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Then was fulfilled that prophecy, "Out of Sion shall go forth the
law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;" and the prediction
of the Lord Christ Himself, when, after the resurrection, "He
opened the understanding" of His amazed disciples "that they might
understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, that thus it is
written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the
dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be
preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."
And again, when, in reply to their questioning about the day of His
last coming, He said, "It is not for you to know the times or the
seasons which the Father hath put in His own power; but ye shall
receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and ye shall be
witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and
Samaria, and even unto the ends of the earth." First of all, the
Church spread herself abroad from Jerusalem; and when very many in
Judea and Samaria had believed, she also went into other nations by
those who announced the gospel, whom, as lights, He Himself had
both prepared by His word and kindled by His Holy Spirit. For He
had said to them, "Fear ye not them which kill the body, but are not
able to kill the soul." And that they might not be frozen with fear,
they burned with the fire of charity. Finally, the gospel of Christ
was preached in the whole world, not only by those who had seen and
heard Him both before His passion and after His resurrection, but
also after their death by their successors, amid the horrible
persecutions, diverse torments and deaths of the martyrs, God also
bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles
and gifts of the Holy Ghost, that the people of the nations,
believing in Him who was crucified for their redemption, might
venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had
poured forth with devilish fury, and the very kings by whose laws the
Church had been laid waste might become profitably subject to that name
they had cruelly striven to take away from the earth, and might begin
to persecute the false gods for whose sake the worshippers of the true
God had formerly been persecuted.
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