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| Chapter VIII
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Chapter
VIII.
In the following way, also, we may conclude that
they who came out of Egypt with Moses were not Egyptians; for if they
had been Egyptians, their names also would be Egyptian, because
in every language the designations (of persons and things) are kindred
to the language.3456
| 3456 Συγγενεῖς
εἰσιν αἱ
προσηγορίαι. | But if it is
certain, from the names being Hebrew, that the people were not
Egyptians,—and the Scriptures are full of Hebrew names, and these
bestowed, too, upon their children while they were in Egypt,—it
is clear that the Egyptian account is false, which asserts that they
were Egyptians, and went forth from Egypt with Moses. Now it is
absolutely certain3457
that, being
descended, as the Mosaic history records, from Hebrew ancestors, they
employed a language from which they also took the names which they
conferred upon their children. But with regard to the Christians,
because they were taught not to avenge themselves upon their enemies
(and have thus observed laws of a mild and philanthropic character);
and because they would not, although able, have made war even if they
had received authority to do so,—they have obtained this reward
from God, that He has
always warred in their behalf, and on certain occasions has restrained
those who rose up against them and desired to destroy them. For
in order to remind others, that by seeing a few engaged in a
struggle for their religion, they also might be better fitted to
despise death, some, on special occasions, and these individuals who
can be easily numbered, have endured death for the sake of
Christianity,—God not permitting the whole nation to be
exterminated, but desiring that it should continue, and that the whole
world should be filled with this salutary and religious
doctrine.3458
| 3458 [Gibbon, in the
sixteenth chapter of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
quotes the first part of this sentence as proving that “the
learned Origen declares, in the most express terms, that the number of
martyrs was very inconsiderable.” But see Guizot’s
note on the passage. S.] | And again, on
the other hand, that those who were of weaker minds might recover their
courage and rise superior to the thought of death, God interposed His
providence on behalf of believers, dispersing by an act of His will
alone all the conspiracies formed against them; so that neither kings,
nor rulers, nor the populace, might be able to rage against them beyond
a certain point. Such, then, is our answer to the assertions of
Celsus, “that a revolt was the original commencement of the
ancient Jewish state, and subsequently of
Christianity.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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