The Ancient Witnesses

Chapter 7: The Last Times • 237

Summarizing the event, Arator added:

The glorious army of the Church now five thousand strong and growing, Judea tried to withstand, as wrath moved the Jews to complete their wickedness against saints deserving reverence. O ever rebellious ones! They saw the gifts, yet set violence in motion. Why do you so often fall, Judea? 16 “Why are the witnesses so hateful toward the Jews?” whispered Cesar. “It is the Enemy whose hatred is focused on them,” replied Arator. He then recited, By Pilate’s judgment Christ was willing to substitute his limbs for the trials of the world, that his flesh might get rid of fleshly evil, and that the fierce Enemy, by whose contrivance the poisonous weapons streamed forth, might fail to obtain the lamentable expiation of the ancient war, now that a matching substance had overcome, lest the burden of Adam’s crime go forward longer through his offspring. The condemnation of the righteous One has become the setting free of the guilty. 17 “Did anybody get that?” asked Preacher. 16 Arator, Acts of the Apostles , lines 33-34, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiaticorum Latinorum (CSEL) vol. 72, page 29: Agmine iam viveo per milia quinque virorum /Ecclesiae crescebat apex; Arecere laborat/ Hunc Iudaea coli cuius de muneri fluxit/. See Schrader, Arator’s Acts of the Apostles , 33-34. 17 Arator, lines 348-349 CSEL vol. 72, page 33: Quis dolus Herodis cum tristia bella moveret/Infantummandata neci! Quos ubere raptos/Vulnera suscipiunt parvis errentia membris. See also, Schrader, Arator’s On the acts of the Apostles , page 35.