What Eusebius Leaves Untold

I think it best to pass over all the other things that happened in the meantime. I pass over what the bishops of the churches went through: how, instead of shepherds of Christ’s flocks of reasoning beings, over which they had presided unlawfully, the divine judgment, counting them fit for such a charge, made them keepers of camels, a beast without reason and very crooked in the build of its body, or sentenced them to look after the emperor’s horses. I pass over too the insults, disgraces and tortures they suffered at the hands of the emperor’s officials and rulers over the sacred vessels and treasures of the Church; and besides these, the hunger for power on the part of many, the disorderly and unlawful ordinations, and the schisms among the confessors themselves; and the novelties zealously devised against what was left of the Church by new and factious members, who added innovation to innovation and forced them in without mercy amid the calamities of the persecution, heaping misfortune on misfortune. I judge it more fitting to shun and avoid any account of these things, as I said at the beginning. [a]

But whatever is sober and praiseworthy, in the words of the sacred text, “if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise,” this I consider it most proper to tell and record, and to set before believing hearers in the history of the admirable martyrs. And after this I think it best to crown the whole work with an account of the peace that has dawned on us from heaven.