47. These facts set forth in
sanctuary we have put forward, not on the supposition that the
greatness of the agent was to be seen in these virtues alone.3332
| 3332
[I have already directed attention to Dominic Diodati’s essay,
De Christo Græce loquente. ed. London, 1843.] |
For
however great these things be, how excessively petty and trifling will
they be found to be, if it shall be
revealed from what realms He has
come, of what
God He is the
minister! But with regard to the acts
which were done by Him, they were performed, indeed, not that He might
boast Himself into empty ostentation, but that hardened and unbelieving
men might be assured that what was professed was not deceptive, and
that they might now
learn to
imagine, from the beneficence of His
works, what a true
god was. At the same time we wish this also to
be known,
3333
| 3333
So almost all edd.; but the ms. and 1st
and 2d Roman edd. read scire—“to know,”
etc. |
when, as
was said, an enumeration of His acts has been given in summary, that
Christ was able to do not only those things which He did, but that He
could even overcome the
decrees of fate. For if, as is evident,
and as is agreed by all,
infirmities and bodily sufferings, if
deafness, deformity, and dumbness, if shrivelling of the sinews and the
loss of sight happen to us, and are brought on us by the
decrees of
fate and if
Christ alone has corrected this, has restored and cured
man, it is clearer than the sun himself that He was more powerful than
the fates are when He has loosened and overpowered those things which
were bound with everlasting knots, and fixed by unalterable
necessity.
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