so many preparatory steps to the ruin of Athanasius himself.
Six-and-twenty months had elapsed, during which the Imperial court
secretly labored, by the most insidious arts, to remove him from
Alexandria, and to withdraw the allowance which supplied his popular
liberality. But when the primate of Egypt, deserted and proscribed by
the Latin church, was left destitute of any foreign support, Constantius
despatched two of his secretaries with a verbal commission to announce
and execute the order of his banishment. As the justice of the sentence
was publicly avowed by the whole party, the only motive which could
restrain Constantius from giving his messengers the sanction of a
written mandate, must be imputed to his doubt of the event; and to a
sense of the danger to which he might expose the second city, and the
most fertile province, of the empire, if the people should persist in
the resolution of defending, by force of arms, the innocence of their
spiritual father. Such extreme caution afforded Athanasius a specious
pretence respectfully to dispute the truth of an order, which he could
not reconcile, either with the equity, or with the former declarations,
of his gracious master. The civil powers of Egypt found themselves
inadequate to the task of persuading or compelling the primate to
abdicate his episcopal throne; and they were obliged to conclude
a treaty with the popular leaders of Alexandria, by which it was
stipulated, that all proceedings and all hostilities should be suspended
till the emperor's pleasure had been more distinctly ascertained. By
this seeming moderation, the Catholics were deceived into a false and
fatal security; while the legions of the Upper Egypt, and of Libya,
advanced, by secret orders and hasty marches, to besiege, or rather to
surprise, a capital habituated to sedition, and inflamed by religious
zeal. The position of Alexandria, between the sea and the Lake Mareotis,
facilitated the approach and landing of the troops; who were introduced
into the heart of the city, before any effectual measures could be taken
either to shut the gates or to occupy the important posts of defence.
At the hour of midnight, twenty-three days after the signature of the
treaty, Syrianus, duke of Egypt, at the head of five thousand soldiers,
armed and prepared for an assault, unexpectedly invested the church of
St. Theonas, where the archbishop, with a part of his clergy and people,
performed their nocturnal devoti