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On the Justice of the Divine Decrees.
happen; God has done as He has said and will do so again, for nothing is impossible to Him.
Especially the spread of the Christian faith.
Consider the beginning and progress of our religion. What a wonderful, incomprehensible thing it is! Who would ever have thought that twelve poor, ignorant, uncouth fishermen, such as the apostles were before their conversion, should be able to change the whole world, and to convince kings, emperors, and philosophers that they had been living in abominable errors, that their gods, to whom most magnificent temples had been erected almost everywhere over the world, were only instruments and tools of the devils? Who would believe that they should be able to persuade the Jews that the religion which they had received from their holy leader Moses, and which was revealed to him by God, was only a figure of ours, and was now of no more value? Who would believe that they should be able to persuade the nations of the world to abjure idolatry, and acknowledge and adore as the true God a poor Man who was crucified as a criminal, to love Him above all things with their whole hearts, and for His sake to suffer all the torments that could be inflicted on them, and a thousand deaths, if it were possible? Who would ever have imagined that those poor fishermen could persuade the world to adopt a religion and faith that appears to contradict natural reason, and comfort, arid sensuality, nay, to be opposed to nature itself; a religion in which poverty is more valued than riches, humiliations more than honors, crosses and trials more than all the joys of earth, for Christ’s sake, and that too merely through the hope of a future kingdom to be enjoyed after the death and decay of the body, a kingdom that no one has seen, a heaven that no one has ever laid eyes on, a happiness that no one has ever had experience of? Yet those poor fishermen succeeded in doing all this, without as much as a staff in their hands to drive off a barking dog, and that too they did although they were beaten out of one city into another, while all those who accepted their teaching and obeyed the law preached by them were tortured in the most frightful manner, and put to death by tyrants. Who could have believed such a thing possible before it actually took place? If I were to say to you: the great city of Rome or Constantinople shall in a short time be plundered and destroyed by twelve flies, who would credit my words? Certainly not one of you, my dear brethren. For my part I could not believe such a thing. And is it more incredible than that twelve ignorant