Section 433
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402 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. was now promoted to the government of a province, Licinius came to the city of Antioch, and making a search for all the im postors, he put the prophets and priests of the newly wrought statue to the torture, asking at the same time, how they came to concoct such a delusion. And when unable by reason of the tortures to conceal it any longer, they disclosed that the whole secret was a device of Theotecnus. After punishing all according to their deserts, he first condemned Theotecnus, and after him all the partners of his impostures, to death, with the greatest possible torments. To all these were superadded the children of Maximinus, whom he had already made sharers in the imperial dig nity with his titles and statues. Also, the relatives of the tyrants who before this were elated and boasting, and exercising their power over all men, had the same punishments, together with the utter disgrace of the others, inflicted upon them. As they would neither receive instruction nor understand the exhortation given in the Holy Scriptures : " Trust not in princes, in the chil dren of men, in whom there is no safety. For his breath goeth from him, and he will return to his earth again. In that day all their thoughts shall perish." Thus, then, the impious being cleared away, the government was deservedly reserved secure, and without a rival, for the only two, Constantine and Licinius. These, after first removing the hostility to God out of the way, and sensible of the great benefits conferred on them by his good ness, exhibited ^oth their love of virtue and God, as well as their piety and grax*tude to Him, by the laws they enacted in favoui of Christians.