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Now Flavianus and Diodorus, like break-waters, broke the force of
the advancing waves. Meletius their shepherd had been constrained to
sojourn far away. But these looked after the flock, opposing their
own courage and cunning to the wolves, and bestowing due care upon the
sheep. Now that they were driven away from under the cliff they fed
their flocks by the banks of the neighbouring river. They could not
brook, like the captives at Babylon, to hang their harps upon the
willows, but they continued to hymn their maker and benefactor in all
places of his dominion. But not even in this spot was the meeting of
the pious pastors of them that blessed the Lord suffered by the foe to
be assembled. So again this pair of excellent shepherds gathered their
sheep in the soldiers' training ground trod there tried to show them
their spiritual food in secret. Diodorus, in his wisdom and courage,
like a clear and mighty river, watered his own and drowned the
blasphemies of his opponents, thinking nothing of the splendour of his
birth, and gladly undergoing the sufferings of the faith.
The excellent Flavianus, who was also of the highest rank, thought
piety the only nobility, and, like some trainer for the games,
anointed the great Diodorus as though he had been an athlete for five
contests.
At that time he did riot himself preach at the services of the church,
but furnished an abundant supply of arguments and scriptural thoughts to
preachers, who were thus able to aim their shafts at the blasphemy of
Arius, while he as it were handed them the arrows of his intelligence
from a quiver. Discoursing alike at home and abroad he easily rent
asunder the heretics' nets and showed their defences to be mere
spiders' webs. He was aided in these contests by that Aphraates
whose life I have written in my Religious History, and who,
preferring the welfare of the sheep to his own rest, abandoned his cell
of discipline and retirement, and undertook the hard toil of a
shepherd. Having written on these matters in another work I deem it
now superfluous to recount the wealth of virtue which he amassed, but
one specimen of his good deeds I will proceed now to relate, as
specially appropriate to this history.
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