1.  The Lord has granted me the privilege of now saluting your holiness by our beloved and very reverend brother, the presbyter Antiochus, of exhorting you to pray for me as you are wont, and offering in our communication by letter some consolation for our long separation.  And, when you pray, I ask you to beg from the Lord this as the first and greatest boon, that I may be delivered from vile and wicked men, who have gained such power over the people that now I seem to see, indeed, a repetition of the events of the taking of Jerusalem. ᾽Ιουδαϊκῆς ἁλώσεως, which the Ben. note is no doubt right in referring to the events of 70.  For the weaker grow the Churches the more does men’s lust for power increase.  And now the very title of bishop has been conferred on wretched slaves, for no servant of God would choose to come forward in opposition to claim the see;—no one but miserable fellows like the emissaries of Anysius the creature of Euippius, and of Ecdicius of Parnassus:  whoever has appointed him The sudden change from the vaguer plural marks the strong contempt of the writer for the individual pointed at. has sent into the Churches a poor means of aiding his own entry into the life to come.