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I WILL now pursue the course of my narrative, and will describe
the beginning of the tempest which stirred up many and great billows to
buflet the Church. Valens, when he first received the imperial
dignity, was distinguished by his fidelity to apostolic doctrine. But
when the Goths had crossed the Danube and were ravaging Thrace, be
determined to assemble an army and march against them; and accordingly
resolved not to take the field without the garb of divine grace, but
first to protect himself with the panoply of Holy Baptism. In
forming this resolution he acted at once well and wisely, but his
subsequent conduct betrays very great feebleness of character,
resulting in the abandonment of the truth. His fate was the same as
that of our first father, Adam; for he too, won over by the
arguments of his wife, lost his free estate and became not merely a
captive but an obedient listener to woman's wily words. His wife had
already been entrapped in the Arian snare, and now she caught her
husband, and persuaded him to fall along with her into the pit of
blasphemy. Their leader and initiator was Eudoxius, who still held
the tiller of Constantinople, with the result that the ship was not
steered onwards but sunk to the bottom.
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