The First Apology
Chapter XXX.—Was Christ not a...: Chapter XXX.—Was Christ not a magician?
Chapter XXX.—Was Christ not a magician?
But lest any one should meet us with the question, What should prevent that He whom we call Christ, being a man born of men, performed what we call His mighty works by magical art, and by this appeared to be the Son of God? we will now offer proof, not trusting mere assertions, but being of necessity persuaded by those who prophesied [of Him] before these things came to pass, for with our own eyes we behold things that have happened and are happening just as they were predicted; and this will, we think appear even to you the strongest and truest evidence.
Edition and rights
ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Historical English edition; series volume first published 1885.
Marcus Dods and George Reith
Ancient work and historical English translation: public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Copyright rules vary by country. This is a historical source transcription, not an official Church edition. Modern website material is not reproduced.
Historical footnotes and publisher introductions are omitted. Author-written openings are retained. Paragraph whitespace is normalized. Transcriptions can contain errors; this is not a critical edition. Attribution follows the historical edition, not universal scholarly agreement.
Digitization provenance (not an external reading link): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/s/schaff/anf01.xml
Source section: viii.ii.xxx · Text SHA-256: 53179e7c3cddc10fa9174f6c2aaa929b7a5d4c8cda0159f0ea7e6b0baa89dbc2