Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| Here, then, is the time to survey what our Savior has accomplished in our own day, and to see the living works of a living God. For are not achievements such as these the living works of one who lives, of God who lives a life that is truly life? What are they, you ask? Learn.
2| Not long ago certain God-fighters, with great contentiousness and with still greater force and violence, were digging up from their foundations and pulling down the buildings of his houses of prayer and making his churches vanish; with every device they made war on him who is not seen with the eyes, pelting him and hurling at him countless volleys of words. But he who is invisible defended himself invisibly.
3| Then, at a single nod of God, they were no more: men who a little before had lived in luxury and thrice-blessed fortune, who were hymned by all as equal to gods, who for long cycles of years had steered the government with distinction, during the time when their relations with the one they later warred against were friendly and peaceful. But when they set about daring to fight against God, ranging their own gods against ours as champions and shield-bearers, at once, at a single turn of the scale, by the nod of God and the power of the one they were warring against, they all paid the penalty for what they had dared; so that they gave way to the one they warred against, turned their backs to him, acknowledged his divinity, and conceded and permitted the very opposite of what they had dared before.
4| He at once raised trophies of victory everywhere on earth, adorning the whole inhabited world afresh, as from the beginning, with holy temples and august dedications of houses of prayer. In cities and villages, in every land and in the deserts of the barbarians, he consecrated shrines and sacred precincts to the one God, the King of all, who is also the Master of the universe; and so the consecrated buildings have been thought worthy of the Master's name, receiving their title not from men but from the Lord of the universe himself, which is why they have been honored with the name of the Lord's houses.
5| Let anyone who wishes come forward, then, and tell us who, after so great a demolition and desolation, raised buildings up from the ground to a height; who granted to what had been robbed of every hope a second renewal far better than the first, and did renew it. And this is the very greatest wonder of the account: he did it not after the death of those God-fighters, but while the very men who had torn them down were still alive, so that their daring was recanted, the recantation being sung by their own mouths and in their own writing; and they did this not in a cheerful mood, from some reckoning of humanity, as one might perhaps suppose, but driven by scourges sent from God.
6| Who, after so many storms of persecution, and at the very height of the dangers, gathered throughout the whole inhabited world countless men who were zealous for the philosophic life and servants of God, and priestesses among the women, and choirs of perpetual virgins who had dedicated the whole of their lives, in complete purity, to the lessons of his divine teaching; and who taught them to persevere most eagerly in abstinence from foods, in fasts and in going without wine for many days, and to practice self-control and the vigor of a hardy life with temperance? Who has persuaded women and countless multitudes of men to exchange the foods of the body for rational food suited to rational souls, through divine readings? Who taught barbarians and rustic men, women and children and households of slaves, countless multitudes of countless nations, to despise death and to be persuaded that their soul is immortal, that an eye of justice watches over human affairs, pious and impious, and that, looking for God's tribunals, they must for this reason care for a just and temperate life? For people not so disposed could not otherwise take on the yoke of godliness. This is achieved by our Savior alone, even to this day. But let us pass over these things.
7| Come, let us bring the man whose mind has turned to stone to the question in another way as well, inquiring of him in some such fashion as this: Come now, you there, utter a rational voice, not from a foolish heart but as the fruit of an intelligent and rational soul, and tell us, after you have considered it often within yourself: who else of all the wise men celebrated through the ages was, like our Savior, known and proclaimed beforehand by prophetic voices from on high, countless ages before, among the children of the Hebrews, dear to God of old? They grasped beforehand the place of his birth, the times of his coming, the manner of his life, his powers, his words and his achievements, and set them down in sacred books.
8| Or who has been shown to be so swift an avenger of what was dared against him, that together with the impiety against him the whole nation of the Jews was overtaken by an unseen power, their royal seat was utterly torn up from its foundations, and the temple itself with its holy things was brought down to the ground? And who, having spoken predictions about these very impious men and about the church that would be established by him throughout the whole inhabited world, predictions matching the facts, has shown them to be trustworthy by the events, as our Savior did? Of the temple of the impious he said: "Your house is left to you desolate," and: "Not a stone shall remain upon a stone in this place that shall not be torn down"; and of the church: "On the rock I shall build my church, and Hades' gates do not prevail over it."
9| And to take simple, rustic men from their fishing and change their calling, and make these the lawgivers and teachers of law for the world of men: how does this seem to you? And to promise, and to say in word and accomplish in deed, that they would be fishers of men, and to give them such virtue and power that they composed writings and handed down books, and made these so strong that throughout the whole inhabited world, translated into every tongue of barbarians and Greeks, they are studied among all nations, and what is set down in them is believed to be divine oracles?
10| And what of his prophesying the future and testifying beforehand to his disciples that they would be led before kings and governors, punished, and endure the last torments, not for any wrongful act but only for their confession of him? And to make them endure this willingly, and fence them with such weapons of piety that in their contests with their adversaries their souls appeared harder than adamant: what account would this not surpass?
11| And that not only those who followed him then, but their successors, and again those who came after, and those even down to our own day, should have their souls so strengthened that, having done nothing worthy of death, they endure with pleasure every kind of punishment and every form of torture for the sake of reverence toward the God of the universe: what account would this not surpass? But which of kings ever kept his power for so long an age? Who commands in this way after death, and sets up trophies over enemies, and subjects every place and country and city, Greek and barbarian, subduing his adversaries with an unseen and invisible right hand?
12| As for the chief point of all that has been said, the peace that his power has established over all the earth, about which we have already said what was fitting: what slanderer's mouth would it not stop, when the concord and harmony of all the nations has so plainly coincided in fact with our Savior's teaching and with the proclamation he laid down for the whole world, and when the world-wide peace of the nations, and the word he laid down for the nations, had been announced so long beforehand by the prophets of God? The whole length of the day would fail me, O emperor, if I tried to gather into one and set out the clear proofs of our Savior's divine power drawn from what is still to be seen now: that no one of all the ages, among Greeks or among barbarians, has ever displayed so great a power of divine virtue as our Savior has.
13| But why do I speak of men, when not even among the beings honored as gods by all the nations has any such nature appeared on earth? Or else let whoever wishes show it. Let every philosopher step forward and say: what god or hero was ever heard of, in all the ages, who handed down to human beings lessons that bring them to eternal life and a heavenly kingdom, as our Savior did; who made countless multitudes throughout the whole inhabited world train together in philosophic doctrines, and persuaded them to pursue heaven and to hope for the dwellings in heaven laid up for souls dear to God? What god, or hero among men, ever shone upon and illumined the earth from the sun's rising to its setting, driving very nearly the same course as the sun, with the brilliant rays of his teaching, so that everywhere on earth every nation performs one and the same worship to one God? What god or hero ever thrust aside all the gods and heroes, Greek and barbarian, laid down a law that none of them was to be regarded as a god, and, once he had laid it down, won people over; and then, attacked by all, though he was one alone, destroyed the whole army of his opponents, prevailing over all the gods and heroes of all the ages, so that from the ends of the earth, throughout the whole inhabited world, he alone is proclaimed God by all the nations?
14| Who has handed down to those who inhabit the great element of the earth, on land and on sea, the practice of coming together each week to keep as a festival the day called the Lord's day, and has prepared them not to fatten their bodies but to rekindle their souls with divine teachings? What god or hero, attacked as our Savior was, raised trophies of victory over his enemies? They never ceased, from first to last, to besiege his teachings and his people; but he, unseen, invisibly led his own, together with their very houses of worship, to a great height of glory.
15| And why should I strive to gather in words the divine powers of our Savior, which surpass all words, when, even if we are silent, the facts themselves cry aloud to those who have the ears of the soul: that the world of men has borne this truly strange and extraordinary thing, the only one of its kind in all the ages, and that the true Son of God, alone in all the ages, has been seen by those on earth?
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