Section 163
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132 ECCELSIASTICAL mSTORY. extreme by hunger and famine. The author of their madness had also suffered his just punishment, and the whole nation from that time were totally prohibited, by the decree and commands of Adrian, from even entering the country about Jerusalem, so that they could not behold the soil of their fathers even at a distance. Such is the statement of Aristo, of Pella. The city of the Jews being thus reduced to a state of abandonment for them, and totally stripped of its ancient inhabitants, and also inhabited by strangers ; the Roman city which subsequently arose, changing its name, was called ^Elia, in honour of the emperor ^Elius Adrian; and when the church was collected there of the Gentiles, the first bishop after those of the circumcision was Marcus. CHAPTER VII. Those who were considered leaders in false doctrine at this time. As the churches now were reflecting the light like splendid luminaries throughout the world, and the faith of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was spreading so as to embrace the whole human race, the malignant spirit of iniquity, as the enemy of all truth, and always the most violent enemy to the salvation of men, was now devising every species of machination against the church, as he had already before armed himself against it by former persecutions. When, however, cut off from those, he then waged a war by other methods, in which he employed the agency of wicked impostors as certain abandoned instru ments and minions of destruction. Intent upon every course, he instigated these insidious impostors and deceivers, by assum ing the same name with us (Christians) to lead those believers whom they happened to seduce to the depths of destruction, and by their presumption, also turn those that were ignorant of the faith, from the path that led to the saving truth of God. Hence a certain double-headed and double-tongued serpentine power, proceeding from that Menander whom we have already men tioned as the successor of Simon, produced two leaders of dif