Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| These things being so, it is time to come to the proofs, if indeed their truth needs proof, and if the testimony of plain facts must be confirmed. Receive them, then, with ears well disposed to the argument.
2| Of old, all the nations on earth were divided, and the whole human race was cut up into provinces and ethnarchies and toparchies, into tyrannies and rule by many, and from these came constant battles and wars, ravagings and enslavements in country and city that never left them in peace; from these came countless themes for the histories, adulteries and abductions of women; from these came the woes of Ilium and the ancient tragedies remembered among all peoples.
3| You would not go wrong in ascribing the causes of all this to polytheistic error. But when the saving instrument, the all-holy body of Christ itself, which had been seen to be stronger than every demonic error and activity and a stranger to wickedness in deed and word, was raised on high as a trophy of victory over the demons and a safeguard against the evils of old, then at once all the works of the demons were undone. There were no longer toparchies and rule by many, tyrannies and democracies, nor the ravagings and sieges of cities and countries that arose from them; instead one God was proclaimed to all.
4| At the same time a single empire, that of the Romans, flowered for all, and the enmity of the nations, implacable and irreconcilable from time immemorial, was abolished at a stroke. And as knowledge of one God was handed on to all people, and one way of piety, the saving teaching of Christ, so in the same way, since one emperor arose at one and the same time over the whole Roman realm, a deep peace took hold of everything. Together, at one moment, as if at a single divine nod, two shoots of blessing sprang up for humankind: the empire of the Romans and the teaching of piety.
5| Before this, some ruled Syria on its own, others reigned over Asia, others over Macedonia; others had cut off Egypt and held it, and likewise the land of the Arabs; and the Jewish nation ruled Palestine. In villages and cities and in every place, as if in some derangement, they were bent on murdering one another, and, truly possessed by demons, they spent their time in wars and battles. But at a stroke two great powers, setting out as from a single starting post, tamed them all and brought them together into friendship: the empire of the Romans, which from that time appeared as a monarchy, and the teaching of Christ; and the two flourished together side by side at the same time.
6| The power of our Savior pulled down the many rulerships and the many gods of the demons, proclaiming the one kingdom of God to all people, Greeks and barbarians, to the ends of the earth; while the Roman empire, since the causes had already been pulled down, subdued the visible rulerships, hastening to join the whole race in one unity and concord. It had already gathered together most of the nations of every kind, and was very soon to reach even the farthest limits of the inhabited world, for the saving teaching, with divine power, was smoothing the way for it beforehand and making all things level.
7| This is the great wonder for those who direct their minds with love of truth and do not wish to begrudge what is fair. At once the error of the demons was refuted; at once the enmity and strife of the nations from the beginning of time was dissolved; at once again one God and one knowledge of him were proclaimed to all; at once one kingdom was established among men, and the whole human race together was shifted over to peace and friendship, and all acknowledged one another as brothers and recognized their own kinship. Straightway, as if born of one Father and one God, as children, and of one mother, true piety, they greeted and welcomed one another in peace, so that from that time the whole inhabited world lacked nothing of a single well-ordered household and family; whoever wished could set out on journeys and travel abroad wherever he liked with perfect ease, and those from the west passed without danger to the east, and those from here in turn set out thither as to their own homelands; and the sayings of ancient oracles and the utterances of the prophets were fulfilled, countless others which there is no leisure now to set beside these, and in particular those which cry out about the saving Word in some such way as this: "He will be lord from one sea to another, and from rivers to the limits of the inhabited world." And again: "In his days righteousness shall rise, and an abundance of peace." "And they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into sickles. "Nation shall not lift a sword against nation, nor shall they any longer learn war." These things were foretold and proclaimed in the voices of the Hebrews long ages ago; these things, seen in actual deeds in our own time, confirm the testimonies of the ancient voices. And you, if you long for a further abundance of proofs, take them not from words but from deeds. Open the eyes of your understanding, and throw wide the gates of your reasoning, and pausing long within yourself, reckon, and question yourself, and inquire as if of another, searching out the nature of the facts in some such way as this: what king or ruler or philosopher or lawgiver or prophet, Greek or barbarian, of all the ages ever won such renown for virtue, I do not say after death, but even while still living and breathing and having much power, that he filled the ears and tongues of all men on earth with his name? Yet no one has done this except our Savior alone, after his victory over death, who spoke the word to his disciples and accomplished it in deed, saying to them: "Go, then, and make all the nations disciples in my name." And having foretold that his gospel must be proclaimed in the whole inhabited world as a testimony to all the nations, he brought the deed hand in hand with the word. Straightway, and before long, the whole inhabited world was filled with his words.
9| What, then, could he say to this, he who at the beginning of the discourse found fault with us, when the testimony of sight is stronger than any argument? But passing from the first point, come to another and consider within yourself: who ever, from all eternity, ordained pious and temperate laws by word alone, without any writing, and through his disciples, opening schools everywhere on earth, easily made them established, to be read in the hearing of all men, barbarians and Greeks alike, from the ends of the earth to the extremities of the whole inhabited world? You would not find another, however you searched. And this was the work of our Savior alone. It was done after his death, and would show his divine life and power. But even this does not persuade the unbeliever. Then let him tell us, who long to learn, who else among men famed for wisdom ever loosed the barbarous and savage customs of barbarian nations by his most humane laws, so that his disciples among the Scythians no longer eat human flesh, nor among the Persians marry their mothers, nor others throw their dead to dogs, nor others hand the aged over to the noose, nor are other cruel and beastlike practices akin to these carried out among others? Yet these are small proofs of the divine life of our Savior after death. Look now at other proofs greater than these, and consider who among men, in so many ages, attacked by all men, rulers and kings, citizens and armies, peoples and nations, and always attacked, has displayed a virtue beyond the human, so that he blooms day by day and stays young throughout all time. And who else of all the ages, like our Savior, wishing to found a nation never before heard of, upon his name, established it not tucked away in some corner of the earth, but across the whole world under the sun, bringing his will to fulfillment by the power of divine authority? Who ever undertook to teach all the nations to know and worship only the God beyond heaven and the whole world? And then, having set such an aim, he brought the achievement to completion, showing the deed to be God-loving almost by its very working. This above all stopped every unbridled mouth: that having proclaimed the God above all, and having commanded all the nations to acknowledge him alone as true, as one who willed what is dear to God, he was deemed worthy of the cooperation and help of the one on whose behalf he was ambassador. And what are the lessons that were taken up together with such a proclamation, handed down within the hearing of all and confirmed in deed? Look and consider. Or who else of all time, having shone upon the souls of men with rational light, has made them laugh at their ancestral error, so that they no longer attach the divine name to stones and wood and lifeless matter? Who other than our Savior persuaded the Egyptians, the most superstitious of all, from whom the error of many gods passed to the Greeks, to be foolish no longer, and no longer to give the revered honor to beasts and reptiles and the most dishonored of irrational animals, but to know alone the God over all, and to contend through every kind of death for him? And who from all time, with an unseen and mighty hand, drove out like fearsome beasts from the flock of men the harmful and destructive tribe of demons, which long preyed upon the whole nature of men and by the moving of images displayed many sorceries among them? Who else, as our Savior did, by invocation of himself and by the purest prayers sent up through him to the God of the universe, gave authority to drive the remnants of the wicked spirits out of men to those who pursue purely and without pretense the life of the philosophy taught by him? And who delivered to his company the bloodless and rational sacrifices, performed by prayers and by ineffable theology, if not our Savior alone?
10| Therefore throughout the whole inhabited world of men altars were set up and dedications of churches, and the sacred services of intelligent and rational sacrifices, sent up by all the nations to the all-sovereign God alone. But the sacrifices performed by blood and gore, smoke and fire, and those cruel and frenzied slayings of men and human sacrifices: who made these be put out by an unseen and invisible power and exist no more, as the history of the Greeks itself attests? For it was not before, but only after the divinely inspired teaching of our Savior, in the times of Hadrian, that all human sacrifices everywhere on earth were abolished.
11| With so many clear proofs attesting the virtue and power of our Savior after his death, who is so iron of soul as not to bear witness with the truth and to acknowledge his divine life? For the achievements are those of the living, not of the dead, and they say that what appears is a sign of what is unseen. Yesterday and the day before, in fact, a race of God-fighters was stirring up the life of men, leading and carrying off and holding great power. But when they had departed from among men, they became after this more cast out than refuse on the earth, breathless, motionless, voiceless, and no word of them remained, no memory; for this is the nature of the dead, and he who is no more is nothing. And how could one who is nothing do anything? But he who works and acts and has more power than the living: how could he be supposed not to exist? And if he is unseen to the eyes of flesh, still the test is not in sensation; for neither do we learn the principles of the arts nor scientific theories by bodily sensation, nor has anyone ever seen with his eyes the mind in men, let alone the power of God, but things of this sort are naturally conceived from their works.
12| So too in the case of our Savior it is fitting to examine and judge his invisible power from his works: whether we must acknowledge that what he is still accomplishing down to this day belongs to one who lives, or say instead that it belongs to one who is not. Or rather the question is foolish and incoherent; for how could anyone reasonably say that one who is not, is? What is not has been declared by every vote not to exist, and to be able to do nothing, neither to act nor to accomplish anything. Such is the nature of the dead; that of the living is the opposite.
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