Paphlagonia,34 in Lydia,35 in Cyzicum,36 in Nicæa,37 in Nicomedia and Cotyæum,38 and in Alexandria;39 that he knows and describes their church edifices;40 that he knows their internal troubles and trials,41 especially their position on the Paschal controversy;42 that he gives vent to expressions of a sympathetic nature with the rigor practiced by the Novatian church;43 that he records the criticisms of Novatians on Chrysostom and the opinion that his deposition was a just retribution for his persecution of the Novatians;44 that he attributes miracles to Paul, Novatian bishop of Constantinople,45 takes the testimony of Novatian witnesses,46 rejects current charges against them,47 and finally speaks of the death of Novatian as a martyrdom.48 On the other hand, Valesius, followed by most of the more recent writers on Socrates, claims that all these facts are due to the extreme impartiality of the historian, his sense of the justice due to a sect whose good he appreciated, together with his lack of interest in the differences between their standpoint and that of the Catholics. Socrates treats other heretical sects with the same generous consideration, e.g. the Arian Goths, whose death he records as a martyrdom;49 and yet he has never been suspected of inclining towards Arianism. At the same time he mentions the Novatians as distinct from the Catholic Church,50 and everywhere implies that the Church for him is the latter. To account for the apparently different conclusions to which these two series of consid- erations point, some have assumed that Socrates had been a Novatian, but before the writing of his history had either gradually drifted into the Catholic Church, or for reasons of prudence 34 IV. 28. 35 VI. 19. 36 II. 38; III. 11. 37 VII. 12. 38 IV. 28. 39 VII. 7. 40 II. 38; VII. 39. 41 V. 21. 42 V. 22. 43 IV. 28; V. 19; VI. 21, 22; VII. 25. 44 VI. 19 and 21. 45 VII. 17, 39. 46 I. 10, 13; II. 38; IV. 28. 47 V. 10. 48 IV. 28. 49 IV. 33. 50 VI. 20, 23; IV. 28; V. 19; VII. 3. 10 Life of Socrates.