His Works and the Works of the Pagan Gods

For what man who was ever born formed a body for himself from a virgin alone? What man ever healed such diseases as the common Lord of all has? Who has restored what was missing from man’s nature, and made someone blind from birth to see? Asclepius was made a god among them because he practiced medicine and discovered herbs for sick bodies. He did not form them himself out of the earth; he found them out by knowledge drawn from nature. But what is this compared with what the Savior did? Instead of healing a wound, he reshaped a man’s original nature and restored the body whole. Heracles is worshiped as a god among the Greeks because he fought against men, his equals, and killed wild beasts by cunning. What is this compared with what the Word did in driving away from man diseases and demons and death itself? Dionysus is worshiped among them because he taught man drunkenness; but the true Savior and Lord of all is mocked by these people for teaching self-control. [a]

But let these matters pass. What will they say about the other miracles of his Godhead? At what man’s death was the sun darkened and the earth shaken? Look, men are dying even to this day, and they died in the past as well. When did any wonder like this happen in their case? Or, to pass over the deeds done through his body and mention those after its rising again: whose teaching that ever existed has prevailed everywhere, one and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has flown through every land? Or if Christ is, as they say, a man and not God the Word, why do the gods they have not stop his worship from passing into the same lands where they are? Or why, on the contrary, does the Word himself, staying here, stop their worship by his teaching and put their deception to shame?