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Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 139
Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.
English translation and editorial credits: Blomfield Jackson (translator and notes), Charles Hole (proof revision and suggestions), Reginald Geare (translation assistance; individual letters unallocated).
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On the cruel persecution roused by Valens in Alexandria shortly after the death of Athanasius in 373, and the horrors perpetrated there, see the letter of Peter, Athanasius’ successor, in Theod. iv. 19.
Editorial footnote · The Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 139, editorial note cite_note-2 · Original source
To the Alexandrians.
ἐν τῆ πολιτεὶ& 139· καμάτους; or, possibly, labours in life, i.e. ascetic life. The Ben. ed. prefer the latter.
Editorial footnote · The Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 139, editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source
1. I have already heard of the persecution in Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, and, as might be expected, I am deeply affected. I have observed the ingenuity of the devil’s mode of warfare. When he saw that the Church increased under the persecution of enemies and flourished all the more, he changed his plan. He no longer carries on an open warfare, but lays secret snares against us, hiding his hostility under the name which they bear, in order that we may both suffer like our fathers, and, at the same time, seem not to suffer for Christ’s sake, because our persecutors too bear the name of Christians. With these thoughts for a long time we sat still, dazed at the news of what had happened, for, in sober earnest, both our ears tingled on hearing of the shameless and inhuman heresy of your persecutors. They have reverenced neither age, nor services to society, nor people’s affection. They inflicted torture, ignominy, and exile; they plundered all the property they could find; they were careless alike of human condemnation and of the awful retribution to come at the hands of the righteous Judge. All this has amazed me and all but driven me out of my senses. To my reflections has been added this thought too; can the Lord have wholly abandoned His Churches? Has the last hour come, and is “the falling away” thus coming upon us, that now the lawless one “may be revealed, the son of perdition who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God and is worshipped”? But if the temptation is for a season, bear it, ye noble athletes of Christ. If the world is being delivered to complete, and final destruction, let us not lose heart for the present, but let us await the revelation from heaven, and the manifestation of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. If all creation is to be dissolved, and the fashion of this world transformed, why should we be surprised that we, who are apart of creation, should feel the general woe, and be delivered to afflictions which our just God inflicts on us according to the measure of our strength, not letting us “be tempted above that we are able, but with the temptation giving us a way to escape that we may be able to bear it”? Brothers, martyrs’ crowns await you. The companies of the confessors are ready to reach out their hands to you and to welcome you into their own ranks. Remember how none of the saints of old won their crowns of patient endurance by living luxuriously and being courted; but all were tested by being put through the fire of great afflictions. “For some had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, and others were sawn asunder and were slain with the sword.” These are the glories of saints. Blessed is he who is deemed worthy to suffer for Christ; more blessed is he whose sufferings are greater, since “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”