"And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things (the welfare of the human race), he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil, and this is the greatest profanity and wickedness." (Apol. I. ch. xxviii.)

Shortly after this he tells the heathen Emperor that the mission and work of Jesus Christ had been predicted:—

"There were amongst the Jews certain men who were prophets of God, through whom the Prophetic Spirit published beforehand things that were to come to pass, ere ever they happened. And their prophecies, as they were spoken and when they were uttered, the kings who happened to be reigning among the Jews at the several times carefully preserved in their possession, when they had been arranged in books by the prophets themselves in their own Hebrew language…. In these books, then, of the prophets, we found Jesus Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognized, and crucified, and dying and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent by Him into every nation to publish these things, and that rather among the Gentiles (than among the Jews) men should believe on Him. And He was predicted before He appeared, first 5,000 years before, and again 3,000, then 2,000, then 1,000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets after prophets arose." (Apol. I. ch. xxxi.)

Then he proceeds to show how certain particular prophecies which he cites were fulfilled in the Jews having a lawgiver till the time of Christ, and not after; in Christ's entry into Jerusalem; in His Birth of a Virgin; in the place of His Birth; in His having His hands and feet pierced with the nails. (Ch. xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxv.)

Again, immediately afterwards, he endeavours to classify certain prophecies as peculiarly those of God the Father, certain others as peculiarly those of God the Son, and others as the special utterance of the Spirit. (Ch. xxxvi.-xl.)

Then he proceeds to specify certain particular prophecies as fulfilled in our Lord's Advent (ch. xl.); certain others in His Crucifixion (xli.); in His Session in heaven (xlv.); in the desolation of Judaea (xlvii.); in the miracles and Death of Christ (xlviii.); in His rejection by the Jews (xlix.); in His Humiliation (l.) He concludes with asserting the extreme importance of prophecy, as without it we should not be warranted in believing such things of any one of the human race:—

"For with what reason should we believe of a crucified Man that He is the first-born of the unbegotten God, and Himself will pass judgment on the whole human race, unless we have found testimonies concerning Him published before He came, and was born as man, and unless we saw that things had happened accordingly,—the devastation of the land of the Jews, and men of every race persuaded by His teaching through the Apostles, and rejecting their old habits, in which, being deceived, they had had their conversation." (Ch. liii.)

After this he speaks (ch. lxi.) of Christian Baptism, as being in some sense a conveyance of Regeneration, and of the Eucharist (ch. lxvi.), as being a mysterious communication of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, and at the conclusion he describes the worship of Christians, and tells the Emperor that in their assemblies the memoirs of the Apostles (by which name he designates the accounts of the Birth, Life, and Death of Christ), or the writings of the Prophets were read, as long as time permits, putting the former on a par with the latter, as equally necessary for the instruction of Christians.

Besides this, we find that Justin holds all these views of Scripture truths which are now called Evangelical. He speaks of men now being

"Purified no longer by the blood of goats and sheep, or by the ashes of an heifer, or by the offerings of fine flour, but by faith through the Blood of Christ, and through His Death, Who died for this very reason." (Dial.)