I might collect these and many similar arguments, if that year had not already passed by which lying divination has promised, and deceived vanity has believed.⁠a But as a few years ago three hundred and sixty-five years were completed since the time when the worship of the name of Christ was established by His presence in the flesh, and by the apostles, what other proof do we need to seek to refute that falsehood? For, not to place the beginning of this period at the nativity of Christ, because as an infant and boy He had no disciples, still, when He began to have them, beyond doubt the Christian doctrine and religion then became known through His bodily presence, that is, after He was baptized in the river Jordan by the ministry of John. For on this account that prophecy was given beforehand concerning Him: “He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” But since, before He suffered and rose from the dead, the faith had not yet been defined to all, but was defined in the resurrection of Christ (for so the Apostle Paul speaks to the Athenians, saying, “But now He announces to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has appointed a day in which to judge the world in equity, by the Man in whom He has defined the faith to all men, raising Him from the dead” Acts 17:30-31), it is better that, in settling this question, we should start from that point, especially because the Holy Spirit was then given, just as He had to be given after the resurrection of Christ in that city from which the second law, that is, the new covenant, was to begin. For the first, which is called the old covenant, was given from Mount Sinai through Moses. But concerning this which was to be given by Christ it was predicted, “The law shall go out from Sion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;” Isaiah 2:3 hence He Himself said that repentance in His name had to be preached among all nations, but still beginning at Jerusalem. Luke 24:47 So it was there that the worship of this name began, that Jesus should be believed in, who died and rose again. There this faith blazed up with such noble beginnings that several thousand men, being converted to the name of Christ with wonderful eagerness, sold their goods for distribution among the needy, and so, by a holy resolution and most ardent love, coming to voluntary poverty, and prepared themselves, amid the Jews who raged and thirsted for their blood, to contend for the truth even to death, not with armed power, but with more powerful patience. If this was accomplished by no magic arts, why do they hesitate to believe that the other could be done throughout the whole world by the same divine power by which this was done? But supposing Peter performed that enchantment so that so great a multitude of men at Jerusalem was kindled in this way to worship the name of Christ, who had either seized and fastened Him to the cross, or reviled Him when fastened there, we must still ask when the three hundred and sixty-five years must be completed, counting from that year. Now Christ died when the Gemini were consuls, on the eighth day before the kalends of April. He rose on the third day, as the apostles have proved by the evidence of their own senses. Then forty days later, He ascended into heaven. Ten days later, that is, on the fiftieth after his resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit; then three thousand men believed when the apostles preached Him. Then, therefore, arose the worship of that name, as we believe, and according to the real truth, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but, as impious vanity has pretended or thought, by the magic arts of Peter. A little later, too, when a wonderful sign was performed, when at Peter's own word a certain beggar, so lame from his mother's womb that he was carried by others and laid down at the gate of the temple, where he begged for alms, was healed in the name of Jesus Christ, and leaped up, five thousand men believed, and from then on the Church grew by successive additions of believers. So we gather the very day with which that year began, namely, that on which the Holy Spirit was sent, that is, during the ides of May. And, on counting the consuls, the three hundred and sixty-five years are found completed on the same ides in the consulship of Honorius and Eutychianus. Now, in the following year, in the consulship of Mallius Theodorus, when, according to that oracle of the demons or figment of men, there ought already to have been no Christian religion, it was not necessary to ask what may have been done in other parts of the earth. But, as we know, in the most famous and eminent city, Carthage, in Africa, Gaudentius and Jovius, officers of the Emperor Honorius, on the fourteenth day before the kalends of April, overthrew the temples and broke the images of the false gods. And from that time to the present, for almost thirty years, who does not see how much the worship of the name of Christ has increased, especially after many of those became Christians who had been kept back from the faith by thinking that divination true, but saw when that same number of years was completed that it was empty and ridiculous? We, therefore, who are called and are Christians, do not believe in Peter, but in Him whom Peter believed — being edified by Peter's sermons about Christ, not poisoned by his incantations; and not deceived by his enchantments, but aided by his good deeds. Christ Himself, who was Peter's Master in the doctrine which leads to eternal life, is our Master too. But let us now at last finish this book, having so far discussed, and shown as far as seemed sufficient, what the mortal course is of the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, which are mingled together from the beginning down to the end. Of these, the earthly one has made for herself, from whomever she wished, whether from any other source or even from among men, false gods to serve by sacrifice; but the one that is heavenly and is a pilgrim on the earth does not make false gods, but is herself made by the true God of whom she herself must be the true sacrifice. But both alike either enjoy temporal good things, or are afflicted with temporal evils, but with a different faith, a different hope, and a different love, until they must be separated by the last judgment, and each must receive her own end, of which there is no end. About these ends of both we must speak next.