The announcement was received[415] with enthusiasm by Constantine, who wrote of the discovery as being miraculous, according to the copy of his letter given by Eusebius: “Truly that the evidence [_gnórisma_] of His most holy Passion, hidden of old under the earth for so many periods of years, should be anew manifested to the faithful ... is a prodigy defying all admiration.” For, as Eusebius says, “the awful and most holy witness [_marturion_] of the Saviour’s resurrection was discovered beyond all hope.” The letter goes on to declare the confirmation of the emperor’s belief by “all those supernatural events which daily occur to demonstrate the truth of the faith,” and it says that his “first wish now, and after having by God’s leave freed from the heavy load of impious idols the place holy from the first by God’s will, holier yet since it has thrown a vivid light on the Passion of the Saviour, my wish I say is to adorn this holy place by the construction of splendid buildings.” The rest of the letter gives directions for this purpose. It does not, however, enlighten us as to the reasons for selecting the site. The emperor, like his people at large, seems to have been quite satisfied to rest on the authority of Macarius. [Sidenote: THE SEPULCHRE] We are now more critical than men were in the fourth century; and besides all the difficulties (already noticed) in accepting this site as appropriate, there is another--namely, that the rock grave found by the bishop cannot apparently have been like that described in the Gospels. Our only contemporary witness is Eusebius, and the turgid language of his eulogy on Constantine gives us little accurate information. He died in 340 A. D., and Cyril wrote twenty years after the supposed discovery occurred.[416] He says that the stone still lay in his time beside the Holy Sepulchre, and that “the hollow place which was then at the door of the salutary tomb, and was hewn out of the rock itself as is customary here in the front of sepulchres, now appears not, the outer cave having been hewn away for the sake of the present adornment; for before the sepulchre was decorated by royal zeal there was a cave in the face of the rock; but where is the rock that has in it this hollow place?” We may echo these words to-day, and may well ask, Was there ever any such cave?