(4) For Valerian, through being persuaded to this policy by him, exposed himself to insults and injuries according to that which was said to Isaiah: “And these men chose their ways and their abominations which their soul desired, and I will choose their mockings and will recompense them their sins.”[138]
But this man (Macrianus) in his mad lust after imperial power for which he had no qualifications, being unable to deck his own crippled body with the imperial robes, put forward his two sons, who thus became liable for their father’s sins.[139] For the prophecy clearly applies to them which God spake: “visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”[140] For he brought upon his sons’ heads his own evil desires in which he had succeeded and involved them in the consequences of his own wickedness and hatred of God.[141]
Then there is a section in which he refers to the peaceful times under Gallienus—
(5) So after thus inciting one of the Emperors before him and attacking the other, he speedily vanished with all his family, root and branch,[142] whilst Gallienus was proclaimed and acknowledged by all, being at once the old and the new Emperor, having preceded the usurpers and remaining after them. For, in accordance with that which was spoken to the prophet Isaiah, “behold the things predicted from the beginning have come to pass, and new things which will now arise.”[143] For as a cloud having overcast the sun’s rays and screened them for a while shades it and shows itself in its stead, and then when the cloud has passed off or been dissipated the sun which was shining before emerges and shines forth again, so it is with Macrianus; after coming forward and gaining access for himself to the imperial power which belonged to Gallienus, he ceases to be, since he was of no account, and the other resumes the position he had before. And the Empire, having cast off, as it were, its old age and purged itself of its former badness, now bursts into greater splendour, is seen and heard from afar and pervades the whole world.
Then in due order he indicates the date of this letter in these words—
(6) And once more it occurs to me to consider the days and years of this period of the Empire. For I observe that the ungodly persons (I have mentioned) after a short period of honourable mention have lost their good name, but (Gallienus) who was more righteous and loved God better,[144] having completed the seven years’ period, is now passing through his ninth year:[145] therefore let us keep the Feast.[146]
To the Brethren in Alexandria
(Eus., H. E. vii. 22)
(Part of another Easter Letter)
(1) Other men would not think the present a time for “keeping festival: nor, indeed, is this nor any other such a time to them; I speak not of times obviously sorrowful, but even of such as they might consider most joyful. In these days there are lamentations everywhere, and all are mourning: wailings resound through the city by reason of the number of the dead and the dying day by day. For, as it is written about the firstborn of the Egyptians, so now also “a great cry arose: for there is not a house in which there is not one dead.”[147] I would, indeed, there were but one; for the things that have before now befallen us were truly many and grievous.[148] First of all they drove us into exile and we kept the feast then too by ourselves, persecuted and harried to death by all, and every place where each particular affliction befel us became the scene of our festal assembly, open country, desert, ship, inn or prison, and our perfect[149] martyrs spent the brightest of all feasts, being entertained in heaven above. But after this war and famine seized us, which we endured in common with the Gentiles, having undergone alone all the injuries they had inflicted on us and then having to share in the evils they wrought on one another and suffered: and once more we rejoiced in the peace of Christ, which He has given to us alone. But now after we and they had obtained a very brief respite, this pestilence has overtaken us, which is to them a more fearful thing than all former fears and more terrible than any calamity whatever, and to quote an expression of an historian of their own,[150] “a thing which alone has exceeded all men’s expectation,” while to us it was not so much that as a discipline and a testing no less severe than any of the rest: for it did not spare us, though it attacked the Gentiles in great force.
To this he adds as follows—
(2) At all events most of the brethren through their love and brotherly affection for us spared not themselves nor abandoned one another, but without regard to their own peril visited those who fell sick, diligently looking after and ministering to them and cheerfully shared their fate with them, being infected with the disease from them and willingly involving themselves in their troubles. Not a few also, after nursing others back to recovery, died themselves, taking death over from them and thus fulfilling in very deed the common saying, which is taken always as a note of mere good feeling; for in their departure they became their expiatory substitutes.[151] At all events, the very pick of our brethren lost their lives in this way, both priests and deacons and some highly praised ones from among the laity, so that this manner of dying does not seem far removed from martyrdom, being the outcome of much piety and stalwart faith. So, too, taking up the bodies of the saints on their arms and breasts, closing their eyes and shutting their mouths, bearing them on their shoulders and laying them out for burial, clinging to them, embracing them, washing them, decking them out, they not long after had the same services rendered to them; for many of the survivors followed in their train. But the Gentiles behaved quite differently: those who were beginning to fall sick they thrust away, and their dearest they fled from, or cast them half dead into the roads: unburied bodies they treated as vile refuse;[152] for they tried to avoid the spreading and communication of the fatal disease, difficult as it was to escape for all their scheming.