So at Alexandria, Alexander having died, Athanasius had succeeded to the see. But that he was the same man of keen genius and especially vigilant in ecclesiastical affairs had already then become quite well known to the heretics, when he had come to the Council of Nicaea with his aged bishop Alexander, by whose suggestions the wiles and deceptions of the heretics were vigilantly exposed. At once, therefore, when they learned that he had been made bishop, judging—as the event showed—that their affairs would not easily proceed under his vigilance, they prepared in every way to seek out against him the engines of their deceptions.
But it does not seem to me to be without order to recount a little of this man's origin from earlier on, and to record what his upbringing from boyhood was, as we have received it from those who had spent their lives with him. At the time when Alexander the Bishop was keeping at Alexandria the day of Peter the martyr, when, after the solemnities were completed, he was awaiting the clergy who were to come together for his banquet, in a place near the sea he sees from afar boys upon the shore of the sea imitating a game, as is wont to be done, of a bishop and the things that are customarily performed in churches. But when he watched the boys more intently for a while, he sees certain even more secret and mystical things performed by them. Troubled at once, he ordered the clergy to be summoned to him, and showed them what he himself saw from afar.
Then he commanded them to go away and to bring all the boys, seized, to him. And when they were present, he inquired what game they had, and what they had done, or how. They, as such an age has, frightened, at first denied, then disclosed in order the deed done, and confessed that certain catechumens had been baptized by them through Athanasius, who had been the pretended bishop of that childish game. Then he, carefully inquiring of those who were said to have been baptized what they had been asked and what they had answered, and likewise of him who had asked—
when he sees that everything was consistent according to the rite of our religion, having conferred with the council of clergy, he is reported to have decided that for those upon whom water had been poured with the questions and answers complete, baptism ought not to be repeated, but that those things which are the custom from the priests should be fulfilled. But Athanasius and those whom that game had seemed to hold either as presbyters or as ministers, the parents being summoned, under the adjuration of God he handed over to his Church to be reared.
And in a short time, when Athanasius had been instructed completely by a notary and sufficiently by a grammarian, immediately, as a faithful trust of the Lord commended by his parents, he is restored to the priest, and like a certain Samuel is reared in the temple of the Lord; and by him, going to his fathers in a good old age, he is chosen to bear after him the priestly ephod. But this man's struggles in the Church for the integrity of the faith were so great that even of him that seems to have been said which is written: 「For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake」 (Acts 9:16). For against his persecutions the whole world conspired, and the princes of the earth were moved: nations, kingdoms, and armies came together against him.
But he kept that divine word, saying: 「If camps stand against me, my heart shall not fear: if battle rise up against me, in this will I hope」 (Psalm 27:3). But since his deeds were so great and so many that the magnitude of the matters suffers me to pass over nothing, while the multitude of his deeds, being most numerous, compels me to omit much, my mind tosses uncertain, while it is unable to deliberate what to retain and what to omit. And therefore we shall record the few things that pertain to the matter; his fame will, without doubt, narrate the rest, though it will report things less than the truth. For it will find nothing that it can add.