44. Why need I enter into further
detail? We were assailed again by the Anti-Christian
Emperor, Emperor.
Valens. that tyrant of the
faith, with more abundant impiety and a hotter onset, inasmuch as the
dispute must be with a stronger antagonist, like that unclean and evil
spirit, who when sent forth upon his wanderings from man, returns to
take up his abode in him again with a greater number of spirits, as we
have heard in the Gospels. S. Luke xi. 24. This spirit
he imitated, both in renewing the contest in which he had formerly been
worsted, and in adding to his original efforts. He thought that
it was a strange and insufferable thing that he, who ruled over so many
nations and had won so much renown, and reduced under the power of
impiety all those round about him, and overcome every adversary, should
be publicly worsted by a single man, and a single city, and so incur
the ridicule not only of those patrons of ungodliness by whom he was
led, but also, as he supposed, of all men.