Section 399
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.51% accurate
368 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. around him, that besought him in many ways, only to have com passion on himself, and to spare his youth and blooming years, he preferred his hope in the supreme God to all, and even to life itself. With him, also, was said to be a certain bishop, named Asclepius, a follower of Marcion's error, with a zeal for piety, as he supposed, but not according to knowledge. Yet he departed this life on the same funeral pile. CHAPTER XL Pampliilus and others. THE time is now come to relate, also, that great and celebrated spectacle exhibited by those who, in martyrdom, wer,e associated with Pamphilus, a name thrice dear to me. These were twelve, who were distinguished by a prophetic and apostolic grace, as well as number. Of these, the leader, and the only one among them, however, with the dignity of presbyter at Cesarea, was Pamphilus ; a man who excelled in every virtue through his whole life, whether by a renunciation and contempt of the world, by distributing his substance among the needy, or by a disregard of worldly expectations, and by a philosophic deportment and self-denial. But he was chiefly distinguished above the rest of us, by his sincere devotedness to the sacred Scriptures, and by an indefatigable industry in what he proposed to accomplish, by his great kindness and alacrity to serve all his relatives, and all that approached him. The other features of his excellence, which deserve a more full account, we have already given in a separate work on his life, consisting of three books. Referring, therefore, those that have a taste for these things, and who wish to know them, to this work, let us now prosecute the history of the martyrs in order. The second after Pamphilus that entered the contest was Valens, deacon of the church of JElia, a man dignified by his ve nerable and hoary locks, and most august by the very aspect of his great age ; well versed in the sacred Scriptures, in which