16. This your celebration some, as is their wont, are envious of. And since their envious minds cannot endure it, they also hate its cause, and proceed to such a pitch of folly as to deny the merits of the martyrs, whose power the very devils confess. But this is not strange; for such is the faithlessness of unbelievers that the confession of the devil himself is often less intolerable. For the devil said, _Jesus, Thou Son of the living God, art Thou come to torment us before the time?_ And yet when the Jews heard this they even then denied the Son of God. And now ye have heard the devils crying out, and owning to the martyrs that they cannot bear their tortures, and saying ‘Why are ye come to torment us so grievously?’ And the Arians say, ‘These are not martyrs, nor can they torment the devil nor dispossess any one:’ while yet their own words are evidence of the torments of the evil spirits, and the benefits of the martyrs are shewn by the recovery of the healed, and the manifest proof of those that were dispossessed. 17. They deny that the blind man received his sight, but he denies not his own cure. He says, ‘I who was blind now see.’ He says, ‘My blindness has left me;’ he evidences it by the fact. They deny the benefit, though they cannot deny the fact. The man is well known: when in health he was employed in public trade, his name is Severus, a butcher by business. When his affliction befell him he laid down his employment. He calls as his witnesses those men by whose charities he was supported; he summons as witnesses of his present visitation the very men who bore testimony to his blindness. He declares that when he touched the border of the garment with which the martyrs’ bodies were clothed, his sight was restored to him. Sidenote: S. John ix. 25. 18. Is not this like what we read in the Gospel? For the power which we admire proceeds from one and the same Author; nor does it signify whether it is a work or a gift, seeing that He confers gifts in His works and works by His gifts. For what He has enabled some themselves to perform, this in the work of others His Name effects. Thus we read in the Gospel that the Jews, when they saw that the blind man had received his sight, required the testimony of his parents. They asked, ‘How has your son received his sight?’ That blind man said, _Whereas I was blind now I see_, and so too our blind man says, ‘I was blind, and now I see.’ Enquire of others, if ye believe me not; question strangers, if you suspect his parents of being in collusion with me. The obstinacy of these men is more detestable than that of the Jews, for the latter inquired of the man’s parents to solve their doubts; they secretly inquire but openly deny, no longer refusing credit to the miracle but to its Author. Sidenote: S. John xiv. 12.