9.

By which things, and by many deeds of this kind tending to His glory, it appeared to follow as a consequence, that in whatever manner the Jews think about Christ, and although they do not believe concerning Jesus Christ our Lord, that even they themselves thought that such and so great a one would without any death endure to eternity, and would possess the kingdom of Israel, and of the whole world for ever; and that it should not be destroyed. Whence, moreover, the Jews dared to seize Him by force, and anoint Him for the kingdom, which indeed He was compelled to evade; and therefore His disciples thought that in no other way would He bestow upon them eternal life, except He Himself had first continued this temporal life into that eternal one in His own experience. In fine, when they were passing through Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after three days He shall rise again." ¹ and they were greatly grieved, because, as we have said, they had formed a very different notion previously in their minds and hearts. And again, this also was the speech of the Jews, in contradiction against Him, when He taught them of Himself, and announced future things to them, and they said, "We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou that the Son of man must be lifted up?" ² And so there was this same presumption concerning Christ in the mind of the disciples, even as Peter himself, the leader and chief of the apostles, broke forth into that expression of his own incredulity. For when he, together with the others, had been asked by the Lord what he thought about Him, that is, whom he thought Him to be, and had first of all confessed the truth, saying that He was the Christ the Son of the living God, and therefore was judged blessed by Him because he had arrived at this truth, not after the flesh, but by the revelation of the heavenly Father; yet this same Peter, when Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, and priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after the third day rise again from the dead; nevertheless that true confessor of Christ, after a few days, taking Him aside, began to rebuke Him, saying, "Be propitious to Thyself: this shall not be;" ³ so that on that account he deserved to hear from the Lord, "Get thee behind me, Satan; ⁴ thou art an offence unto me, because he savoured not the things which are of God, but those things which are of men." Which rebuke against Peter became more and more apparent when the Lord was apprehended, and, frightened by the damsel, he said, "I know not what thou sayest, neither know I thee;" ⁵ and again when, using an oath, he said this same thing; and for the third time, cursing and swearing, he affirmed that he knew not the man, and not once, but frequently, denied Him. ⁶ And this disposition, because it was to continue to him even to the Lord's passion, was long before made manifest by the Lord, that we also might not be ignorant of it. Again, after the Lord's resurrection, one of His disciples, Cleopas, when he was, according to the error of all his fellow-disciples, sorrowfully telling what had happened to the Lord Himself, as if to some unknown person, spoke thus, saying of Jesus the Nazarene, "who was a prophet mighty in deed and in word before God and all the people; how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and fastened Him to the cross. But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel." ⁷ And in addition to these things, all the disciples also judged the declaration of the women who had seen the Lord after the resurrection to be idle tales; and some of themselves, when they had seen Him, believed not, but doubted; and they who were not then present believed not at all until they had been subsequently by the Lord Himself in all ways rebuked and reproached; because His death had so offended them that they thought that He had not risen again, who they had believed ought not to have died, because contrary to their belief He had died once. And thus, as far as concerns the disciples themselves, they are found to have had a faith neither sound nor perfect in such matters as we have referred to; and what is much more serious, they moreover baptized others, as it is written in the Gospel according to John.