Section 286
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 255 crowned with the hoary locks of venerable age, he was cast into prison. After giving a splendid and illustrious testimony at the governor's tribunal, and expiring in prison, he was suc ceeded by Mazabanes as bishop of Jerusalem. But Babylas, like Alexander, dying in prison at Antioch, after his confession, the church there was governed by Fabius. But the number and greatness of Origen's sufferings there during the persecution, and the nature of his death, when the spirit of darkness drew up his forces, and waged a war with all his arts and power against the man, and assailed him particularly beyond all that were then as saulted by him; the nature and number of bonds which the man endured on account of the doctrine of Christ, and all his torments of body, the sufferings also which he endured under an iron collar, and in the deepest recesses of the prison, when for many days he was extended and stretched to the distance of four holes on the rack; besides the threats of fire, and what soever other sufferings inflicted by his enemies he nobly bore, and finally the issue of these sufferings, when the judge eagerly strove with all his might to protract his life (in order to prolong his sufferings,) and what expressions after these he left behind, replete with benefit to those needing consolation, all this the many epistles of the man detail with no less truth than accuracy. CHAPTER XL. What happened to Dionysius. I SHALL now subjoin the occurrences that befel Dionysius, from his epistle to Germanus, where, speaking of himself, he gives the following account : " But I speak before God, and he knows that I lie not ; it was never by my own counsel, nor without divine in timation, that I projected my flight. But before the persecution of Deems, Sabinus, at the very hour, sent Frumentarius to search forme. And I indeed, staid at home about four days, expecting the arrival of Frumentarius. But he went about examining all places, the roads, the rivers, the fields, where he suspected that 24*