Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
5| With what authority the Savior's voice was uttered, what virtue it showed, with how much power it was filled, how great too was its love for mankind and its readiness to do good, so that he offered his presence on the spot, and what a wonder the kindness was, one cannot even conceive worthily. For he said no more to the tribune than "As you have believed, let it be done for you," and with the word he granted healing to the man's servant and at once freed from his sickness one who had been all but seized by death; how did this not show him to be truly God speaking through a mortal voice? But if anyone is incredulous toward this because the wonder is so great, he could not reasonably make the same excuse about the prediction, in which the proof by fact will be shown to be greater, if one considers that at that time the tribune who came to the Savior was one Roman, who showed a confession toward him greater and more right-minded than that of the Jewish nation; but our Savior foretells that instead of one there will be many who are to come to him as that man did, from the regions toward the dawn and the sunrise and from those who dwell where the sun goes down, men who through their [….] and confession toward him will be counted worthy of honor with God equal to that of the forefathers of the Hebrews. For indeed their forefather himself, the celebrated Abraham, sprang from superstitious fathers and changed his way of life, withdrawing from the error of many gods and coming to know the one God over all. And our Savior foretells that countless men throughout the whole inhabited world will become like him and his sons Isaac and Jacob, and most of all the nations toward the dawn and those who dwell where the sun goes down. And he adds to these the greatest part of the prediction: that the Jews themselves, the descendants of those friends of God, who boast of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, because of their opposition and unbelief toward him, as men deprived of the light of knowledge, will be cast out into the outer darkness. In some such words he proclaimed beforehand their ignorance and utter want of learning, and their loss of the saving light. Here one ought to fix one's mind on the outcomes and take them in with one's own eyes: the Jews, who pride themselves on being the race of the friends of God we have named, have been expelled, and not merely from the kingdom of God, but from their own holy and royal mother city as well. And in place of the single tribune who came to the Savior long ago, a countless number of men from all the nations, not tribunes only but the whole multitude of the Roman army, together with tens of thousands of rulers and governors who hold sway over the nations and the provinces, and others above these in honor and rank who hold their dignity in the palaces, come, like that tribune, to God's Christ, and through his [….] the God of the friends of God who shone among the Hebrews, and they have been counted worthy of the same reward as those men themselves before God, the King of all.
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