lled them.

To report to you, Fausta, this part of his defence, must be needless,
and could not prove otherwise than painful. He then also refuted in the
same manner other common objections alleged against the Christians and
their worship; the lateness of its origin; its beggarly simplicity; the
low and ignorant people who alone or chiefly, both in Rome and
throughout the world, have received it; the fierce divisions and
disputes among the Christians themselves; the uncertainty of its
doctrines; the rigor of its morality, as unsuited to mankind; as also
its spiritual worship; the slowness of its progress, and the little
likelihood that, if God were its author, he would leave it to be trodden
under foot and so nearly annihilated by the very people to whom he was
sending it; these and other similar things usually urged against the
Christians, and now for the first time, it is probable, by most of the
Romans present, heard, refuted, and explained, did Probus set forth,
both with brevity and force; making nothing tedious by reason of a
frivolous minuteness, nor yet omitting a single topic or argument, which
it was due to the cause he defended, to bring before the minds of that
august assembly. He then ended his appeal in the following manner:

'And now, great Emperor, must you have seen, in what I have already
said, what the nature and character of this religion is; for in denying
and disproving the charges that have been brought against it, I have, in
most particulars, alleged and explained some opposite truth or doctrine,
by which it is justly characterized. But that you may be informed the
more exactly for what it is you are about to persecute and destroy us,
and for what it is that we cheerfully undergo torture and death sooner
than surrender or deny it, listen yet a moment longer. You have heard
that we are named after Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, who, in the
reign of Tiberius, was born in Judea, and there lived and taught, a
prophet and messenger of God, till he was publicly crucified by his
bitter enemies the Jews. We do not doubt, nay, we all steadfastly
believe, that this Jesus was the Son of the Most High God, by reason of
his wonderful endowments and his delegated office as the long-looked-for
Messiah of the Jews. As the evidences of his great office and of his
divine origin, he performed those miracles that filled with astonishment
the whole Jewish nation, and strangers from all parts of the world; and