CHAPTER LXII

CONCERNING THE SAME ARIUS, AND THE MELITIANS

THUS did the adverse parties at Alexandria maintain an obstinate conflict respecting questions of the highest and most mysterious kind. And at the same time others were at variance throughout Egypt and the Upper Thebaid, on account of a controversy which had been still earlier in existence: so that the churches were every where distracted by divisions. The body therefore being thus diseased, the whole of Libya caught the contagion; and the rest of the remoter provinces became affected with the same disorder. For the disputants at Alexandria sent emissaries to the bishops of the several provinces, who accordingly ranged themselves as partisans on either side, and shared in the same spirit of discord.