Section 325
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.31% accurate
294 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. out into the roads half dead, or throw them when dead without burial, shunning any communication and participation in death, which it was impossible to avoid by every precaution and care." After this epistle, when the city was at peace, he addressed another paschal epistle to the brethren in Egypt, and wrote many others besides. There is one of his extant, On the Sab bath, another On Exercise. He also addressed one to Hermammon, and to the brethren in Egypt. Many other facts, after de scribing the wickedness of Decius and his successors, he states, and also mentions the peace of Gallienus. CHAPTER XXIII. The reign of Gallienus. BUT it is best to hear his own words, as follows : " He indeed, viz., Macrianus, having betrayed the one, and wraged war with the other emperor, suddenly perished with his whole family. But Gallienus was proclaimed and universally acknowledged emperor, an emperor at once new and old, having been before them, and now surviving them. For as it is said by the prophet Isaiah, Those things that were from the first, lo they have come, and those are new which shall now arise. As the cloud which enters the sun's rays, and for a little obscures it by its shadow and ap pears in its place, when the cloud has passed by, or is dissipated, the sun which had arisen before seems to rise again. Thus Macrianus, who had established himself, and aspired higher, to the very power of Gallienus, himself is now no more, because he never was ; but the latter is just as he was, and his govern ment as if it had lost the feebleness of age, and had become puri fied of its former filth, now arose and assumed a more flourishing aspect. And it is now seen and heard at a greater distance, and expanded to every part." After this he also indicates the time when he wrote this. " And it occurs to me again, to survey the days of our emperor's reign. For I see, indeed, that those most impious men, once honoured, and famous, ere long became with