Virginity Taught and Savage Peoples Tamed

Again, what human being, after his death or while still alive, taught about virginity, and taught that this virtue was not impossible for human beings? But Christ, our Savior and King of all, had such power in his teaching about it that even children not yet of the lawful age vow the virginity that lies beyond the law. What man has ever been able to go so far as to come among the Scythians and Ethiopians, or Persians, Armenians or Goths, or those we hear of beyond the ocean, or those beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans, people devoted to magic, superstitious beyond nature and savage in their ways, and to preach at all about virtue and self-control, and against the worship of idols, as the Lord of all has done, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? He not only preached through his own disciples, but also brought persuasion to people’s minds, to lay aside the fierceness of their ways, to stop serving their ancestral gods, and to learn to know him, and through him to worship the Father. [a]

For in the past, while they were idolaters, Greeks and barbarians used to make war on each other, and were cruel even to their own kin. No one could cross sea or land at all without arming his hand with a sword, because of their relentless fighting among themselves. The whole course of their life was carried on by arms; the sword took the place of a walking staff for them and was their support in every emergency. And all the while, as I said before, they were serving idols and offering sacrifices to demons, yet for all their idolatrous superstition they could not be won back from this spirit. But when they come over to the school of Christ, then, strange to say, as people truly pricked in conscience, they lay aside the savagery of their murders and no longer set their minds on the things of war. Everything is at peace with them, and from then on what makes for friendship is what they like.