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AT that period at Edessa flourished the admirable Ephraim, and at
Alexandria Didymus, both writers against the doctrines that are at
variance with the truth. Ephraim, employing the Syrian language,
shed beams of spiritual grace. Totally untainted as he was by heathen
education he was able to expose the niceties of heathen error, and lay
bare the weakness of all heretical artifices. Harmonius the son of
Bardesanes had once composed certain songs and by mixing sweetness of
melody with his impiety beguiled the hearers, and led them to their
destruction. Ephraim adopted the music of the songs, but set them to
piety, and so gave the hearers at once great delight and a healing
medicine. These songs are still used to enliven the festivals of our
victorious martyrs.
Didymus, however, who from a child had been deprived of the sense of
sight, had been educated in poetry, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, and the eloquence of Plato.
Instruction in all these subjects he received by the sense of hearing
alone, not indeed as conveying the truth, but as likely to be weapons
for the truth against falsehood. Of holy scriptures he learnt not only
the sonnet but the sense. So among livers of ascetic lives and
students of virtue, these men at that time Were conspicuous.
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