The Second Apology and Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew

He was made man also, as we before said, having been conceived according to the will of God the Father, for the sake of believing men, and for the destniction of the demons. And now you can learn this from what is under your own observation. For numberless demoniacs throughout the whole world, and in your city, many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified, under Pontius Pilate, have healed and do heal^ rendering helpless and driving the possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be cured by all the other exorcists, and those who used incantations and drugs. CHAP. VII. THE WORLD PRESERVED FOR THE SAKE OF CHRISTIANS. MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. Wherefore God delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and men shall cease to exist, because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature.' Since, if it were not so, it would not have been possible for you to do these things, and to be impelled by evil spirits ; but the fire of judgment would descend and utterly dissolve all things, even as formerly the flood left no one but him only with his family who is by us called Noah, and by you Deucalion, from whom again such vast numbers have sprung, some of them evil and others good. For so we say that there will be the conflagration, but not as the Stoics, according to their doctrine of all things being changed into one another, which seems most degrading. But neither do we affirm that it is by fate that men do what they do, or suffer what they suffer, but that each man by free choice acts rightly or sins ; and that it is by the influence of the wicked demons that earnest men, such as Socrates and the like, suffer perse-^ cution and are in bonds, while Sardanapalus, Epicurus, and the like, seem to be blessed in abundance and glory.…