Makrina.
What is it that you hate and persecute? Not him, but your belief in him. And does he not live in your hate and persecution, no less than in our love?
Julian.
I know your tortuous tricks of speech. You Galileans say one thing and mean another. And that you call rhetoric! Oh mediocre minds! What folly! I feel that the crucified Jew is alive! Oh what a degenerate age, to find satisfaction in such sophistries! But such is the latter-day world. Madness passes for wisdom. How many sleepless nights have I not spent in searching out the true foundation of things? But where are my followers? Many praise my eloquence, but few, or none, are convinced by it.
But truly the end is not yet. A great astonishment will come upon you. You shall see how all the scattered forces are converging into one. You shall see how, from all that you now despise, glory shall issue forth—and out of the cross on which you hang your hopes I will fashion a ladder for One whom you know not of.
Makrina.
And I tell you, Emperor Julian, that you are nought but a scourge in the hand of God—a scourge foredoomed to chasten us by reason of our sins. Woe to us that it must be so! Woe to us for the discords and the lovelessness that have caused us to swerve from the true path!
There was no longer a king in Israel. Therefore has the Lord stricken you with madness, that you might chastise us.
