3.

A great blessing truly is faith, great, and one which makes great those who hold it rightly with (good) living.¹ By this men (are enabled) to do the things of God in His² name. And well did Christ say,³ "If ye have faith ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove, and it shall remove" (Matt. xvii. 20 ); and again, "He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do." (c. xiv. 12.) What meaneth He by "greater"? Those which the disciples are seen after this to work. For even the shadow of Peter raised a dead man; and so the power of Christ was the more proclaimed. Since it was not so wonderful that He while alive should work miracles, as that when He was dead others should be enabled to work in His name greater than He wrought. This was an indisputable proof of the Resurrection; nor if (that Resurrection) had been seen by all, would it have been equally believed. For men might have said that it was an appearance, but one who saw that by His name alone greater miracles were wrought than when He conversed with men, could not disbelieve unless he were very senseless. A great blessing then is faith when it arises from glowing feelings, great love,⁴ and a fervent soul; it makes us truly wise, it hides our human meanness, and leaving reasonings beneath, it philosophizes about things in heaven; or rather what the wisdom of men cannot discover,⁵ it abundantly comprehends and succeeds in. Let us then cling to this, and not commit to reasonings⁶ what concerns ourselves. For tell me, why have not the Greeks been able to find out anything? Did they not know all the wisdom of the heathen?⁷ Why then could they not prevail against fishermen and tentmakers, and unlearned persons? Was it not because the one committed all to argument, the others to faith? and so these last were victorious over Plato and Pythagoras, in short, over all that had gone astray; and they surpass those whose lives had been worn out in⁸ astrology and geometry, mathematics and arithmetic, and who had been thoroughly instructed in⁹ every sort of learning, and¹⁰ were as much superior to them as true and real philosophers are superior to those who are by nature foolish and out of their senses.¹¹ For observe, these men asserted that the soul was immortal, or rather, they did not merely assert this, but persuaded others of it. The Greeks, on the contrary, did not at first know what manner of thing the soul was, and when they had found out, and had distinguished it from the body, they were again in the same case, the one asserting that it was incorporeal, the other that it was corporeal and was dissolved with the body. Concerning heaven again, the one said that it had life and was a god, but the fishermen both taught and persuaded that it was the work and device¹² of God. Now that the Greeks should use reasonings is nothing wonderful, but that those who seem to be believers, that "they" should be found carnal,¹³ this is what may justly be lamented.¹⁴ And on this account they have gone astray, some saying that they know God as He knoweth Himself, a thing which not even any of those Greeks have dared to assert; others that God cannot beget without passion, not even allowing Him any superiority over men;¹⁵ others again, that a righteous life and exact¹⁶ conversation avail nothing. But it is not the time to refute these things now.