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OF the outrages perpetrated upon the installation of Lucius, and the
treatment of those who were ejected, both in the courts and outside of
the courts, and how some were subjected to a variety of tortures, and
others sent into exile even after this excruciating process, Sabinus
takes not the slightest notice. In fact, being half disposed to
Arianism himself, he purposely veils the atrocities of his friends.
Peter, however, has exposed them, in the letters he addressed to all
the churches, when he had escaped from prison. For this [bishop]
having managed to escape from prison, fled to Damasus, bishop of
Rome. The Arians though not very numerous, becoming thus possessed
of the Alexandrian churches soon after obtained an imperial edict
directing the governor of Egypt to expel not only from Alexandria but
even out of the country, the favorers of the 'homoousian' doctrine,
and all such as were obnoxious to Lucius. After this they assailed
and disturbed and terribly harassed the monastic institutions in the
desert; armed men rushed in the most ferocious manner upon those who
were utterly defenceless, and who would not lift an arm to repel their
violence: so that numbers of unresisting victims were in this manner
slaughtered with a degree of wanton cruelty beyond description.
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