that no man knew it save themselves, that they would write down the martyrology of these holy martyrs, and lay the writing therein with the Saints, just where men must go into the cave, that it might lie therein with them as a testimony, until the time when God Almighty should awake them, and should reveal them to mankind; that all men might afterward perceive by that writing, who the Saints were whom they should find therein, when it should be God's will. And they, the twain, were faithful, and did straightway all as they had before intended, and went into the cave secretly apart [from the rest], and engraved with letters on a leaden tablet the holy martyrology, just as it had happened, and they sealed up the writing with two silver seals in a casket, and laid it therein very secretly beside the Saints; and they closed the cave's keystone very securely, and afterward thence turned them homeward ; and so all these things were through God's ordinance thus disposed. Then about that time died Decius abroad, the evil emperor, and all his kindred, every whit; and many other emperors reigned after him, one after another, in the glory of their kingship, and in the joy of their power; and they, some heathen and some Christian, reigned many years until Theodosius, the great emperor, son of Arcadius, succeeded to the kingdom. And about the eight and thirtieth year after he began to reign, there sprang up everywhere among God's people great heresy, and evil men went about everywhere they could, and brought Christian men into heresy, and said that the belief was naught which all faithful men believe without doubt, viz. that all men at Doomsday shall arise with the same bodies in which each one before lived here in life, 'and then each man shall be doomed according to his deserts, either to misery in hell-torment, or to mirth in the kingdom of heaven. Heretics desired to destroy this faith, and utterly to extinguish it out of Christ's church ; and at the time when the bishops should have been ready to lead God's holy people in the right way, they, above all, fostered every error, and raised up every heresy. There were two men in the episcopal office who were the chief promoters of every evil ; one was called Theodore, and the other Gains. They
