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That He would teach men the perfect way.

And there has never come, before Him nor after Him, any man who has taught anything divine approaching to this.

733

...  That Jesus Christ would be small in His beginning, and would then increase.  The little stone of Daniel.

If I had in no wise heard of the Messiah, nevertheless, after such wonderful predictions of the course of the world which I see fulfilled, I see that He is divine.  And if I knew that these same books foretold a Messiah, I should be sure that He would come; and seeing that they place His time before the destruction of the second temple, I should say that He had come.

734

Prophecies.—­That the Jews would reject Jesus Christ, and would be rejected of God, for this reason, that the chosen vine brought forth only wild grapes.  That the chosen people would be fruitless, ungrateful, and unbelieving, populum non credentem et contradicentem.[275] That God would strike them with blindness, and in full noon they would grope like the blind; and that a forerunner would go before Him.

735

Transfixerunt. Zech. xii, 10.

That a deliverer should come, who would crush the demon’s head, and free His people from their sins, ex omnibus iniquitatibus; that there should be a New Covenant, which would be eternal; that there should be another priesthood after the order of Melchisedek, and it should be eternal; that the Christ should be glorious, mighty, strong, and yet so poor that He would not be recognised, nor taken for what He is, but rejected and slain; that His people who denied Him should no longer be His people; that the idolaters should receive Him, and take refuge in Him; that He should leave Zion to reign in the centre of idolatry; that nevertheless the Jews should continue for ever; that He should be of Judah, and when there should be no longer a king.

SECTION XII

PROOFS OF JESUS CHRIST

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...  Therefore I reject all other religions.  In that way I find an answer to all objections.  It is right that a God so pure should only reveal Himself to those whose hearts are purified.  Hence this religion is lovable to me, and I find it now sufficiently justified by so divine a morality.  But I find more in it.

I find it convincing that, since the memory of man has lasted, it was constantly announced to men that they were universally corrupt, but that a Redeemer should come; that it was not one man who said it, but innumerable men, and a whole nation expressly made for the purpose, and prophesying for four thousand years.  This is a nation which is more ancient than every other nation.  Their books, scattered abroad, are four thousand years old.

The more I examine them, the more truths I find in them:  an entire nation foretell Him before His advent, and an entire nation worship Him after His advent; what has preceded and what has followed; in short, people without idols and kings, this synagogue which was foretold, and these wretches who frequent it, and who, being our enemies, are admirable witnesses of the truth of these prophecies, wherein their wretchedness and even their blindness are foretold.