Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXXII
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXXII.
But since nothing belonging to human nature is
permanent, this polity also must gradually be corrupted and
changed. And Providence, having remodelled their venerable system
where it needed to be changed, so as to adapt it to men of all
countries, gave to believers of all nations, in place of the Jews, the
venerable religion of Jesus, who, being adorned not only with
understanding, but also with a share of divinity,3825
and having overthrown the doctrine regarding
earthly demons, who delight in frankincense, and blood, and in the
exhalations of sacrificial odours, and who, like the fabled Titans or
Giants, drag down men from thoughts of God; and having Himself
disregarded their plots, directed chiefly against the better class of
men, enacted laws which ensure happiness to those who live according to
them, and who do not flatter the demons by means of sacrifices, but
altogether despise them, through help of the word of God, which aids
those who look upwards to Him. And as it was the will of God that
the doctrine of Jesus should prevail amongst men, the demons could
effect nothing, although straining every nerve3826
| 3826 καίτοιγε
πάντα κάλων
κινήσαντες. | to
accomplish the destruction of Christians; for they stirred up both
princes, and senates, and rulers in every place,—nay, even
nations themselves, who did not perceive the irrational and wicked
procedure of the demons,—against the word, and those who believed
in it; yet, notwithstanding, the word of God, which is more powerful
than all other things, even when meeting with opposition, deriving from
the opposition, as it were, a means of increase, advanced onwards, and
won many souls, such being the will of God. And we have offered
these remarks by way of a necessary digression. For we wished to
answer the assertion of Celsus concerning the Jews, that they were
“fugitives from Egypt, and that these men, beloved by God, never
accomplished anything worthy of note.” And further, in
answer to the statement that “they were never held in any
reputation or account,” we say, that living apart as a
“chosen nation and a royal priesthood,” and shunning
intercourse with the many nations around them, in order that their
morals might escape corruption, they enjoyed the protection of the
divine power, neither coveting like the most of mankind the acquisition
of other kingdoms, nor yet being abandoned so as to become, on account
of their smallness, an easy object of attack to others, and thus be
altogether destroyed; and this lasted so long as they were worthy of
the divine protection. But when it became necessary for them, as
a nation wholly given to sin, to be brought back by their sufferings to
their God, they were abandoned (by Him), sometimes for a longer,
sometimes for a shorter period, until in the time of the Romans, having
committed the greatest of sins in putting Jesus to death, they were
completely deserted.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
