Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
8| And since it had been spoken prophetically, in the prophecies set down in writing, as from his person: "Request it of me, and I shall give you nations as your inheritance, and the limits of the earth as your possession," for this reason, as though the prophetic testimony were now fulfilled in fact, he says to his disciples: "All authority has been given to me, as in heaven, so also on earth." For over the things in heaven he had held the kingship from eternity, but over those "on earth" he says that rule has now been given him "by the Father," in keeping with "Request it of me, and I shall give you nations as your inheritance." For long ago, as Moses testifies, "when the Most High [….] nations, he set the boundaries of the nations in proportion to the number of the angels." The angels of God were over all of them before; but when mankind [….] into the error of many gods, and the presiding angels could give no help against it, then at last the common Savior of all himself, through his [….], after his victory over death, teaches that authority over the nations on earth has been given by the Father no longer to angels but to him. That is why he bade his disciples, not earlier but now, to go round and make all the nations their disciples. And of necessity he adds the mystery of cleansing too. For those of the nations who turned had to be cleansed by his power "from every defilement" and pollution, since they were soiled by the demonic and idolatrous error and caught fast in every kind of pollution, and had only just now for the first time changed from a licentious and lawless life. And after the cleansing through his mystical teaching he bids them teach these people, not the Jewish precepts nor the ordinances of Moses, but all that he himself had commanded them to keep. These were the things which all of them, going round all the nations, handed down with one voice to all their converts and to all the churches throughout the inhabited world. And of necessity he urges them on and makes them more eager to go hunting, to go round all the nations and make disciples of every race of men, by the promise he made them when he said: "And behold, I am with you." Upon this word of promise he set a deed: by divine power he was with each of them and present with all of them together, breathing with them and working with them, and he made their success sure, showing them to be teachers to all the nations of the religion he had handed down. Taking courage from this promise, then, they fulfilled his words in deed. At once, without delay, with all eagerness they went out to teach the nations, having received him in very fact and seeing with their own eyes alive the one who had died a little before; the very one whom they had forsworn and denied because of what had happened, they saw plainly present in his own person, conversing with them as he used to and promising them what he had foretold, and they had no way to disbelieve the promises, because of the sight they beheld. They might indeed have shrunk from the command, conscious of their own rusticity and lack of skill in speech; for this they might perhaps even have begged to be excused, reasoning, naturally enough, that it was not possible for men who were Syrians in their tongue and knew nothing more than fishing to set themselves up as teachers of Greeks and Romans alike, of Egyptians and Persians and the other barbarian nations, and to lay down laws against the lawgivers and kings everywhere on earth, contrary to what had been laid down from all time about the ancestral gods. But they could not entertain such thoughts, since they had heard God's voice saying to them, "Behold, I am with you all the days," and saw plainly the Godhead of the one who spoke, which had shown itself stronger than death. So fear of disobeying came upon them; and so they went to close quarters with the dangers, having received from their teacher the pledges of the life after death, and they went out boldly on their circuit of all the nations, making good their teacher's promises by deeds [….]
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