Who among human beings, either after death or while still alive, ever taught about virginity and did not think this virtue impossible for people? Yet Christ our Savior and King of all has had such power in His teaching about it that even children not yet of legal age vow a virginity beyond what the law requires.
Who among human beings has ever been able to travel so far and reach the Scythians, Ethiopians, Persians, Armenians, Goths, those said to live beyond the Ocean, those beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans—peoples devoted to magic, extraordinarily superstitious, and savage in their ways—and preach among them about virtue and self-control and against the worship of idols, as has the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ?
He not only preached through His own disciples, but persuaded them in their minds to lay aside their savage ways, no longer worship their ancestral gods, but recognize Him and through Him worship the Father.
For formerly, while they worshiped idols, Greeks and barbarians fought one another and were cruel even to their own relatives. No one could travel by land or sea without arming his hand with a sword because of their unrelenting warfare against one another.
Their whole way of life was lived under arms; the sword served them instead of a staff and was their support in every need. Yet, as I said before, they worshiped idols and poured out sacrifices to demons, and despite their idolatrous superstition they could not be taught to abandon such ways.
But when they came over to the teaching of Christ, then, remarkably, being truly pierced in conscience, they laid aside the cruelty of murder and no longer thought of war. Everything among them became peaceful, and from then on they desired what leads to friendship.