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But granting that this was once incredible, behold, now, the world
has come to the belief that the earthly body of Christ was received up
into heaven. Already both the learned and unlearned have believed in
the resurrection of the flesh and its ascension to the heavenly places,
while only a very few either of the educated or uneducated are still
staggered by it. If this is a credible thing which is believed, then
let those who do not believe see how stolid they are; and if it is
incredible, then this also is an incredible thing, that what is
incredible should have received such credit. Here then we have two
incredibles, to wit, the resurrection of our body to eternity, and
that the world should believe so incredible a thing; and both these
incredibles the same God predicted should come to pass before either
had as yet occurred. We see that already one of the two has come to
pass, for the world has believed what was incredible; why should we
despair that the remaining one shall also come to pass, and that this
which the world believed, though it was incredible, shall itself
occur? For already that which was equally incredible has come to
pass, in the world's believing an incredible thing. Both were
incredible: the one we see accomplished, the other we believe shall
be; for both were predicted in those same Scriptures by means of which
the world believed. And the very manner in which the world's faith
was won is found to be even more incredible if we consider it. Men
uninstructed in any branch of a liberal education, without any of the
refinement of heathen learning, unskilled in grammar, not armed with
dialectic, not adorned with rhetoric, but plain fishermen, and very
few in number, these were the men whom Christ sent with the nets of
faith to the sea of this world, and thus took out of every race so many
fishes, and even the philosophers themselves, wonderful as they are
rare. Let us add, if you please, or because you ought to be
pleased, this third incredible thing to the two former. And now we
have three incredibles, all of which have yet come to pass. It is
incredible that Jesus Christ should have risen in the flesh and
ascended with flesh into heaven; it is incredible that the world should
have believed so incredible a thing; it is incredible that a very few
men, of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, should have
been able so effectually to persuade the world, and even its learned
men, of so incredible a thing. Of these three incredibles, the
parties with whom we are debating refuse to believe the first; they
cannot refuse to see the second, which they are unable to account for
if they do not believe the third. It is indubitable that the
resurrection of Christ, and His ascension into heaven with the flesh
in which He rose, is already preached and believed in the whole
world. If it is not credible, how is it that it has already received
credence in the whole world? If a number of noble, exalted, and
learned men had said that they had witnessed it, and had been at pains
to publish what they had witnessed, it were not wonderful that the
world should have believed it, but it were very stubborn to refuse
credence; but if, as is true, the world has believed a few obscure,
inconsiderable, uneducated persons, who state and write that they
witnessed it, is it not unreasonable that a handful of wrong-beaded
men should oppose themselves to the creed of the whole world, and
refuse their belief? And if the world has put faith in a small number
of men, of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, it is
because the divinity of the thing itself appeared all the more
manifestly in such contemptible witnesses. The eloquence, indeed,
which lent persuasion to their message, consisted of wonderful works,
not words. For they who had not seen Christ risen in the flesh, nor
ascending into heaven with His risen body, believed those who related
how they had seen these things, and who testified not only with words
but wonderful signs. For men whom they knew to be acquainted with only
one, or at most two languages, they marvelled to hear speaking in the
tongues of all nations. They saw a man, lame from his mother's
womb, after forty years stand up sound at their word in the name of
Christ; that handkerchiefs taken from their bodies had virtue to heal
the sick; that countless persons, sick of various diseases, were laid
in a row in the road where they were to pass, that their shadow might
fall on them as they walked, and that they forthwith received health;
that many other stupendous miracles were wrought by them in the name of
Christ; and, finally, that they even raised the dead. If it be
admitted that these things occurred as they are related, then we have a
multitude of incredible things to add to those three incredibles. That
the one incredibility of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus
Christ may be believed, we accumulate the testimonies of countless
incredible miracles, but even so we do not bend the frightful obstinacy
of these sceptics. But if they do not believe that these miracles were
wrought by Christ's apostles to gain credence to their preaching of
His resurrection and ascension, this one grand miracle suffices for
us, that the whole world has believed without any miracles.
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