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Some noble blood was shed by the hand of the executioner; and the most inhospitable extremities of the empire were filled with innocent and illustrious exiles. Among the generals and consuls of the East, Abundantius had reason to dread the first effects of the resentment of Eutropius.
The eunuch won considerable odium in the first year of his power by bringing about the fall of two men of distinction Abundantius, to whose patronage he owed his rise in the world, and Timasius, who had been the commander-general in the East. An account of the manner in which the ruin of the latter was wrought will illustrate the sort of intrigues that were spun at the Byzantine court.
Whatever were the forms by which the election should have been governed, it was in reality settled by a battle between the two parties in the streets; and though Abundantius, the military prefect, gave the weight of his name, if not the strength of his cohort, to the party of Timotheus, yet his rival conquered, -and Cyril was carried into the cathedral with a pomp more like a pagan triumph than the modest ordination of a bishop.
Abundantius was stripped of his ample fortunes by an Imperial rescript, and banished to Pityus, on the Euxine, the last frontier of the Roman world; where he subsisted by the precarious mercy of the Barbarians, till he could obtain, after the fall of Eutropius, a milder exile at Sidon, in Phnicia. The destruction of Timasius required a more serious and regular mode of attack.
So far is clear at once, that the preacher’s object is the spiritual good of his hearers. “Finis prædicanti sit,” says St. Francis de Sales; “ut vitam (justitiæ) habeant homines, et abundantius habeant.” And St. Charles: “Considerandum, ad Dei omnipotentis gloriam, ad animarumque salutem, referri omnem concionandi vim ac rationem.” Moreover, “Prædicatorem esse ministrum Dei, per quem verbum Dei
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