Some thus at Alexandria maintained an obstinate conflict on the highest questions. Others throughout Egypt and the Upper Thebaid, were at variance on account of an earlier controversy: so that the churches were everywhere distracted by divisions. The body therefore being thus diseased, the whole of Libya caught the contagion; and the rest of the remoter provinces became affected with the same disorder. For the disputants at Alexandria sent emissaries to the bishops of the several provinces, who accordingly ranged themselves as partisans on either side, and shared in the same spirit of discord.

---

Footnotes:

[3210] [The Melitians, or Meletians, an obscure Egyptian sect, of whom little satisfactory is recorded.--Bag.] Compare Blunt, Dict. of Sects, Heresies, &c. (1874), 305-308.