Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXXV
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXXV.
But I should like, in answer to him who for some
unknown reason advances such statements as the above, to make in a
conversational way3547
some such remarks
as the following, which seem not inappropriate to him. Are then
those persons whom you have mentioned nonentities, and is there no
power in Lebadea connected with Trophonius, nor in Thebes with the
temple of Amphiaraus, nor in Acarnania with Amphilochus, nor in Cilicia
with Mopsus? Or is there in such persons some being, either a
demon, or a hero, or even a god, working works which are beyond the
reach of man? For if he answer that there is nothing either
demoniacal or divine about these individuals more than others, then let
him at once make known his own opinion, as being that of an Epicurean,
and of one who does not hold the same views with the Greeks, and who
neither recognises demons nor worships gods as do the Greeks; and let
it be shown that it was to no purpose that he adduced the instances
previously enumerated (as if he believed them to be true), together
with those which he adds in the following pages. But if he will
assert that the persons spoken of are either demons, or heroes, or even
gods, let him notice that he will establish by what he has admitted a
result which he does not desire, viz., that Jesus also was some such
being; for which reason, too, he was able to demonstrate to not a few
that He had come down from God to visit the human race. And if he
once admit this, see whether he will not be forced to confess that He
is mightier than those individuals with whom he classed Him, seeing
none of the latter forbids the offering of honour to the others; while
He, having confidence in Himself, because He is more powerful than all
those others, forbids them to be received as divine3548
| 3548 τὰς τουτων
ἀποδοχάς. | because they are wicked demons, who have
taken possession of places on earth, through inability to rise to the
purer and diviner region, whither the grossnesses of earth and its
countless evils cannot reach.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
