Is not the accomplishment of a prophecy a testimony to its truth?  Seeing that events which are past have vindicated these prophecies, shall we be blamed for trusting them in events that are to come?  Now, as we believe things that have been prophesied and have come to pass, so we believe things that have been told us, but not yet come to pass, because they have all been foretold by the same Scriptures, as well those that are verified every day as those that still remain to be fulfilled.

These Holy Scriptures teach us that there is one God, who made the world out of nothing, who, though daily seen, is invisible; his infiniteness is known only to himself; his immensity conceals, but at the same time discovers him.  He has ordained for men, according to their lives, rewards and punishments; he will raise all the dead that have ever lived from the creation of the world, will command them to reassume their bodies, and thereupon adjudge them to felicity that has so end, or to eternal flames.  The fires of hell are those hidden flames which the earth shuts up in her bosom.  He has in past times sent into the world preachers or prophets.  The prophets of those old times were Jews; they addressed their oracles, for such they were, to the Jews, who have stored them up in the Scriptures.  On them, as has been said, Christianity is founded, though the Christian differs in his ceremonies from the Jew.  We are accused of worshiping a man, and not the God of the Jews.  Not so.  The honor we bear to Christ does not derogate from the honor we bear to God.

On account of the merit of these ancient patriarchs, the Jews were the only beloved people of God; he delighted to be in communication with them by his own mouth.  By him they were raised to admirable greatness.  But with perversity they wickedly ceased to regard him; they changed his laws into a profane worship.  He warned them that he would take to himself servants more faithful than they, and, for their crime, punished them by driving them forth from their country.  They are now spread all over the world; they wander in all parts; they cannot enjoy the air they breathed at their birth; they have neither man nor God for their king.  As he threatened them, so he has done.  He has taken, in all nations and countries of the earth, people more faithful than they.  Through his prophets he had declared that these should have greater favors, and that a Messiah should come, to publish a new law among them.  This Messiah was Jesus, who is also God.  For God may be derived from God, as the light of a candle may be derived from the light of another candle.  God and his Son are the self-same God—­a light is the same light as that from which it was taken.