Section 417
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386 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. iniquity against the wicked may appear, which soon overtook him, and by which he was urged onwards ; so that he did not long devise hostilities, and form decrees against us. The decree \vas as follows : Copy of the translated epistle ofMaximinus, in answer to the ordi nances (of the cities) against us, taken from the brazen tablet at Tyre. " Now at length the feeble powers* of the human mind have prevailed so far as to shake off and to scatter the mists of every error, and dissipate the clouds of delusion, which before this had beset the senses of those who were more miserable than profane, and enveloped them in a destructive darkness and igno rance ; thus leading us to acknowledge that it is regulated and strengthened by the good providence of the immortal gods: which things it is incredible to say how grateful, how delightful and pleasing it is to us, how powerful an evidence it has fur nished of your pious resolutions, since before this it could be un known to none, how much regard and reverence you cherished to wards the immortal gods, to whom faith is exhibited not by mere empty words, but by a constant and eminentf display of illustri ous deeds. Wherefore, deservedly, may your city be called the seat and habitation of the immortal gods, for by many evidences it does appear most clearly that it flourishes by the presence and residence of the celestial gods. So then, your city, regardless ol all local interest and advantage, and omitting the petitions for merly presented to us, for its own political affairs, when it per ceived the votaries of an execrable vanity again insinuating themselves, and as a funeral pile long disregarded and smothered, again rising in mighty flames and rekindling the extinguished brands, immediately without delay it took refuge to our piety, as We have rendered the word P»C-UT»S here, not according to the Greek, but what we conjecture was the original Latin. Audacity, the meaning of the Greek, seems en tirely at variance with the whole drift of the sentence, even if it should be under stood in the milder .sense of confidence. If our author had before him the word via animi, it is possible that he might have understood it in a lax sense, and rendered accordingly. j-Probably the Latin here, was singularis, and our author rendered 3-»p*Jog«..