47. These facts set forth in sanctuary we have put forward, not on the supposition that the greatness of the agent was to be seen in these virtues alone.94    [I have already directed attention to Dominic Diodati’s essay, De Christo Græce loquente. ed. London, 1843.] For however great these things be, how excessively petty and trifling will they be found to be, if it shall be revealed from what realms He has come, of what God He is the minister! But with regard to the acts which were done by Him, they were performed, indeed, not that He might boast Himself into empty ostentation, but that hardened and unbelieving men might be assured that what was professed was not deceptive, and that they might now learn to imagine, from the beneficence of His works, what a true god was. At the same time we wish this also to be known,95    So almost all edd.; but the ms. and 1st and 2d Roman edd. read scire—“to know,” etc. when, as was said, an enumeration of His acts has been given in summary, that Christ was able to do not only those things which He did, but that He could even overcome the decrees of fate. For if, as is evident, and as is agreed by all, infirmities and bodily sufferings, if deafness, deformity, and dumbness, if shrivelling of the sinews and the loss of sight happen to us, and are brought on us by the decrees of fate and if Christ alone has corrected this, has restored and cured man, it is clearer than the sun himself that He was more powerful than the fates are when He has loosened and overpowered those things which were bound with everlasting knots, and fixed by unalterable necessity.

XLVII. Et haec quidem summatim exposita, non ea ratione protulimus, tanquam magnitudo facientis solis in his esset perspicienda virtutibus. Quanta sint enim haec, vel exilitatis cujus reperientur, et ludi, si traditum fuerit nosci, ex quibus ad nos regnis, cujus numinis ministrator advenerit? Quae quidem ab eo gesta sunt, et factitata, non ut se vana ostentatione jactaret, sed ut homines duri, atque increduli scirent non esse, quod spondebatur, falsum: et ex operum benignitate, quid esset Deus verus, jam addiscerent suspicari. Simul et illud volumus sciri, cum summatim, ut dictum est, enumeratio facta gestorum est, non ea solum Christum potuisse, quae fecit, sed constituta etiam exuperasse fatorum. Nam si, ut liquet, 0779B et constat, debilitates et corporum passiones, surdi, manci et muti, nervorum contractio et amissio luminis, fatalibus accidunt irroganturque decretis, et solus haec Christus correxit, restituit, atque sanavit: sole ipso est clarius, potentiorem illum fuisse, quam fata sunt, cum ea solvit et vicit, quae perpetuis nexibus, et immobili fuerant necessitate devincta.