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| Chapter LXVIII
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Chapter
LXVIII.
That philosophical discourses, however,
distinguished by orderly arrangement and elegant expression,3643
| 3643 ᾽Αλλὰ τὴν μὲν
τάξιν καὶ
σύνθεσιν καὶ
φράσιν τῶν
ἀπὸ
φιλοσοφίας
λόγων. | should produce such results in the case of
those individuals just enumerated, and upon others3644
| 3644 The reading in the
text is ἄλλως, for which ἄλλους has been conjectured by
Ruæus and Boherellus, and which has been adopted in the
translation. | who have led wicked lives, is not at all to
be wondered at. But when we consider that those discourses, which
Celsus terms “vulgar,”3645
are filled
with power, as if they were spells, and see that they at once convert
multitudes from a life of licentiousness to one of extreme
regularity,3646
and from a life of
wickedness to a better, and from a state of cowardice or unmanliness to
one of such high-toned courage as to lead men to despise even death
through the piety which shows itself within them, why should we not
justly admire the power which they contain? For the words of
those who at the first assumed the office of (Christian) ambassadors,
and who gave their labours to rear up the Churches of God,—nay,
their preaching also,—were accompanied with a persuasive power,
though not like that found among those who profess the philosophy of
Plato, or of any other merely human philosopher, which possesses no
other qualities than those of human nature. But the demonstration
which followed the words of the apostles of Jesus was given from God,
and was accredited3647
| 3647 πιστικὴ ἀπὸ
πνεύματος. | by the Spirit and
by power. And therefore their word ran swiftly and
speedily, or rather the word of God through their
instrumentality, transformed numbers of persons who had been sinners
both by nature and habit, whom no one could have reformed by
punishment, but who were changed by the word, which moulded and
transformed them according to its pleasure.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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