sed that he should win the case if he could
make out by arguments that a journey of 700 miles had not been
accomplished in two days, Cicero not only had no fear of all the
force of the pleading of the opposing counsel, Hortensius, but
could not have been afraid even of greater orators than
Hortensius, men of the stamp of Cotta and Antonius and Crassus,
whose reputation for speaking he set higher than that of all
other men: for truth does sometimes stand out in so clear a light
that no artifice of word or deed can hide it. Now the case on our
side is clearer even than that position of Roscius. I have only
to evince this, that there is a Heaven, that there is a God, that
there is a Faith, that there is a Christ, and I have gained my
cause. Standing on such ground should I not pluck up heart? I may
be killed, beaten I cannot be. I take my stand on those Doctors,
whom that Spirit has instructed who is neither deceived nor
overcome. I beg of you, consent to be saved. Of those from whom I
obtain this consent I expect without the least doubt that all the
rest will follow. Only give yourselves up to take interest in
this inquiry, entreat Christ, add efforts of your own, and
certainly you will perceive how the case lies, how our
adversaries are in despair, and ourselves so solidly founded that
we cannot but desire this conflict with serene and high courage.
I am brief here, because I address you in the rest of my
discourse. Farewell.

FIRST REASON

HOLY WRIT

Of the many signs that tell of the adversaries' mistrust of their
own cause, none declares it so loudly as the shameful outrage
they put upon the majesty of the Holy Bible. After they have
dismissed with scorn the utterances and suffrages of the rest of
the witnesses, they are nevertheless brought to such straits that
they cannot hold their own otherwise than by laying violent hands
on the divine volumes themselves, thereby showing beyond all
question that they are brought to their last stand, and are
having recourse to the hardest and most extreme of expedients to
retrieve their desperate and ruined fortunes. What induced the
Manichees to tear out the Gospel of Matthew and the Acts of the
Apostles? Despair. For these volumes were a torment to men who
denied Christ's birth of a Virgin, and who pretended that the
Spirit then first descended upon Christians when their peculiar
Paraclete, a good-for-nothing Persian, made his appearance. What
induced the Ebionites to rej