"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