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 scure fables of ancient times; on the contrary, its truth is evident and obvious to all. For it exhibits, from the remotest antiquity down to the present time, an uninterrupted series, as it were, of public and universally known facts and events, which perfectly agree with one another, and with all the monuments of past ages, and with the annals of the various nations of the world. They have been so manifoldly and irrefragably attested that he who would not believe them might just as well deny any other historical truth. We count the generations as they succeeded one another from Adam to Christ (Luke iii.; Matt, i.), and all the Supreme Pastors or Popes from St. Peter to our Holy Father, Pius X., who is now gloriously governing the Church established by the Son of God. What a wonderful chain of events^ and what an unparalleled succession!

4. Even the Jews, the most obstinate adversaries of our faith, bear witness to its truth. For they carefully keep upon record, in their Holy Books, the whole history and all the Prophecies of the Old Testament, to which we appeal in order to prove the Divine Origin of Christianity; insomuch that no one can for a moment suppose that the Christians have perverted or invented such passages in the Old Testament as refer to our Saviour (17).

5. Nor can it be denied that it is entirely through the mighty help of God that the Christian Religion has spread over the whole earth. The Apostles who first preached it were from the lowest class of the people, poor, unknown, even without eloquence or learning. Their doctrine of the Cross, which contains the inscrutable