Many kings and tyrants have existed before this, and history records many wise men and magicians among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Indians. Which of them—not after death, I say, but even while alive—ever had such power that he filled the whole earth with his teaching and turned so great a multitude away from the superstition of idols as our Savior has brought from idols to Himself?
The philosophers of the Greeks composed many works with persuasive force and skill in words. But what result did they display that was as great as the Cross of Christ? Their subtle arguments seemed persuasive only until their deaths. Even the influence they appeared to possess while alive was divided by rivalry among themselves, as they competed and argued against one another.
But the Word of God, most remarkably, taught in simpler words and put the most accomplished sophists in the shade. He brought their teachings to nothing, drew everyone to Himself, and filled His own churches. And this is the remarkable thing: by going down to death as a human being, He brought to nothing the grand pronouncements of the wise about idols.
For whose death ever drove out demons? Whose death did demons ever fear as they fear Christ’s? Wherever the Savior’s Name is spoken, every demon is driven away. And who has so removed the passions of the soul from people that the sexually immoral become chaste, murderers no longer wield the sword, and those once mastered by cowardice become courageous?
In short, who persuaded people among the barbarians and among the nations in different places to lay aside their madness and set their minds on peace, except the faith of Christ and the sign of the Cross? Who else has given people such assurance of immortality as the Cross of Christ and the resurrection of His body?
For though the Greeks invented every kind of false tale, they were never able to invent a resurrection for their idols; it did not even occur to them whether a body could exist again after death. On this point one might especially commend them, because by thinking this way they exposed the weakness of their own idolatry and conceded the possibility to Christ, so that by this too He might be recognized by all as the Son of God.