When it is said that Jesus Christ did not die for all, you take undue advantage of a fault in men who at once apply this exception to themselves; and this is to favour despair, instead of turning them from it to favour hope.  For men thus accustom themselves in inward virtues by outward customs.

781

The victory over death.  “What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?[309] Whosoever will save his soul, shall lose it."[310]

“I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil."[311]

“Lambs took not away the sins of the world, but I am the lamb which taketh away the sins."[312]

“Moses[313] hath not led you out of captivity, and made you truly free.”

782

...  Then Jesus Christ comes to tell men that they have no other enemies but themselves; that it is their passions which keep them apart from God; that He comes to destroy these, and give them His grace, so as to make of them all one Holy Church; that He comes to bring back into this Church the heathen and Jews; that He comes to destroy the idols of the former and the superstition of the latter.  To this all men are opposed, not only from the natural opposition of lust; but, above all, the kings of the earth, as had been foretold, join together to destroy this religion at its birth. (Proph.:  Quare fremuerunt gentes ... reges terrae ... adversus Christum.)[314]

All that is great on earth is united together; the learned, the wise, the kings.  The first write; the second condemn; the last kill.  And notwithstanding all these oppositions, these men, simple and weak, resist all these powers, subdue even these kings, these learned men and these sages, and remove idolatry from all the earth.  And all this is done by the power which had foretold it.

783

Jesus Christ would not have the testimony of devils, nor of those who were not called, but of God and John the Baptist.

784

I consider Jesus Christ in all persons and in ourselves:  Jesus Christ as a Father in His Father, Jesus Christ as a Brother in His Brethren, Jesus Christ as poor in the poor, Jesus Christ as rich in the rich, Jesus Christ as Doctor and Priest in priests, Jesus Christ as Sovereign in princes, etc.  For by His glory He is all that is great, being God; and by His mortal life He is all that is poor and abject.  Therefore He has taken this unhappy condition, so that He could be in all persons, and the model of all conditions.

785

Jesus Christ is an obscurity (according to what the world calls obscurity), such that historians, writing only of important matters of states, have hardly noticed Him.

786

On the fact that neither Josephus, nor Tacitus, nor other historians have spoken of Jesus Christ.—­So far is this from telling against Christianity, that on the contrary it tells for it.  For it is certain that Jesus Christ has existed; that His religion has made a great talk; and that these persons were not ignorant of it.  Thus it is plain that they purposely concealed it, or that, if they did speak of it, their account has been suppressed or changed.