrænatus; paucissimis Dei verbis, tam placidum quam ovem reddam. Da cupidum, avarum, tenacem; jam tibi eum liberalem dabo, et pecuniam suam plenis manibus largientem. Da timidum doloris ac mortis ; jam cruces, et ignes, taurum contemnet. Da libidinosum, adulterum, ganionem; jam sobrium, castum, continentem videbis. Da crudelem, et sanguinis appetentem; jam in veram clementiam furor ille mutabitur. Da injustum, insipientem, peccatorem; continuo et æquus, et prudens, et innocens erit. In which words that elegant writer doth, by a rhetorical scheme, set out the remarkable alteration which was in any who became true Christians, that although they were passionate, covetous, fearful, lustful, cruel, unjust, vicious; yet upon their being Christians, they became mild, liberal, courageous, temperate, merciful, just, and unblameable, which never any were brought to by mere philosophy; which rather teacheth the art of concealing vices, than of healing them. But now when Christianity was so effectual in the cure of those distempers, which philosophy gave over as beyond its skill and power, when it cured them with so great success, and that not in a Paracelsian way, for them to relapse afterwards with greater violence, but it did so thoroughly unsettle the fomes morbi, that it should never gather to so great a head again; doth not this argue a power more than philosophical, and that could be no less than Divine power which tended so much to reform the world, and to promote true goodness in it.

XXIV.

Thus we have considered the contrariety of the doctrine of Christ to men's natural inclinations, and yet the strange success it had in the world, which in the last place will

IX.

appear yet more strange, when we add the almost con- CHAP. tinual opposition it met with from worldly power and policy. Had it been possible for a cunningly devised fable, or any mere contrivance of impostors, to have prevailed in the world, when the most potent and subtle persons bent their whole wits and designs for suppressing it? Whatever it were in others, we are sure of some of the Roman Emperors, as Julian and Dioclesian, that it was their master-design to root out and abolish Christianity; and was it only the subtlety of the Christians which made these persons give over their work in despair of accomplishing it? If the Christians were such subtle men, whence came all their enemies to agree in one common calumny, that they were a company of poor, weak, ignorant, inconsiderable men? And if they were so, how came it to pass that by their power and wisdom they could never exterminate these persons, but as they cut them down they grew up the faster, and multiplied by their subtraction of them? There was something then certainly peculiar in Christianity from all other doctrines, that it not only was not advanced by any civil power, but it got ground by the opposition it met with in the world. And therefore it is an observable circumstance, that the first Christian Emperor, (who acted as Emperor for Christianity,) viz. Constantine, (for otherwise I know what may be said for Philippus,) did not appear in the world till Christianity had spread itself over most parts of the habitable world; God thereby letting us see, that though the civil power, when become Christian, might be very useful for protecting Christianity, yet that he stood in no need at all of it as to the propagation of it abroad in the world. But we see it was quite otherwise in that religion which had Mars its ascendant, viz. Mahometism, for, like Paracelsus's dæmon, it always sate upon the pummel of the sword, and made its way in the world merely by force and violence; and as its first constitution had much of blood in it, so by it hath it been fed and nourished ever since. But it was quite otherwise with the Christian religion: it never thrived better than in the most barren places, nor triumphed more than when it suffered most; nor spread itself further than when it encountered the greatest opposition: because therein was seen the great force and efficacy of the doctrine of Christ, that it bore up men's spirits under the greatest miseries of life, and made them with cheerfulness to undergo the

BOOK most exquisite torments which the cruelty of tyrants II. could invent. The Stoics and Epicureans boasts, that their wise man would be happy in the Bull of Phalaris, were but empty and Thrasonical words, which none would venture the truth of by an experiment upon themselves. It was the Christian alone, and not the Epicurean, that could truly say in the midst of torments, Suave est et nihil curo, and might justly alter a little of that common saying of the Christians, and say, Non magna loquimur, sed patimur, as well as vivimus; the Christians did not speak great things, but do and suffer them. And this gained not only great reputation of integrity to themselves, but much advanced the honour of their religion in the world, when it was so apparently seen that no force or power was able to withstand it. Will not this at least persuade you that our religion is true, and from God? Arnob. 1. ii. saith Arnobius: Quod cum genera pœnarum tanta sint a P. 45. cont. vobis proposita religionis hujus sequentibus leges, augeatur

Gentes.

res magis, et contra omnes minas atque interdicta formidinum animosius populus obnitatur, et ad credendi studium, prohibitionis ipsius stimulis excitetur? Itane istud non divinum et sacrum est, aut sine Deo, eorum tantas animorum fieri conversiones, ut cum carnifices unci, aliique innumeri cruciatus, quemadmodum diximus, impendeant credituris, veluti quadam dulcedine, atque omnium virtutum amore correpti, cognitas accipiant rationes, atque mundi omnibus rebus præponant amicitias Christi; that no fears, penalties, or torments, were able to make a Christian alter his profession, but he would rather bid adieu to his life than to his Origen Saviour. This Origen likewise frequently takes notice of, cont. Cels. when Celsus had objected the novelty of Christianity. 1. i. p. 22. The more wonderful it is (saith Origen) that in so short a 1. ii. p. 110. time it should so largely spread itself in the world; for if the cure of men's bodies be not wrought without Divine Providence, how much less the cure of so many thousands of souls, which have been converted at once to humanity and Christianity, especially when all the powers of the world were from the first engaged to hinder the progress of this doctrine; and yet, notwithstanding all this opposition, ἐνίκησε, μὴ πεφυκως κωλύεσθαι, ὡς λόγος Θεοῦ, καὶ γενόμενος τοσέτων ἀνταγονισῶν ἰσχυρότερος, πάσης μὲν Ἑλλάδος, ἐπὶ πλεῖον δὲ τῆς βαρβάρου ἐκράτησε, καὶ μετεποίησε μυρίας ὅσας ψυχὰς ἐπὶ τὴν καὶ αὐτὸν θεοσέβειαν. The Word of God prevailed, as not being able to be stopped by men, and became master over all its enemies, and not only spread itself quite through Greece,

Vid. etiam,

but through a great part of the world besides, and converted CHAP. an innumerable company of souls to the true worship and IX. service of God. Thus we have now manifested, from all the circumstances of the propagation of the doctrine of Christ, what evidence there was of a Divine power accompanying of it, and how useful the first miracles were in order to it.