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The City of God

Chapter 7.--That the World's Belief in Christ is the Result of Divine Power, Not of Human Persuasion.

But it is thoroughly ridiculous to make mention of the false divinity of Romulus as any way comparable to that of Christ. Nevertheless, if Romulus lived about six hundred years before Cicero, in an age which already was so enlightened that it rejected all impossibilities, how much more, in an age which certainly was more enlightened, being six hundred years later, the age of Cicero himself, and of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, would the human mind have refused to listen to or believe in the resurrection of Christ's body and its ascension into heaven, and have scouted it as an impossibility, had not the divinity of the truth itself, or the truth of the divinity, and corroborating miraculous signs, proved that it could happen and had happened? Through virtue of these testimonies, and notwithstanding the opposition and terror of so many cruel persecutions, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh, first in Christ, and subsequently in all in the new world, was believed, was intrepidly proclaimed, and was sown over the whole world, to be fertilized richly with the blood of the martyrs. For the predictions of the prophets that had preceded the events were read, they were corroborated by powerful signs, and the truth was seen to be not contradictory to reason, but only different from customary ideas, so that at length the world embraced the faith it had furiously persecuted.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput VII: Quod ut mundus in Christum crederet, uirtutis fuerit diuinae, non persuasionis humanae.

Sed ualde ridiculum est de Romuli falsa diuinitate, cum de Christo loquimur, facere mentionem. uerumtamen cum sescentis ferme annis ante Ciceronem Romulus fuerit atque illa aetas iam fuisse doctrinis dicatur exculta, ut quod fieri non potest omne respueret, quanto magis post sescentos annos ipsius tempore Ciceronis maximeque postea sub Augusto atque Tiberio, eruditioribus utique temporibus, resurrectionem carnis Christi atque in caelum adscensionem, tamquam id quod fieri non potest, mens humana ferre non posset eludensque ab auribus cordibusque respueret, nisi eam fieri potuisse atque factam esse diuinitas ipsius ueritatis uel diuinitatis ueritas et contestantia miraculorum signa monstrarent; ut terrentibus et contradicentibus tam multis tamque magnis persecutionibus praecedens in Christo, deinde in ceteris ad nouum saeculum secutura resurrectio atque inmortalitas carnis et fidelissime crederetur et praedicaretur intrepide et per orbem terrae pullulatura fecundius cum martyrum sanguine sereretur. legebantur enim praeconia praecedentia prophetarum, concurrebant ostenta uirtutum, et persuadebatur ueritas noua consuetudini, non contraria rationi, donec orbis terrae, qui persequebatur furore, sequeretur fide.