Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter LVI

by Arnobius

56. But our writers, we shall be told, have put forth these statements with false effrontery; they have extolled^[1] small matters to an inordinate degree, and have magnified trivial affairs with most pretentious boastfulness. And^[2] would that all things could have been reduced to writing,—both those which were done by Himself, and those which were accomplished by His apostles with equal authority and power. Such an assemblage of miracles, however, would make you more incredulous; and perhaps you might be able to discover a passage from which^[3] it would seem very probable, both that additions were made to facts, and that falsehoods were inserted in writings and commentaries. But in nations which were unknown to the writers, and which themselves knew not the use of letters, all that was done could not have been embraced in the records or even have reached the ears of all men; or, if any were committed to written and connected narrative, some insertions and additions would have been made by the malevolence of the demons and of men like to them, whose care and study it is to obstruct^[4] the progress of this truth: there would have been some changes and mutilations of words and of syllables, at once to mar the faith of the cautious and to impair the moral effect of the deeds. But it will never avail them that it be gathered from written testimony only who and what Christ was; for His cause has been put on such a basis, that if what we say be admitted to be true, He is by the confession of all proved to have been God.

Footnotes

1. According to Rigaltius the ms. reads ista promiserunt in immensum—“have put forth (i.e., exaggerated) these things to an immense degree falsely, small matters and trivial affairs have magnified,” etc.; while by a later hand has been superscribed over in immensum, in ink of a different colour, extulere—“have extolled.”
2. So the ms., 1st ed., and Hildebrand, while all others read atqu-i—“but.”
3. So LB., reading quo for the ms. quod.
4. So most edd., reading intercip-erefor the ms. intercipi—“it is that the progress be obstructed,” etc.