Chapter XX.

To make up for our delay in this, we bring under your notice something of even greater importance; we point to the majesty of our Scriptures, if not to their antiquity. If you doubt that they are as ancient as we say, we offer proof that they are divine.  And you may convince yourselves of this at once, and without going very far. Your instructors, the world, and the age, and the event, are all before you.  All that is taking place around you was fore-announced; all that you now see with your eye was previously heard by the ear. The swallowing up of cities by the earth; the theft of islands by the sea; wars, bringing external and internal convulsions; the collision of kingdoms with kingdoms; famines and pestilences, and local massacres, and widespread desolating mortalities; the exaltation of the lowly, and the humbling of the proud; the decay of righteousness, the growth of sin, the slackening interest in all good ways; the very seasons and elements going out of their ordinary course, monsters and portents taking the place of nature’s forms—it was all foreseen and predicted before it came to pass. While we suffer the calamities, we read of them in the Scriptures; as we examine, they are proved. Well, the truth of a prophecy, I think, is the demonstration of its being from above.  Hence there is among us an assured faith in regard to coming events as things already proved to us, for they were predicted along with what we have day by day fulfilled. They are uttered by the same voices, they are written in the same books—the same Spirit inspires them. All time is one to prophecy foretelling the future. Among men, it may be, a distinction of times is made while the fulfilment is going on: from being future we think of it as present, and then from being present we count it as belonging to the past. How are we to blame, I pray you, that we believe in things to come as though they already were, with the grounds we have for our faith in these two steps?

CAPUT. XX.

Plus jam offerimus pro ista dilatione, majestatem 0389A Scripturarum, si non vetustatem ; divinas probamus, si dubitatur antiquas . Nec hoc tardius aut aliunde discendum: coram sunt, quae docebunt, mundus, et saeculum, et exitus. Quidquid agitur, praenuntiabatur; quidquid videtur, audiebatur. Quod terrae vorant urbes, quod insulas maria fraudant; quod externa atque interna bella dilaniant; 0390A quod regnis regna compulsant; quod fames et lues et locales quaeque clades et frequentiae pleraque montium vastant; quod humiles sublimitate, sublimes humilitate mutantur; quod justitia rarescit, iniquitas increbrescit, bonarum omnium disciplinarum cura torpescit; quod etiam officia temporum 0391A et elementorum munia exorbitant ; quod et monstris et portentis naturalium forma turbatur, providenter scripta sunt . Dum patimur, leguntur; dum recognoscimus, probantur. Idoneum, opinor, testimonium divinitatis veritas divinationis. Hinc igitur apud nos futurorum quoque fides tuta est, jam scilicet probatorum, quia cum illis, quae quotidie probantur, praedicebantur. Eadem voces sonant, eadem litterae notant, idem spiritus pulsat, unum tempus est divinationi futura praefanti apud homines, si forte distinguitur dum expungitur, dum ex futuro praesens, dehinc ex praesenti praeteritum deputatur. Quid delinquimus, oro vos, futura quoque credentes, qui jam didicimus illis per duos gradus credere?