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PEACE had but just been restored when he returned to Alexandria;
but as sedition and war broke out again, rendering it impossible if or
him to oversee all the brethren, separated in different places by the
insurrection, at the feast of the passover, as if he were still an
exile from Alexandria, he addressed them again by letter. And in
another festal epistle written later to Hierax, a bishop in Egypt,
he mentions the sedition then prevailing in Alexandria, as follows:
"What wonder is it that it is difficult for me to communicate by
letters with those who live far away, when it is beyond my power even
to reason with myself, or to take counsel for my own life? Truly I
need to send letters to those who are as my own bowels, dwelling in one
home, and brethren of one soul, and citizens of the same church; but
how to send them I cannot tell. For it would be easier for one to
go, not only beyond the limits of the province, but even from the
East to the West, than from Alexandria to Alexandria itself.
For the very heart of the city is more intricate and impassable than
that great and trackless desert which Israel traversed for two
generations. And our smooth and waveless harbors have become like the
sea, divided and walled up, through which Israel drove and in whose
highway the Egyptians were overwhelmed. For often from the slaughters
there committed they appear like the Red Sea. And the river which
flows by the city has sometimes seemed drier than the waterless desert,
and more parched than that in which Israel, as they passed through
it, so suffered for thirst, that they cried out against Moses, and
the water flowed for them from the steep rock, through him who alone
doeth wonders. Again it has overflowed so greatly as to flood all the
surrounding country, and the roads and the fields; threatening to
bring back the deluge of water that occurred in the days of Noah. And
it flows along, polluted always with blood and slaughter and
drownings, as it became for Pharaoh through the agency of Moses,
when he changed it into blood, and it stank. And what other water
could purify the water which purifies everything? How could the
ocean, so great and impassable for men, if poured into it, cleanse
this bitter sea? Or how could the great river which flowed out of
Eden, if it poured the four heads into which it is divided into the
one of Geon, wash away this pollution? Or when can the air poisoned
by these noxious exhalations become pure? For such vapors arise from
the earth, and winds from the sea, and breezes from the river, and
mists from the harbors, that the dews are, as it were, discharges
from dead bodies putrefying in all the elements around us. Yet men
wonder and cannot understand whence these continuous pestilences;
whence these severe sicknesses; whence these deadly diseases of all
kinds; whence this various and vast human destruction; why this great
city no longer contains as many inhabitants, from tender infants to
those most advanced in life, as it formerly contained of those whom it
called hearty old men. But the men from forty to seventy years of age
were then so much more numerous that their number cannot now be filled
out, even when those from fourteen to eighty years are enrolled and
registered for the public allowance of food. And the youngest in
appearance have become, as it were, of equal age with those who
formerly were the oldest. But though they see the race of men thus
constantly diminishing and wasting away, and though their complete
destruction is increasing and advancing, they do not tremble."
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