Power Given in His Own Name

But why do we spend so long on your wild blasphemy, with arguments that are clear enough but still slight? Let us hear God himself speaking to his disciples: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” And again he says, “In my name you will cast out demons.” Did he, who made his own name a power, need another’s name to use his power? And what does he add? “See,” he says, “I have given you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” He says of himself that he was gentle and humble in heart, as indeed he was. How was it, then, that in the greatest power there could be he commanded others to work in his own name, if he himself worked in another’s name? Or did he give to others as his own what, according to you, he himself did not have unless he received it from another? [a]

But tell me, which of the saints who received power from God ever worked like that? Would Peter not have been thought a lunatic, or John a madman, or Paul out of his mind, if they had said to the sick, “Rise in our name,” or to the lame, “Walk in our name,” or to the dead, “Live in our name,” or to others, “We give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy”? So you see your own madness from this. Just as these words are mad if they come from a man’s self-confidence, so you are utterly mad if you do not see that they come from divine power. You must admit one of two things: either that a man could possess divine power and give it, or else, if no man can do this, that the one who could do it was God. For no one can grant divine power out of his own generosity except the one who possesses it by nature.