Why habit blinds people to plain proof

For contentiousness and prejudice are a hard thing. They can make people set themselves even against what is evident, so that they will not give up doctrines which have dyed them indelibly, to which they have somehow grown used, and which have coloured their souls. A man would more easily give up his habits in other matters, even if he finds it hard to tear himself from them, than those that concern doctrines. Yet even those other habits are not easily set aside by those used to them. So people who have grown attached to houses, or cities or villages, or familiar companions, are not readily willing to leave them.

This, then, was the reason why many of the Jews at that time also set themselves against the plain evidence of the prophecies and of the wonders that Jesus did and is recorded to have undergone. That human nature is affected in some such way will be clear to those who observe how people once taken up even with the most shameful and senseless traditions of their fathers and fellow citizens are not easily moved from them. One would not quickly persuade an Egyptian, at any rate, to despise what he has received from his fathers, so that he would no longer think this or that irrational animal a god, or no longer guard himself, even at the cost of his life, from tasting the flesh of this or that animal.

So if, in examining this argument, we have gone through the matter of Bethlehem and the prophecy about it at some length, we think we have done so of necessity. We were answering those who might say: if the prophecies about Jesus among the Jews were so plain, why ever did they not assent to his teaching when he came, and go over to the better things that Jesus showed? But let no one bring the like reproach against those of us who believe, seeing that arguments by no means contemptible are put forward for faith in Jesus by those who have learned to champion them.