Thus the writers of the _first three Gospels_, though they usually record the events of Christ's life without comment, yet in one passage identify Him with the God of the Old Testament, referring the prophecy about the messenger of the _Lord our God_ to the messenger of _Christ_.[429] And as to the _Fourth Gospel_, it begins with asserting Christ's Divinity in the plainest terms, saying that _the Word_, who afterwards became flesh, _was God_. And it appropriately ended, before the last chapter was added, with St. Thomas declaring this same belief, when he addressed Christ as _my Lord and my God_, which titles He fully accepted.[430] Yet immediately afterwards, the author says he wrote his Gospel to convince men that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. Evidently then this expression, _the Son of God_, meant to him, and therefore presumably to other New Testament writers, who use it frequently, that Christ was truly God--God the Son--_my Lord and my God_--in the fullest and most complete sense. [Footnote 429: Isa. 40. 3; Matt. 3. 3; Mark 1. 3; Luke 3. 4.] [Footnote 430: John 1. 1; 20. 28.] With regard to the _Acts_ an argument on the other side is sometimes drawn from St. Peter's speaking of Christ as 'a _man_ approved of God unto you by mighty works,' thus implying, it is urged, that St. Peter did not know Him to be more than man.[431] But since he says he was only appealing to what his _hearers_ knew to be true (_even as ye yourselves know_), how else could he have put it? His hearers did not know that Christ was God; they did know that He was _a man approved of God_ by many wonderful miracles, because they had seen them. Moreover, in other places the Acts bear strong witness to the Divinity of Christ, as for instance when St. Paul speaks _of the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood_, or St. Stephen says _Lord Jesus receive my spirit_; or when the Apostles are represented as working their miracles, not in the name of God the Father, but in that of Christ.[432] [Footnote 431: Acts 2. 22.] [Footnote 432: Acts 20. 28; 7. 59; 3. 6; 4. 10.]