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 so wrought even upon the mind of your great predecessor, the Emperor Tiberius, that he would fain receive him into the number of the gods of Rome. And why, O Emperor, was this great personage sent forth into the world, encircled by the rays of divine power and wisdom and goodness, an emanation of the self-existent and infinite God? And why do we so honor him, and cleave to him, that we are ready to offer our lives in sacrifice, while we go forth as preachers of his faith, making him known