After these things, when a pestilential disease had taken up the war, and the feast was drawing near, he again addresses the brethren by writing, signifying the sufferings of the calamity in these words:
“To other men the present time would not seem to be a season of festival; nor is it to them, neither this nor any other—not only of the sorrowful, but not even any that one might think exceedingly joyful. Now indeed all is lamentation, and all are in mourning, and wailings resound throughout the city because of the multitude of the dead and of those who are dying day by day.
For as it is written concerning the firstborn of the Egyptians, so also now there has come to be a great cry; for there is no house in which there is not one dead—and would that there were but one! For many and dreadful indeed were the things that befell us even before this.
First they drove us out; and we alone, persecuted and put to death by all men, kept festival even then; and every place of affliction for each one became for us a festal site—field, desert, ship, inn, prison. But the most radiant feast of all was kept by the perfected martyrs, feasted in heaven.
And after these things war and famine fell upon us, which we bore together with the gentiles; we alone enduring all that they did to harm us, yet also having our share of what they wrought upon and suffered from one another; and again we took joy in the peace of Christ, which He gave to us alone.
And when both we and they had obtained a very brief respite, this disease swept down—a thing more fearful to them than any fear, and more wretched than any calamity whatever, and, as one of their own historians reported, a thing alone surpassing all expectation. To us, however, it was not such, but a training and a proving no less than any of the rest. For neither did it abstain from us; yet it went forth in abundance among the gentiles.”
To these he subjoins, saying: “At all events, the most of our brethren, through their surpassing love and brotherly affection, sparing not themselves and cleaving to one another, visited the sick without thought of self, ministered to them assiduously, tended them in Christ, and most gladly departed life together with them—being filled with the affliction caught from others, and drawing the disease upon themselves from their neighbours, and willingly taking on their pains. And many, after nursing and strengthening others, themselves died, transferring to themselves the death of those others; and the popular saying, which always seems to be but a matter of courtesy, they then fulfilled in very deed, departing as their ‘offscouring.’
At all events, the best of our brethren departed life in this manner—certain presbyters and deacons, and some of the people highly commended—so that this kind of death, brought about through great piety and strong faith, seemed to fall short in nothing of martyrdom.
And taking up the bodies of the saints with upturned hands and bosoms, closing their eyes and shutting their mouths, bearing them on their shoulders and laying them out, clinging to them, embracing them, adorning them with washings and grave-clothes, after a little while they obtained the like themselves—those who remained ever following after those who had gone before them.
But the gentiles did just the opposite: they thrust away those beginning to fall sick, and fled from their dearest, and cast out into the roads the half-dead, and flung away the dead unburied as refuse, shunning the spread and the sharing of death—which, even with many contrivances, it was not easy to escape.
And after this letter too, when peace had come to those in the city, he again sends a Festal Letter to the brethren in Egypt, and after this composes still others on various subjects. And there is extant a certain letter of his also concerning the Sabbath, and another concerning exercise.
And in communicating by letter with Hermammon and the brethren in Egypt, after recounting many other things concerning the wickedness of Decius and those after him, he makes mention of the peace under Gallienus.