.—The Pestilence which came upon them.
1. these events a pestilential disease followed the
war, and at the approach of the feast he wrote again to the brethren, describing the sufferings consequent upon this calamity.
2. “To other men the present might not seem to be a
suitable time for a festival. Nor indeed is this or any other time
suitable for them; neither sorrowful times, nor even such as might be
thought especially cheerful. Now, indeed, everything is tears and every one is mourning, and wailings resound daily through the city because of the multitude of the dead and dying.
3. For as it was written of the
firstborn of the Egyptians, so now ‘there has arisen a great cry, for there is not a house where there is not one dead.’ And would that this were all!
4. For many terrible things have
happened already. First, they drove us out; and when alone, and
persecuted, and put to death by all, even then we kept the feast. And
every place of affliction was to us a place of festival: field, desert, ship, inn, prison; but the perfected martyrs kept the most joyous festival of all, feasting in heaven.
5. After these things war and
famine followed, which we endured in common with the heathen. But we
bore alone those things with which they afflicted us, and at the same
time we experienced also the effects of what they inflicted upon and
suffered from one another; and again, we rejoiced in the peace of
Christ, which he gave to us alone.
6. “But after both we and
they had enjoyed a very brief season of rest this pestilence assailed
us; to them more dreadful than any dread, and more intolerable than any
other calamity; and, as one of their own writers has said, the only
thing which prevails over all hope. But to us this was not so, but
no less than the other things was it an exercise and probation. For it
did not keep aloof even from us, but the heathen it assailed more
severely.”
7. Farther on he
adds:
“The most of our brethren
were unsparing in their exceeding love and brotherly kindness. They
held fast to each other and visited the sick fearlessly, and ministered
to them continually, serving them in Christ. And they died with them
most joyfully, taking the affliction of others, and drawing the
sickness from their neighbors to themselves and willingly receiving
their pains. And many who cared for the sick and gave strength to
others died themselves having transferred to themselves their death. And the popular saying which always seems a mere expression of courtesy, they then made real in action, taking their departure as the others’ ‘offscouring.’
8. “Truly the best of our
brethren departed from life in this manner, including some presbyters
and deacons and those of the people who had the highest reputation; so
that this form of death, through the great piety and strong faith it
exhibited, seemed to lack nothing of martyrdom.
9. And they took the bodies of
the saints in their open hands and in their bosoms, and closed their
eyes and their mouths; and they bore them away on their shoulders and
laid them out; and they clung to them and embraced them; and they
prepared them suitably with washings and garments. And after a little
they received like treatment themselves, for the survivors were
continually following those who had gone before them.
10. “But with the heathen
everything was quite otherwise. They deserted those who began to be
sick, and fled from their dearest friends. And they cast them out into
the streets when they were half dead, and left the dead like refuse, unburied. They shunned any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape.”
11. After this epistle, when
peace had been restored to the city, he wrote another festal letter to the brethren in Egypt, and again several others besides this. And there is also a certain one extant On the Sabbath, and another On Exercise.
12. Moreover, he wrote again an
epistle to Hermammon and the
brethren in Egypt, describing at length the wickedness of Decius and
his successors, and mentioning the peace under Gallienus.