Section 17
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.07% accurate
X LIFE OP EUSEBIUSmies of Eusebius. For had a crime so great been really committed by him, how could he have been afterwards appointed bishop of Caesarea ? How is it likely that he should, in this case, have been invited by the Antiochians to undertake the episcopate of their city ? And yet Cardinal Baronius has seized on that as certain and un doubted, which by his enemies, for litigious purposes, was objected against Eusebius, but never confirmed by the testimony of any one. At the same time, a book was written by Eusebius against Hierocles. For Hierocles of Nicomedia, about the beginning of the persecution, when the Christian churches were everywhere harassed, in the city of Nicomedia, published, as an insult to a religion then assailed by all its enemies, two* books against the Christian faith. In which books he asserted, that Apollonius Tyaneus performed more and greater thingsf than Christ. These impious assertions, Eusebius answered in a very short book, as if he regarded the man and his cause of little consequence. „ Agapius, bishop of Caesarea during this interval, being dead, the persecution subsiding, and peace being restored to the church, Euse bius, by common consent, succeed^ to the episcopal dignity at. Caesa rea. Others represent Agricola, who subscribed to the synod of ATTcyra, at which he was present in the 314th year of the Christian era, to be the successor of Agapius. This is affirmed by Baronius in his AnnalsJ and Blondellus.§ The latter writes, that Eusebius un dertook the administration of the church of Caesarea, after the death of Agricola, about the year 315. But these subscriptions of the bishops extant only in the Latin collections of the canons, seem in our judgment to be entitled to little credit. For they occur not either in the Greek copies, or in the Latin versions of Dionysius Exiguus, Berides, Eusebius,! enumerating the bishops of the principal diocesses, where the persecution began and raged, ends with the men tion of Agapius bishop of Caesarea ; who, he observes, laboured much, during that persecution, for the good of his own church. The ne cessary inference, therefore, is, that Agapius must have been bishop until the end of the persecution. But Eusebius was elevated to the Which he termed $»x«x>)5£»j. f No word for " miracles" occurs in the text of Valesius. Ad. annum Christi, 314. § In his Apology pro Sententia Hieronymi. c. 19. Val. 1 In the 7th Book of his Ecclesiactic Hist. chap. 32.