Section 468
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.51% accurate
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 437 For "he did not suppose that prayers were offered up for him. reasoning thus in his bad conscience, but persuaded himself that we did all and propitiated the Deity only for the divinely favoured emperor. Hence also he directed the violence of his fury against us, and at the same time when his parasitical governors per ceived that they were doing what was gratifying to the execrable tyrant, they subjected some of the bishops to the same punishments as the worst criminal. Those, therefore, who had done no evil, were led away to punishment without any pretext, just like mur derers and assassins. Some also endured a novel kind of death, having their bodies cut into many small pieces, and after this savage and horrible spectacle, were thrown as food to the fishes into the depths of the sea. Again then, the worshippers of God began to flee; again the open fields, the deserts, forests, and mountains, received the servants of Christ. When these things had succeeded with the impious tyrant, after this manner, he finally contemplated to renew the persecution against all. And no doubt he would have prevailed in his determination, and there was nothing to hinder him to proceed in his work, had not God, the defender of his own servants, anticipated him, and led forth Constantine, his servant, with a mighty arm amid these events, and suddenly, as in the dense and impenetrable darkness of a gloomy night, caused a light and a deliverer to arise to all. CHAPTER IX. The victory of Constantine, and the blessings which under him accrued to the whole Roman world. To him, therefore, the supreme God, granted from heaven above, the fruits of his piety, the trophies of victory over the wick ed, and that nefarious tyrant with all his counsellors and ad herents, he cast prostrate at the feet of Constantine.* For when * Constantine obtained this signal victory over Licinius, A. D. 324, the limits of our author's history. The first war that broke out between the two emperors, was occasioned by the protection which Licinius had extended to Sinicius, who