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Rh , who could not, he tried to hope, have sanctioned the late outrage. But he was deterred by the news of one woe following upon another (Ap. ad Const. 27, 19). Bishops of the West who had refused to disown him were suffering under tyranny, or had been hurried into exile. Among the latter class was the Roman bishop himself, who had manfully spurned both gifts and menaces (Theod. ii. 16); and Hosius, on addressing to Constantius a remonstrance full of pathetic dignity, had been sent for to be detained at Sirmium. Then came news which touched Athanasius more closely. It was given out that one George, a Cappadocian of evil reputation and ruthless temper, was coming to supersede him; and that a vague creed, purporting to be simply Scriptural, but in fact ignoring the Nicene doctrine, was to be proposed for his suffragans' acceptance. This last report set him at once to work on a Letter to the Egyptian and Libyan Bishops. But he had soon to hear of a repetition of the sacrileges and brutalities of the days of Gregory. As before, Lent was the time chosen for the arrival of the usurper. Easter brought an increase of trouble in the persecution of prelates, clergy, virgins, widows, the poor, and even ordinary Catholic householders. On the evening of the Sunday after Pentecost, when "the brethren" had met for worship, apart from the Arians, in the precincts of a cemetery, a military commander, named Sebastian, a fierce-tempered Manichean, whose sympathies went with George, came to the spot with more than 3000 soldiers, and found some virgins and others still in prayer after the general congregation had broken up. On their refusal to embrace Arianism, he caused them to be stripped, and beaten or wounded with such severity that some died from the effects, and their corpses were kept without burial. This was followed by the banishment of sixteen bishops, doubtless for rejecting the new-made creed; more than thirty fled, others were scared into an apparent conformity, and the vacated churches were given over to men whose moral disqualifications for any religious office were compensated by their profession of Arianism. Tragical as were these tidings, Athanasius still clung to his purpose of presenting himself before Constantius, until he learned that one imperial letter had denounced him as a fugitive criminal who richly merited death, and another had exhorted the two Ethiopian sovereigns to send Frumentius to Alexandria, that George might instruct him in the knowledge of "the supreme God."

Then it was that Athanasius, accepting the position of a proscribed man who must needs live as a fugitive, "turned back again," as he says, "towards the desert," and sought for welcome and shelter amid the innumerable monastic cells. Anthony had died at the beginning of the year, desiring that a worn-out sheepskin cloak (the monk's usual upper dress), which when new had been the gift of Athanasius, might be returned to him (Vit. Ant. 91). As Athanasius appears to have made secret visits to Alexandria, he probably spent some time among the recluses of Lower Egypt, but he also doubtless visited what Villemain calls "the pathless solitudes which surround Upper

Egypt, and the monasteries and hermitages of the Thebaid." A veil of mystery was thus drawn over his life; and the interest was heightened by the romantic incidents naturally following from the Government's attempts to track and seize him. When comparatively undisturbed, he would still be full of activities, ecclesiastical and theological. Athanasius made those six years of seclusion available for literary work of the most substantial kind, both controversial and historical. The books which he now began to pour forth were apparently written in cottages or caves, where he sat, like any monk, on a mat of palm-leaves, with a bundle of papyrus beside him, amid the intense light and stillness of the desert (Kingsley's Hermits, p. 130, 19). He finished his Apology to Constantius, a work which he had for some time in hand, and which he still hoped to be able, in better days, to deliver in the emperor's presence. He met the taunts of "cowardice" directed against him by the Arians with an Apology for his Flight. To the same period belong the Letter to the Monks, with the Arian History (not now extant as a whole), which it introduces (and as to which it is difficult to resist the impression that part of it, at least, was written under Athanasius's supervision, by some friend or secretary); a Letter to Serapion, bp. of Thmuis, giving an account of the death of Arius, the details of which he had learned from his presbyter Macarius, while he himself was resident at Trèves; and, above all, the great Orations or Discourses against the Arians. These last have been described by Montfaucon as "the sources whence arguments have been borrowed by all who have since written in behalf of the Divinity of the Word." The first discourse is occupied with an exposition of the greatness of the question at issue; with proofs of the Son's eternity and uncreatedness, with discussion of objections, and with comments on texts alleged in support of Arianism (i.e. Phil. ii. 9, 10; Ps. xlv. 7, 8; Heb i. 4). The second, written after some interval, pursues this line of comment, especially on a text much urged by Arians in the LXX version (Prov. viii. 22). The third explains texts in the Gospels, and in so doing sets forth the Christ of the church, as uniting in Himself true Godhead and true Manhood; and it then passes to the consideration of another Arian statement, that the Sonship was a result of God's mere will. Differing from other writers, Dr. Newman considers the fourth Discourse to be an undigested collection of notes or memoranda on several heresies, principally that which was imputed to his friend Marcellus, and to persons connected with him—an imputation which Athanasius, about 360, began to think not undeserved. It may be thought by some who have no bias against the theology of the Discourses that his tenderness towards an old associate is in striking contrast with the exuberance of objurgation bestowed on the Arian "madmen" and "foes of Christ." But not to urge that the 4th cent. had no established rules of controversial politeness, and that the acerbity of Greek disputation and the personalities of Roman society had often too much influence on the tone of Christian argument, one must 