Section 406
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 375 the keepers of the imperial horses ; also, the number and seve rity of the burdens and oppressions they bore for the sake of the sacred vessels and property of the churches, from the imperial rulers and governors at the time in the midst of insult, injury, and torment; moreover, the ambitious aspirings of many to office, and the injudicious and unlawful ordinations, that took place, the divisions among the confessors themselves, the great schisms and difficulties industriously fomented by the factious among the new members, against the relics of the church, devising one innova tion after another, and unmercifully thrusting them into the midst of all these calamities, heaping up affliction upon affliction ; all this, I say, I have resolved to pass by, judging it foreign to my purpose, wishing, as I said in the beginning, to shun and avoid giving an account of them. But whatsoever things are serious and commendable according to the Scriptures — "if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," deeming it most proper to tell and to describe these, and present them to the attention of the faithful, in a history of the admirable martyrs, as also, most con sistent with that peace \vhich has recently shone upon us from heaven, I shall consider myself as most likely to decorate the close of my work, if I present to the attention of the faithful an account of these. CHAPTER XIII. Silvanus and John, and thirty more other martyrs. THE seventh year of the conflict against us was verging to its close, and the measures against us had gently and impercepti bly received a less afflictive aspect, and had now continued until the eighth year, when there was no small number of confessors collected in the copper mines of Palestine, and these were enjoy ing considerable freedom, so far as even to build houses for as sembling together, then the governor of the province, a savage and wicked man, such indeed, as his acts against the martyrs proved him to be, came thither, and ascertaining the state of 34*