and that it was only through them that He had power to do things so great as these, we may
well ask whether the God of Israel also worshipped their gods, who has now fulfilled by
Christ what He promised with respect to the extension of His own worship through all the
nations, and with respect to the detestation and subversion of those other deities?647 Where
are their gods? Where are the vaticinations of their fanatics, and the divinations of their
prophets?648 Where are the auguries, or the auspices, or the soothsayings,649 or the oracles
of demons? Why is it that, out of the ancient books which constitute the records of this type
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of religion, nothing in the form either of admonition or of prediction is advanced to oppose
the Christian faith, or to controvert the truth of those prophets of ours, who have now come
to be so well understood among all nations? “We have offended our gods,” they say in reply,
“and they have deserted us for that reason: that explains it also why the Christians have
prevailed against us, and why the bliss of human life, exhausted650 and impaired, goes to
wreck among us.” We challenge them, however, to take the books of their own seers, and
read out to us any statement purporting that the kind of issue which has come upon them
would be brought on them by the Christians: nay, we challenge them to recite any passages
in which, if not Christ (for they wish to make Him out to have been a worshipper of their
own gods), at least this God of Israel, who is allowed to be the subverter of other deities, is
held up as a deity destined to be rejected and worthy of detestation. But never will they
produce any such passage, unless, perchance, it be some fabrication of their own. And if
ever they do cite any such statement, the fact that it is but a fiction of their own will betray
itself in the unnoticeable manner in which a matter of so grave importance is found adduced;
whereas, in good truth, before what has been predicted should have come to pass, it behoved
to have been proclaimed in the temples of the gods of all nations, with a view to the timeous
preparation and warning of all who are now minded651 to be Christians.
647 Deut. vii. 5.
648 Pythonum.
649 Aruspicia.
650 Reading defessa; others give depressa, crushed.
651 Others read nolunt, who refuse.
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A Statement in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Apostles as Opposed to…