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| Of the Very Foolish Lie of the Pagans, in Feigning that the Christian Religion Was Not to Last Beyond Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Years.
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Chapter 54.—Of the Very Foolish
Lie of the Pagans, in Feigning that the Christian Religion Was Not
to Last Beyond Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Years.
I might collect these and many
similar arguments, if that year had not already passed by which
lying divination has promised, and deceived vanity has believed.
But as a few years ago three hundred and sixty-five years were
completed since the time when the worship of the name of Christ was
established by His presence in the flesh, and by the apostles, what
other proof need we seek to refute that falsehood? For, not to
place the beginning of this period at the nativity of Christ,
because as an infant and boy He had no disciples, yet, when He
began to have them, beyond doubt the Christian doctrine and
religion then became known through His bodily presence, that is,
after He was baptized in the river Jordan by the ministry of
John. For on
this account that prophecy went
before concerning Him: “He shall reign from sea even to sea,
and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”1255
But
since, before He suffered and rose from the dead, the faith had not
yet been defined to all, but was defined in the resurrection of
Christ (for so the Apostle Paul speaks to the Athenians, saying,
“But now He announces to men that all everywhere should repent,
because He hath appointed a day in which to judge the world in
equity, by the Man in whom He hath defined the faith to all men,
raising Him from the dead”1256
), it is better that, in settling
this question, we should start from that point, especially because
the Holy Spirit was then given, just as He behoved to be given
after the resurrection of Christ in that city from which the second
law, that is, the new testament, ought to begin. For the first,
which is called the old testament was given from Mount Sinai
through Moses. But concerning this which was to be given by
Christ it was predicted, “Out of Sion shall go forth the law and
the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;”1257
whence He Himself said that
repentance in His name behoved to be preached among all nations,
but yet beginning at Jerusalem.1258
There, therefore, the worship of
this name took its rise, that Jesus should be believed in, who died
and rose again. There this faith blazed up with such noble
beginnings, that several thousand men, being converted to the name
of Christ with wonderful alacrity, sold their goods for
distribution among the needy, thus, by a holy resolution and most
ardent charity, coming to voluntary poverty, and prepared
themselves, amid the Jews who raged and thirsted for their blood,
to contend for the truth even to death, not with armed power, but
with more powerful patience. If this was accomplished by no magic
arts, why do they hesitate to believe that the other could be done
throughout the whole world by the same divine power by which this
was done? But supposing Peter wrought that enchantment so that so
great a multitude of men at Jerusalem was thus kindled to worship
the name of Christ, who had either seized and fastened Him to the
cross, or reviled Him when fastened there, we must still inquire
when the three hundred and sixty-five years must be completed,
counting from that year. Now Christ died when the Gemini were
consuls, on the eighth day before the kalends of April. He rose
the third day, as the apostles have proved by the evidence of their
own senses. Then forty days after, He ascended into heaven. Ten
days after, that is, on the fiftieth after his resurrection, He
sent the Holy Spirit; then three thousand men believed when the
apostles preached Him. Then, therefore, arose the worship of that
name, as we believe, and according to the real truth, by the
efficacy of the Holy Spirit, but, as impious vanity has feigned or
thought, by the magic arts of Peter. A little afterward, too, on
a wonderful sign being wrought, when at Peter’s own word a
certain beggar, so lame from his mother’s womb that he was
carried by others and laid down at the gate of the temple, where he
begged alms, was made whole in the name of Jesus Christ, and leaped
up, five thousand men believed, and thenceforth the Church grew by
sundry accessions of believers. Thus we gather the very day with
which that year began, namely, that on which the Holy Spirit was
sent, that is, during the ides of May. And, on counting the
consuls, the three hundred and sixty-five years are found completed
on the same ides in the consulate of Honorius and Eutychianus.
Now, in the following year, in the consulate of Mallius Theodorus,
when, according to that oracle of the demons or figment of men,
there ought already to have been no Christian religion, it was not
necessary to inquire, what perchance was done in other parts of the
earth. But, as we know, in the most noted and eminent city,
Carthage, in Africa, Gaudentius and Jovius, officers of the Emperor
Honorius, on the fourteenth day before the kalends of April,
overthrew the temples and broke the images of the false gods. And
from that time to the present, during almost thirty years, who does
not see how much the worship of the name of Christ has increased,
especially after many of those became Christians who had been kept
back from the faith by thinking that divination true, but saw when
that same number of years was completed that it was empty and
ridiculous? We, therefore, who are called and are Christians, do
not believe in Peter, but in Him whom Peter believed,—being
edified by Peter’s sermons about Christ, not poisoned by his
incantations; and not deceived by his enchantments, but aided by
his good deeds. Christ Himself, who was Peter’s Master in the
doctrine which leads to eternal life, is our Master too.
But let us now at last finish this
book, after thus far treating of, and showing as far as seemed
sufficient, what is the mortal course of the two cities, the
heavenly and the earthly, which are mingled together from the
beginning down to the end. Of these, the earthly one has made to
herself of whom she would,
either from any other quarter,
or even from among men, false gods whom she might serve by
sacrifice; but she which is heavenly and is a pilgrim on the earth
does not make false gods, but is herself made by the true God of
whom she herself must be the true sacrifice. Yet both alike
either enjoy temporal good things, or are afflicted with temporal
evils, but with diverse faith, diverse hope, and diverse love,
until they must be separated by the last judgment, and each must
receive her own end, of which there is no end. About these ends
of both we must next treat. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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