Athanasius Withdraws

When all this was done, they did not stop even there. They consulted how they might play the same part in the other church, where I was mostly staying during those days, and they were eager to carry their fury to this church too, so that they might hunt me out and put me to death. And that would have been my fate, had not the grace of Christ helped me, if only so that I might escape to tell these few details of their conduct. For I saw that they were utterly mad against me. I was anxious that the church should not be harmed, nor the virgins in it suffer, nor more murders be committed, nor the people be outraged again. So I withdrew from among them, remembering our Savior’s words, “If they persecute you in this city, flee to another.” For I knew from the evil they had done against the first church that they would hold back from no outrage against the other as well. And there, in fact, they did not respect even the Lord’s day of the holy feast. In that church too they imprisoned its people, at the very time when the Lord set all free from the bonds of death. Gregory and his associates, as though fighting against our Savior and relying on the governor’s patronage, have turned this day of freedom for the servants of Christ into mourning. The pagans were glad to do it, for they hate that day; and Gregory perhaps was only carrying out the orders of Eusebius and his party in forcing Christians to mourn in chains. [a]

With these acts of violence the governor has seized the churches and handed them over to Gregory and the Arian madmen. So those whom we excommunicated for their impiety now boast in the plunder of our churches, while the people of God and the clergy of the catholic church are forced either to have communion with the impiety of the Arian heretics or to stay away from the churches. Moreover, through the governor, Gregory has used no small violence against ship captains and others who travel by sea. He has tortured and flogged some and put others in chains and thrown them into prison, to force them not to resist his wickedness and to take letters from him. And not content with all this, so that he may glut himself with our blood, he has had his savage associate, the governor, bring an indictment against me, as if in the name of the people, before the most religious emperor Constantius. It contains hateful charges, for which one might expect not only banishment but ten thousand deaths. The man who drew it up is an apostate from Christianity and a shameless worshiper of idols; those who signed it are pagans and keepers of idol temples, and some of them Arians. [e]

In short, so as not to make my letter tedious to you, a persecution is raging here, and a persecution such as was never before raised against the church. For in earlier persecutions a man could at least pray while he fled from his persecutors, and be baptized while he lay in hiding. But now their extreme cruelty has imitated the godless conduct of the Babylonians. For as they falsely accused Daniel, so this remarkable Gregory now accuses before the governor those who pray in their houses, and watches every opportunity to insult their ministers. Because of his violence, many are in danger of going without baptism, and many who are sick and grieving have no one to visit them. They lament this bitterly and count it worse than their sickness. For while the ministers of the church are under persecution, the people, who condemn the impiety of the Arian heretics, choose rather to be sick in this way and run the risk than to let the hand of an Arian come upon their heads.