Chapter III.—Miracles Alone, Without Prophecy, an Insufficient Evidence of Christ’s Mission.

A procedure795    Ordo. of this kind, you say, was not necessary, because He was forthwith to prove Himself the Son and the Sent One, and the Christ of God in very deed, by means of the evidence of His wonderful works.796    Virtutum, “miracles.” On my side, however, I have to deny that evidence simply of this sort was sufficient as a testimony to Him. He Himself afterwards deprived it of its authority,797    Exauctoravit. because when He declared that many would come and “show great signs and wonders,”798    Matt. xxiv. 24. [See Kaye, p. 125.] so as to turn aside the very elect, and yet for all that were not to be received, He showed how rash was belief in signs and wonders, which were so very easy of accomplishment by even false christs. Else how happens it, if He meant Himself to be approved and understood, and received on a certain evidence—I mean that of miracles—that He forbade the recognition of those others who had the very same sort of proof to show, and whose coming was to be quite as sudden and unannounced by any authority?799    Auctore. If, because He came before them, and was beforehand with them in displaying the signs of His mighty deeds, He therefore seized the first right to men’s faith,—just as the firstcomers do the first place in the baths,—and so forestalled all who came after Him in that right, take care that He, too, be not caught in the condition of the later comers, if He be found to be behindhand with the Creator, who had already been made known, and had already worked miracles like Him,800    Proinde. and like Him had forewarned men not to believe in others, even such as should come after Him. If, therefore, to have been the first to come and utter this warning, is to bar and limit faith,801    Cludet, quasi claudet. He will Himself have to be condemned, because He was later in being acknowledged; and authority to prescribe such a rule about later comers will belong to the Creator alone, who could have been posterior to none. And now, when I am about to prove that the Creator sometimes displayed by His servants of old, and in other cases reserved for His Christ to display, the self-same miracles which you claim as solely due to faith in your Christ, I may fairly even from this maintain that there was so much the greater reason wherefore Christ should not be believed in simply on account of His miracles, inasmuch as these would have shown Him to belong to none other (God) than the Creator, because answering to the mighty deeds of the Creator, both as performed by His servants and reserved for802    Repromissis in. His Christ; although, even if some other proofs should be found in your Christ—new ones, to wit—we should more readily believe that they, too, belong to the same God as do the old ones, rather than to him who has no other than new803    Tantummodo nova. proofs, such as are wanting in the evidences of that antiquity which wins the assent of faith,804    Egentia experimentis fidei victricis vetustatis. so that even on this ground he ought to have come announced as much by prophecies of his own building up faith in him, as by miracles, especially in opposition to the Creator’s Christ who was to come fortified by signs and prophets of His own, in order that he might shine forth as the rival of Christ by help of evidence of different kinds.  But how was his Christ to be foretold by a god who was himself never predicted? This, therefore, is the unavoidable inference, that neither your god nor your Christ is an object of faith, because God ought not to have been unknown, and Christ ought to have been made known through God.805    i.e., through God’s announcement by prophecy.

CAPUT III.

Non fuit, inquis, ordo ejusmodi necessarius, quia statim se et Filium, et missum, et Dei Christum rebus 0324A ipsis esset probaturus per documenta virtutum. At ego negabo, solam hanc illi speciem ad testimonium competisse, quam et ipse postmodum exauctoravit. Siquidem edicens (Matth. XXIV, 24) multos venturos , et signa facturos, et virtutes magnas edituros, aversionem etiam electorum , nec ideo tamen admittendos; temerariam signorum et virtutum fidem ostendit, ut etiam apud pseudochristos facillimarum . Aut quale est, si inde se voluit probari, et intelligi, et recipi (ex virtutibus dico) unde caeteros noluit, aeque et ipsos tam subito venturos, quam a nullo auctore praedicatos? Si quia prior eis venit, et prior virtutum documenta signavit, idcirco, quasi locum in balneis, ita fidem occupavit, posteris quibusque praeripuit, vide ne ipse in conditione posteriorum 0324B deprehendatur, posterior inventus Creatore, ante jam cognito, et proinde virtutes ante operato, et non aliter praefato non esse aliis credendum, post eum scilicet. Igitur si priorem venisse, et priorem de posteris pronuntiasse, hoc fidem cludet ; praedamnatus erit et ipse jam ab eo quod posterior est agnitus, et solius erit auctoritas Creatoris, hoc in posteros constituendi, qui nullo posterior esse potuit. Jam nunc cum probaturus sim Creatorem easdem virtutes, quas solas ad fidem Christo tuo vindicas, interdum per famulos suos retro edidisse, interdum per Christum suum edendas destinasse; possum et ex hoc merito praescribere, tanto magis Christum non ex solis virtutibus credendum fuisse, quanto illum non alterius quam Creatoris interpretari potuissent, 0324C ut respondentes virtutibus Creatoris, et editis per famulos suos, et in Christum suum repromissis. Quanquam et si alia documenta invenirentur in tuo Christo, nova scilicet, facilius crederemus etiam nova ejusdem esse cujus et vetera, quam cujus tantummodo nova; egentia experimentis fidei victricis vetustatis; ut sic quoque praedicatus venire debuerit, tam praedicationibus propriis exstruentibus ei fidem, quam et virtutibus; praesertim adversus Christum Creatoris venturum, et signis et prophetis propriis munitum; ut aemulus Christi per omnes diversitatum species reluceret. Sed quomodo a Deo nunquam 0325A praedicato Christus ejus praedicaretur? Hoc est ergo quod exigit, nec Deum, nec Christum tuum credi, quia et Deus ignotus esse non debuit, et Christus agnosci per Deum debuit.