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Histoire de l'Église

CHAPITRE XXVII.

Têtes d'hommes trouvées à Antioche.

VOILA les restes abominables de la superstition et de l'impiété qui furent trouvés à Carras. On dit qu'on trouva à Antioche dans le Palais de Julien, plusieurs coffres pleins de têtes d'hommes, et des puits comblés de corps morts. Voila quelles sont les leçons que les faux Dieux donnent à ceux qui les adorent.

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The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret (CCEL)

Chapter XI. In what manner Valens fell into heresy.

I will now pursue the course of my narrative, and will describe the beginning of the tempest which stirred up many and great billows to buffet the Church. Valens, when he first received the imperial dignity, was distinguished by his fidelity to apostolic doctrine. But when the Goths had crossed the Danube and were ravaging Thrace, he determined to assemble an army and march against them; and accordingly resolved not to take the field without the garb of divine grace, but first to protect himself with the panoply of Holy Baptism. ¹ In forming this resolution he acted at once well and wisely, but his subsequent conduct betrays very great feebleness of character, resulting in the abandonment of the truth. His fate was the same as that of our first father, Adam; for he too, won over by the arguments of his wife, lost his free estate and became not merely a captive but an obedient listener to woman’s wily words. His wife ² had already been entrapped in the Arian snare, and now she caught her husband, and persuaded him to fall along with her into the pit of blasphemy. Their leader and initiator was Eudoxius, who still held the tiller of Constantinople, with the result that the ship was not steered onwards but sunk ³ to the bottom.