I am aware that Cicero, in the third book of his De Republica, if Imistake not, argues that a first-rate power will not engage in war except either for honor or for safety.What he has to say about the question of safety, and what he means by safety, he explains in another place, saying, "Private persons frequently evade, by a speedy death, destitution, exile, bonds, the scourge, and the other pains which even the most insensible feel.But to states, death, which seems to emancipate individuals from all punishments, is itself a punishment; for a state should be so constituted as to be eternal.And thus death is not natural to a republic as to a man, to whom death is not only necessary, but often even desirable.But when a state is destroyed obliterated, annihilated, it is as if (to compare great things with small) this whole world perished and collapsed." Cicero said this because he, with the Platonists, believed that the world would not perish.
It is therefore agreed that, according to Cicero, a state should engage in war for the safety which preserves the state permanently in existence though its citizens change; as the foliage of an olive or laurel, or any tree of this kind, is perennial, the old leaves being replaced by fresh ones.For death, as he says, is no punishment to individuals, but rather delivers them from all other punishments, but it is a punishment to the state.And therefore it is reasonably asked whether the Saguntines did right when they chose that their whole state should perish rather than that they should break faith with the Roman republic; for this deed of theirs is applauded by the citizens of the earthly republic.But I do not see how they could follow the advice of Cicero, who tell us that no war is to be undertaken save for safety or for honor;neither does he say which of these two is to be preferred, if a case should occur in which the one could not be preserved without the loss of the other.For manifestly, if the Saguntines chose safety, they must break faith; if they kept faith, they must reject safety; as also it fell out.But the safety of the city of God is such that it can be retained, or rather acquired, by faith and with faith; but if faith be abandoned, no one can attain it.It is this thought of a most steadfast and patient spirit that has made so many noble martyrs, while Romulus has not had, and could not have, so much as one to die for his divinity.
CHAP.7.--THAT THE WORLD'S BELIEF IN CHRIST IS THE RESULT OF DIVINEPOWER, NOT OF
HUMAN PERSUASION.
But it is thoroughly ridiculous to make mention of the false divinity of Romulus as any way comparable to that of Christ.
Nevertheless, if Romulus lived about six hundred years before Cicero, in an age which already was so enlightened that it rejected all impossibilities, how much more, in an age which certainly was more enlightened, being six hundred years later, the age of Cicero himself, and of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, would the human mind have refused to listen to or believe in the resurrection of Christ's body and its ascension into heaven, and have scouted it as an impossibility, had not the divinity of the truth itself, or the truth of the divinity, and corroborating miraculous signs, proved that it could happen and had happened?
Through virtue of these testimonies, and notwithstanding the opposition and terror of so many cruel persecutions, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh, first in Christ, and subsequently in all in the new world, was believed, was intrepidly proclaimed, and was sown over the whole world, to be fertilized richly with the blood of the martyrs.For the predictions of the prophets that had preceded the events were read, they were corroborated by powerful signs, and the truth was seen to be not contradictory to reason, but only different from customary ideas, so that at length the world embraced the faith it had furiously persecuted.
CHAP.8.--OF MIRACLES WHICH WERE WROUGHT THAT THE WORLD MIGHT BELIEVEIN CHRIST, AND WHICH HAVE NOT CEASED SINCE THE WORLD BELIEVED.
Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were wrought formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that it might believe.And whoever now-a-days demands to see prodigies that he may believe, is himself a great prodigy, because he does not believe, though the whole world does.But they make these objections for the sole purpose of insinuating that even those former miracles were never wrought.How, then, is it that everywhere Christ is celebrated with such firm belief in His resurrection and ascension? How is it that in enlightened times, in which every impossibility is rejected, the world has, without any miracles, believed things marvellously incredible? Or will they say that these things were credible, and therefore were credited?