For birth is an aid towards an individual’s becoming famous, and
distinguished, and talked about; viz., when a man’s parents happen to be
in a position of rank and influence, and are possessed of wealth, and
are able to spend it upon the education of their son, and when the
country of one’s birth is great and illustrious; but when a man having
all these things against him is able, notwithstanding these hindrances,
to make himself known, and to produce an impression on those who hear of
him, and to become distinguished and visible to the whole world, which
speaks of him as it did not do before, how can we help admiring such a
nature as being both noble in itself, and devoting itself to great
deeds, and possessing a courage which is not by any means to be
despised? And if one were to examine more fully the history of such an
individual, why should he not seek to know in what manner, after being
reared up in frugality and poverty, and without receiving any complete
education, and without having studied systems and opinions by means of
which he might have acquired confidence to associate with multitudes,
and play the demagogue, and attract to himself many hearers, he
nevertheless devoted himself to the teaching of new opinions,
introducing among men a doctrine which not only subverted the customs of
the Jews, while preserving due respect for their prophets, but which
especially overturned the established observances of the Greeks
regarding the Divinity? And how could such a person—one who had been so
brought up, and who, as his calumniators admit, had learned nothing
great from men—have been able to teach, in a manner not at all to be
despised, such doctrines as he did regarding the divine judgment, and
the punishments that are to overtake wickedness, and the rewards that
are to be conferred upon virtue; so that not only rustic and ignorant
individuals were won by his words, but also not a few of those who were
distinguished by their wisdom, and who were able to discern the hidden
meaning in those more common doctrines, as they were considered, which
were in circulation, and which secret meaning enwrapped, so to speak,
some more recondite signification still? The Seriphian, in Plato, who
reproaches Themistocles after he had become celebrated for his military
skill, saying that his reputation was due not to his own merits, but to
his good fortune in having been born in the most illustrious country in
Greece, received from the good-natured Athenian, who saw that his native
country did contribute to his renown, the following reply: “Neither
would I, had I been a Seriphian, have been so distinguished as I am, nor
would you have been a Themistocles, even if you had had the good fortune
to be an Athenian!” And now, our Jesus, who is reproached with being
born in a village, and that not a Greek one, nor belonging to any nation
widely esteemed, and being despised as the son of a poor labouring
woman, and as having on account of his poverty left his native country
and hired himself out in Egypt, and being, to use the instance already
quoted, not only a Seriphian, as it were, a native of a very small and
undistinguished island, but even, so to speak, the meanest of the
Seriphians, has yet been able to shake[1170] the whole inhabited world
not only to a degree far above what Themistocles the Athenian ever did,
but beyond what even Pythagoras or Plato, or any other wise man in any
part of the world whatever, or any prince or general, ever succeeded in
doing.
Footnote 1170:
σεῖσαι.