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| How Flavianus and Diodorus gathered the church of the orthodox in Antioch.
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Chapter XXII.—How
Flavianus and Diodorus gathered the church of the orthodox in
Antioch.763
| 763 Cf. ante, ii. 19, page 85. |
Now Flavianus and Diodorus, like break-waters, broke the force of the
advancing waves. Meletius their shepherd had been constrained to
sojourn far away. But these looked after the flock, opposing their own
courage and cunning to the wolves, and bestowing due care upon the
sheep. Now that they were driven away from under the cliff they fed
their flocks by the banks of the neighbouring river. They could not
brook, like the captives at Babylon, to hang their harps upon the willows,764
but they continued to hymn their maker
and benefactor in all places of his dominion.765
But not even in this spot was the meeting of the pious pastors of them
that blessed the Lord suffered by the foe to be assembled. So again
this pair of excellent shepherds gathered their sheep in the soldiers
training ground and there tried to show them their spiritual food in
secret. Diodorus, in his wisdom and courage, like a clear and mighty
river, watered his own and drowned the blasphemies of his opponents,
thinking nothing of the splendour of his birth, and gladly undergoing
the sufferings of the faith.
The excellent Flavianus, who was
also of the highest rank, thought piety the only nobility,766
| 766 cf.
“Virtus sola nobilitas.” | and, like some trainer for the games,
anointed the great Diodorus767
| 767 Diodorus was now a presbyter. Chrysost. (Laus Diodori §4.
tom. iii. p. 749) describes how the whole city assembled and were fed
by his tongue flowing with milk and honey, themselves meanwhile
supplying his necessities with their gifts. Valens retorted with
redoubled violence, and anticipated the “noyades” of
Carrier at Lyons. cf. Socrates iv. 17 and Dict. Christ. Biog. ii.
529. | as though he had
been an athlete for five contests.768
| 768 The five contests of the complete athlete are summed up in the
line
ἅλμα,
ποδωκείην,
δίσκον,
ἄκοντα,
πάλην |
At that time he did not himself
preach at the services of the church, but furnished an abundant supply
of arguments and scriptural thoughts to preachers, who were thus able
to aim their shafts at the blasphemy of Arius, while he as it were
handed them the arrows of his intelligence from a quiver. Discoursing
alike at home and abroad he easily rent asunder the heretics nets and
showed their defences to be mere spiders webs. He was aided in these
contests by that Aphraates whose life I have written in my Religious
History,769
and who, preferring the welfare of
the sheep to his own rest, abandoned his cell of discipline and
retirement, and undertook the hard toil of a shepherd. Having written
on these matters in another work I deem it now superfluous to recount
the wealth of virtue which he amassed, but one specimen of his good
deeds I will proceed now to relate, as specially appropriate to this
history.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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