(At this great council, when many reasoned soundly and well, and others spoke differently (for there were few who thought contrary to the right dogmas, although they did not dare to expose their impiety, but covered it with certain stratagems, which not everyone could discern, but only those who comprehended the mysteries of the truth), the confession of faith was read, which was preserved and preached at that time throughout the whole world; all recognized it, having testified both in words and on paper, that they believe and think so. Many did this quite willingly, and seven of some of the accomplices in the blasphemy of Arius, although they also testified to the Creed with their tongues and pens, yet in their souls they held the conviction of the opposite, according to the word of the prophet: "These men worship Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me" (Isaiah 29:13). About them also Jeremiah says: "Thou art near their lips, but far from their wombs" (Jeremiah 12:2), and also David: "With thy lips thou blesseth, and with thy heart a maple" (Psalm 61:5), and their words are softer than oil, and that are arrows (Psalm 54:22). And so these seven men began to ask the great Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, to have pity on Arius, who had been condemned by the whole council. But when Alexander, knowing their pretense and suspecting the cunning of Arius, did not heed their request, some others, deceived by Arius in their simplicity, began to praise the virtue of love for mankind, proving that it was especially pleasing to the Lord of all. When the great Alexander called unjust love for one person inhumanity, harmful to many, pointing out that it could serve as the cause of the destruction of the entire flock of Christ, then James offered advice to all to observe a strict fast and during the seven days of this fast to pray to the Lord that He would grant peace to the churches. Everyone accepted this advice of the divine man, since they knew that he shone with apostolic gifts. Fasting was combined with prayer, and when Sunday came, on which many hoped to see the impious Arius received by the Orthodox into church communion and, upon the onset of the Divine Liturgy, expected to see the adversary of God pardoned, a Divine and truly wondrous miracle took place. In the most unclean place, this wicked man, having vomited out the food he had taken, vomited out its receptacle together with it: his intestines fell out and mingled with impurities, this wicked man fell down dead and suffered a shameful death. He received the well-deserved recompense for his abominable blasphemy in a vile place through the prayers of the great James. The Holy Scriptures justly praise the priest Phinehas, because he struck down Baadfeshloa, the author of the misfortunes of the people of Israel. That is why the Psalmist David sings of it, saying: "A hundred Phinehas and propitiate, and cease to be slain: and it shall be reckoned to him for righteousness, for generations and generations for ever" (Psalm 105:30-31). But Phinehas deservedly and gloriously struck down the enemy with his weapons, and for Jacob, instead of spear and sword, the word with which he struck the wicked man was enough, so that he would not see the glory of the Lord. And this alone was sufficient to expose the folly of the accomplices in the wickedness of Arius. For James, as a preacher and defender of the dogmas we revere, having struck with his weapon the words of the father of impiety, forced others to turn away from this insane impiety).

After the end of the holy council, each primate returned to his flock; Jacob also returned, as a leader and conqueror, comforted by the victories of piety.

11. After a while, the great and admirable Emperor Constantine, adorned with crowns of piety, died; power over the Roman empire was inherited by his sons. Then the king of Persia (Sapor was his name), looking with contempt upon the children of Constantine, as not equal in strength to their father, set out with a multitude of infantry and cavalry against Nisibis; He also brought here as many elephants as he could. Having disposed his army to storm the city, he set up siege weapons, built fortifications, fixed the piles, and blocked the spaces between them like wattle with branches, ordered the soldiers to make an embankment and set up siege towers against the fortress towers. Then, placing archers in them, he commanded them to shoot at those standing on the walls, and ordered the other soldiers to blow up the walls from below. Since, through the prayers of the pious man, all this did not bring success, Sapor with a multitude of his people stopped the flow of the neighboring river, blocking it with a dam. When a large amount of water had gathered, he released it all at once on the walls, as if using a siege engine of great destructive power. The wall could not withstand the pressure of the water and under its onslaught on one side completely collapsed. The Persian soldiers raised a great cry as if the city had almost been taken, for they did not know of the great stronghold guarding the inhabitants of the city. The Persians postponed its capture for a while, seeing the impossibility of approaching the fortress due to the abundance of water. Moving away at a distance and as if calmed down from their labors, they gave themselves a rest, and took care of the horses. The inhabitants of the city turned to God with fervent prayers, having the great Jacob as their intercessor before Him. All the adults eagerly renewed the collapsed wall, not caring in the least about its beauty or slenderness, but in disorder piling up what they could: stones, bricks, and other objects brought with them. The work went well, and in one night the laying in the wall reached a height sufficient to hold back a cavalry charge, and to prevent infantrymen without ladders from climbing the wall. Then all the inhabitants of the city began to beseech the man of God to ascend the wall and strike the enemies with the arrows of prayer. Heeding the requests, he climbed one of the towers and, seeing a multitude of enemies, began to beseech the Lord to send a cloud of mosquitoes and mosquitoes upon them. The Lord heard his prayers, as he had previously listened to the prayers of Moses, and the Persian soldiers were stung by the arrows sent by God. The horses and elephants broke free from their harness and fled, scattered everywhere, because they could not bear the attacks of these insects.

12. When the wicked king saw that all the siege weapons were of no use, and the pressure of the water was useless, for the broken wall was quickly rebuilt; when he saw that his entire army was exhausted by labor, suffering in the open air and being persecuted by a punishment sent from above; when he also saw a man of God walking on the walls, and decided that the Roman emperor himself was in command of the city (for on the wall he saw a man dressed in purple and adorned with a diadem), then he was indignant at those who had deceived him by persuading him to go to war, and by assuring him that there was no emperor in Nisibis. Having condemned these advisers to death, he sent his army back and hastily retired to his royal palace.

13. Such miracles God performed through this Hezekiah, not less, but greater than through Hezekiah of old (2 Kings 19:14-19)! For what miracle can surpass that of Jacob, for the city with the broken wall was not taken by the enemy! And I am also amazed that in his prayers Jacob did not ask for lightning and fire from heaven, as the great Elijah did, when two military commanders came to him, each with fifty soldiers (2 Kings 1:9-12). James knew that the Lord said to the Apostles James and John, when they wanted to do the same thing as Elijah did: "You do not know what kind of spirit you are" (Luke 9:55). And therefore he did not ask that the earth be opened under the feet of the Persian soldiers, nor did he ask that the army of the enemies be given over to the fire, but turned to God only with a prayer that it would be ulcerated by insects and that the enemies, recognizing the power of God, would finally learn piety.

14. Such boldness before God was this man of God! He was vouchsafed such grace from above! Living in this way and progressing from day to day in the Divine, he left this life with the greatest glory and migrated from these places. After some time, when the city itself was ceded by the then Roman king to the Persians, its former inhabitants left the city and carried with them the body of their defender and leader, grieving and grieving over their migration, but singing and glorifying the valor of the victorious James. For if he had lived, they would not have fallen under the power of the barbarians.

Having told about this holy man, I, praying for his blessing, will proceed to another story.

II. JULIAN

1. Julian, who was honored by the local inhabitants with the name "Sava", which means "elder" in Greek, established his ascetic cell in the land, which was then Parthian, and is now called Osroene. This country extends to the west to the very bank of the river, the name of which is Euphrates, and to the east it borders on the Roman possessions and passes into Assyria, the western part of the Persian kingdom, which was later called Adiabene. In this country there were many large and populous cities; there was much land in it, both inhabited and uninhabited and desolate.

2. Withdrawing into the depths of the desert and finding there a cave not made by hands, although not well and beautifully made, but capable of giving close shelter to those who wish solitude, this divine man gladly settled in this place, considering it better than magnificent palaces resplendent with gold and silver. It was here that he spent his life, eating once a week; and his food was barley bread (and that was made of bran), the seasoning was salt, and the most pleasant drink was spring water. All this was used not with satiety, but in a measure taken once and for all. For him, the true food, luxury, and pleasure were David's psalmody and uninterrupted conversation with God. Greedily enjoying them, he could never be satisfied, but, always satiated with them, he constantly sang: "If thy words are sweet to my throat, more than honey to my lips" (Psalm 118:103). He also heard other words of David: "The destinies of the Lord are true, justified together: they are more desirable than gold, and more precious than stone, and sweeter than honey and honeycomb" (Psalm 18:10-11); I have also heard others: "Delight in the Lord, and he will give thee the petitions of thy heart" (Psalm 36:4), "My heart rejoices in fearing Thy name" (Psalm 85:4 and 11), and taste and see how good the Lord is (Psalm 33:9). He also listened to these words: "My soul thirsts for the mighty living God" (Psalm 41:3), and my soul cleaves to Thee (Psalm 62:9). And heeding these words, he also took into himself the love of the one who spoke them. After all, the great David, singing these songs, said that he would like to gain many accomplices and partners in the love of God. So he was not deceived in his hope, but attracted to Divine love this pious man, and a multitude of others. Julian was inflamed with such love for God that he was, as it were, intoxicated with it; he did not notice anything earthly, day and night dreaming and thinking only of the Beloved.

3. Many of those who lived near him and at a distance from him learned from him the sublime wisdom (for the fame of him quickly spread everywhere); Many came and begged him to accept them into his school of asceticism, asking to be allowed to live with him as a mentor and guide. Thus, not only do birds lure birds of their own kind by their song, attracting their own kind and luring them into their nets, but people also draw their own kind: some to destruction, others to salvation. Soon ten people gathered around Julian, then this number doubled and tripled, and finally reached a hundred.

4. And though there were many of them, his cave contained them all; because they learned from the elder to neglect the care of the body. They ate, like their teacher, barley bread seasoned with salt. And later they gathered wild vegetables, put them in vessels and filled them with the right amount of brine - this was a supply of them, saved in case of need for the sick. For the stored vegetables, their presence in the same cave was harmful: they could become moldy and rot here from dampness. When this really happened with vegetables (for it was damp in all corners of the cave), the brethren began to ask the elder for permission to build some small house, which would be enough to store supplies there. At first he did not heed their requests, but then, being convinced by them and having learned from the great Paul not to seek his own (1 Corinthians 13:5), but to yield to the inferior, he determined the size of a small and narrow house, and he himself withdrew far from the cave in order to make his usual prayers to God. For he was in the habit of going deep into the wilderness, often fifty stades, and sometimes twice as far as this, to withdraw from all human society, to go deep into himself, to converse alone with God, and to contemplate, as in a mirror, the divine and ineffable Beauty. Taking advantage of Julian's absence, those who lived under his care built a house in proportion to the need, but larger than the size indicated by the elder. And he, returning ten days later from those ineffable contemplations, like Moses coming down from the mountain, saw that the house was larger than he had intended, and said: "I am afraid, brethren, that by enlarging our earthly dwellings, we shall not diminish the heavenly ones; while earthly ones are temporary and only for a short time, and heavenly ones are eternal and cannot have limits." He said this to them, instructing his monastic choir regarding the highest perfection, and forgave them their guilt, heeding the word of the Apostle: "I seek not my own profit, but the benefit of many, that they may be saved" (1 Corinthians 10:33).