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?