Writings of Basil - The Letters
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The Letters
Of Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Cæsaria,
Translated with Notes by
The Rev. Blomfield Jackson, M.A.
Vicar of Saint Bartholomew's, Moor Lane, and Fellow of King's College, London.
Under the editorial supervision of Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Church History in the Union Theological Semimary, New York,
and Henry Wace, D.D., Principal of King's College, London
Published in 1895 by T&T Clark,
Edinburgh
Introduction to the Letters.
Of Saint Basil the extant letters, according to popular ascription,
number three hundred and sixty-six. Of these three hundred and
twenty-five, or, according to some, only three hundred and nineteen
are genuine. They are published in three chronological divisions, the
1st, (Letters 1-46) comprising those written by Basil before his
elevation to the episcopate; the second (47-291) the Letters of the
Episcopate; the third (292-366) those which have no note of time,
together with some that are of doubtful genuineness, and a few
certainly spurious. [1736]They may be classified as (a) historical,
(b) dogmatic, (c) moral and ascetic, (d) disciplinary, (e)
consolatory, (f) commendatory, and (g) familiar. In the historic we
have a vivid picture of his age. The doctrinal are of special value
as expressing and defending the Nicene theology. The moral and
ascetic indicate the growing importance of the monastic institution
which Athanasius at about the same time was instrumental in
recommending to the Latin Church. The disciplinary, (notably 188,
199, and 217), to Amphilochius, illustrate the earlier phases of
ecclesiastical law. The consolatory, commendatory, and familiar, have
an immediate biographical value as indicating the character and faith
of the writer, and may not be without use alike as models of Christian
feeling and good breeding, and as bringing comfort in trouble to
readers remote in time and place. The text in the following
translation is that of Migne's edition, except where it is stated to
the contrary. Of the inadequacy of the notes to illustrate the
letters as they deserve no one can be more vividly conscious than
myself. But the letters tell their own story.
Footnotes
[1736] Fessler, Inst. Pat. i. 518.
Letter I. [1737]
To Eustathius the Philosopher. [1738]
Much distressed as I was by the flouts of what is called fortune, who
always seems to be hindering my meeting you, I was wonderfully cheered
and comforted by your letter, for I had already been turning over in
my mind whether what so many people say is really true, that there is
a certain Necessity or Fate which rules all the events of our lives
both great and small, and that we human beings have control over
nothing; or, that at all events, all human life is driven by a kind of
luck. [1739]You will be very ready to forgive me for these
reflexions, when you learn by what causes I was led to make them.
On hearing of your philosophy, I entertained a feeling of contempt for
the teachers of Athens, and left it. The city on the Hellespont I
passed by, more unmoved than any Ulysses, passing Sirens' songs.
[1740]
Asia [1741] I admired; but I hurried on to the capital of all that is
best in it. When I arrived home, and did not find you,--the prize
which I had sought so eagerly,--there began many and various
unexpected hindrances. First I must miss you because I fell ill; then
when you were setting out for the East I could not start with you;
then, after endless trouble, I reached Syria, but I missed the
philosopher, who had set out for Egypt. Then I must set out for
Egypt, a long and weary way, and even there I did not gain my end.
But so passionate was my longing that I must either set out for
Persia, and proceed with you to the farthest lands of barbarism, (you
had got there; what an obstinate devil possessed me!) or settle here
at Alexandria. This last I did. I really think that unless, like
some tame beast, I had followed a bough held out to me till I was
quite worn out, you would have been driven on and on beyond Indian
Nyssa, [1742] or any more remote region, and wandered about out
there. Why say more?
On returning home, I cannot meet you, hindered by lingering ailments.
If these do not get better I shall not be able to meet you even in the
winter. Is not all this, as you yourself say, due to Fate? Is not
this Necessity? Does not my case nearly outdo poets' tales of
Tantalus? But, as I said, I feel better after getting your letter,
and am now no longer of the same mind. When God gives good things I
think we must thank Him, and not be angry with Him while He is
controlling their distribution. So if He grant me to join you, I
shall think it best and most delightful; if He put me off, I will
gently endure the loss. For He always rules our lives better than we
could choose for ourselves.
Footnotes
[1737] Placed in 357.
[1738] Another ms. reading is "To Eustathius, Presbyter of Antioch."
The Benedictine note is "Eustathius was not a Presbyter, but a
heathen, as is indicated by Basil's words, `Are not these things work
of fate,--of necessity, as you would say?'"
[1739] The word tuche does not occur in the N.T.
[1740] hos oudeis 'Odusseus. The Ben. translation is "citius quam
quisquam Ulysses." But the reason of the escape of Ulysses was not
his speed, but his stopping the ears of his crew with wax and tying
himself to the mast. cf. Hom. Od. xii. 158. The "city on the
Hellespont," is, according to the Ben. note, Constantinople; but
Constantinople is more than 100 m. from the Dardanelles, and Basil
could hardly write so loosely.
[1741] Apparently not the Roman Province of Asia, but what we call
Asia Minor, a name which came into use in Basil's century. The
"metropolis" is supposed to mean Cæsarea.
[1742] Nusios='Indikos. cf. Soph. Aj. 707. Nyssa was in the Punjab.
Letter II. [1743]
Basil to Gregory.
1. [I recognised your letter, as one recognises one's friends'
children from their obvious likeness to their parents. Your saying
that to describe the kind of place I live in, before letting you hear
anything about how I live, would not go far towards persuading you to
share my life, was just like you; it was worthy of a soul like yours,
which makes nothing of all that concerns this life here, in comparison
with the blessedness which is promised us hereafter. What I do
myself, day and night, in this remote spot, I am ashamed to write. I
have abandoned my life in town, as one sure to lead to countless ills;
but I have not yet been able to get quit of myself. I am like
travellers at sea, who have never gone a voyage before, and are
distressed and seasick, who quarrel with the ship because it is so big
and makes such a tossing, and, when they get out of it into the
pinnace or dingey, are everywhere and always seasick and distressed.
Wherever they go their nausea and misery go with them. My state is
something like this. I carry my own troubles with me, and so
everywhere I am in the midst of similar discomforts. So in the end I
have not got much good out of my solitude. What I ought to have done;
what would have enabled me to keep close to the footprints of Him who
has led the way to salvation--for He says, "If any one will come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me" [1744]
--is this.]
2. We must strive after a quiet mind. As well might the eye
ascertain an object put before it while it is wandering restless up
and down and sideways, without fixing a steady gaze upon it, as a
mind, distracted by a thousand worldly cares, be able clearly to
apprehend the truth. He who is not yet yoked in the bonds of
matrimony is harassed by frenzied cravings, and rebellious impulses,
and hopeless attachments; he who has found his mate is encompassed
with his own tumult of cares; if he is childless, there is desire for
children; has he children? anxiety about their education, attention to
his wife, [1745] care of his house, oversight of his servants, [1746]
misfortunes in trade, quarrels with his neighbours, lawsuits, the
risks of the merchant, the toil of the farmer. Each day, as it comes,
darkens the soul in its own way; and night after night takes up the
day's anxieties, and cheats the mind with illusions in accordance.
Now one way of escaping all this is separation from the whole world;
that is, not bodily separation, but the severance of the soul's
sympathy with the body, and to live so without city, home, goods,
society, possessions, means of life, business, engagements, human
learning, that the heart may readily receive every impress of divine
doctrine. Preparation of heart is the unlearning the prejudices of
evil converse. It is the smoothing the waxen tablet before attempting
to write on it. [1747]
Now solitude is of the greatest use for this purpose, inasmuch as it
stills our passions, and gives room for principle to cut them out of
the soul. [1748][For just as animals are more easily controlled
when they are stroked, lust and anger, fear and sorrow, the soul's
deadly foes, are better brought under the control of reason, after
being calmed by inaction, and where there is no continuous
stimulation.] Let there then be such a place as ours, separate from
intercourse with men, that the tenour of our exercises be not
interrupted from without. Pious exercises nourish the soul with
divine thoughts. What state can be more blessed than to imitate on
earth the choruses of angels? to begin the day with prayer, and honour
our Maker with hymns and songs? As the day brightens, to betake
ourselves, with prayer attending on it throughout, to our labours, and
to sweeten [1749] our work with hymns, as if with salt? Soothing
hymns compose the mind to a cheerful and calm state. Quiet, then, as
I have said, is the first step in our sanctification; the tongue
purified from the gossip of the world; the eyes unexcited by fair
colour or comely shape; the ear not relaxing the tone or mind by
voluptuous songs, nor by that especial mischief, the talk of light men
and jesters. Thus the mind, saved from dissipation from without, and
not through the senses thrown upon the world, falls back upon itself,
and thereby ascends to the contemplation of God. [When [1750] that
beauty shines about it, it even forgets its very nature; it is dragged
down no more by thought of food nor anxiety concerning dress; it keeps
holiday from earthly cares, and devotes all its energies to the
acquisition of the good things which are eternal, and asks only how
may be made to flourish in it self-control and manly courage,
righteousness and wisdom, and all the other virtues, which,
distributed under these heads, properly enable the good man to
discharge all the duties of life.]
3. The study of inspired Scripture is the chief way of finding our
duty, for in it we find both instruction about conduct and the lives
of blessed men, delivered in writing, as some breathing images of
godly living, for the imitation of their good works. Hence, in
whatever respect each one feels himself deficient, devoting himself to
this imitation, he finds, as from some dispensary, the due medicine
for his ailment. He who is enamoured of chastity dwells upon the
history of Joseph, and from him learns chaste actions, finding him not
only possessed of self-command over pleasure, but virtuously-minded in
habit. He is taught endurance by Job [who, [1751] not only when the
circumstances of life began to turn against him, and in one moment he
was plunged from wealth into penury, and from being the father of fair
children into childlessness, remained the same, keeping the
disposition of his soul all through uncrushed, but was not even
stirred to anger against the friends who came to comfort him, and
trampled on him, and aggravated his troubles.] Or should he be
enquiring how to be at once meek and great-hearted, hearty against
sin, meek towards men, he will find David noble in warlike exploits,
meek and unruffled as regards revenge on enemies. Such, too, was
Moses rising up with great heart upon sinners against God, but with
meek soul bearing their evil-speaking against himself. [Thus, [1752]
generally, as painters, when they are painting from other pictures,
constantly look at the model, and do their best to transfer its
lineaments to their own work, so too must he who is desirous of
rendering himself perfect in all branches of excellency, keep his eyes
turned to the lives of the saints as though to living and moving
statues, and make their virtue his own by imitation.
4. Prayers, too, after reading, find the soul fresher, and more
vigorously stirred by love towards God. And that prayer is good which
imprints a clear idea of God in the soul; and the having God
established in self by means of memory is God's indwelling. Thus we
become God's temple, when the continuity of our recollection is not
severed by earthly cares; when the mind is harassed by no sudden
sensations; when the worshipper flees from all things and retreats to
God, drawing away all the feelings that invite him to self-indulgence,
and passes his time in the pursuits that lead to virtue.]
5. This, too, is a very important point to attend to,--knowledge how
to converse; to interrogate without over-earnestness; to answer
without desire of display; not to interrupt a profitable speaker, or
to desire ambitiously to put in a word of one's own; to be measured in
speaking and hearing; not to be ashamed of receiving, or to be
grudging in giving information, nor to pass another's knowledge for
one's own, as depraved women their supposititious children, but to
refer it candidly to the true parent. The middle tone of voice is
best, neither so low as to be inaudible, nor to be ill-bred from its
high pitch. One should reflect first what one is going to say, and
then give it utterance: be courteous when addressed; amiable in
social intercourse; not aiming to be pleasant by facetiousness, but
cultivating gentleness in kind admonitions. Harshness is ever to be
put aside, even in censuring. [1753][The more you shew modesty and
humility yourself, the more likely are you to be acceptable to the
patient who needs your treatment. There are however many occasions
when we shall do well to employ the kind of rebuke used by the prophet
who did not in his own person utter the sentence of condemnation on
David after his sin, but by suggesting an imaginary character made the
sinner judge of his own sin, so that, after passing his own sentence,
he could not find fault with the seer who had convicted him. [1754]
6. From the humble and submissive spirit comes an eye sorrowful and
downcast, appearance neglected, hair rough, dress dirty; [1755] so
that the appearance which mourners take pains to present may appear
our natural condition. The tunic should be fastened to the body by a
girdle, the belt not going above the flank, like a woman's, nor left
slack, so that the tunic flows loose, like an idler's. The gait ought
not to be sluggish, which shews a character without energy, nor on the
other hand pushing and pompous, as though our impulses were rash and
wild. The one end of dress is that it should be a sufficient covering
alike in winter and summer. As to colour, avoid brightness; in
material, the soft and delicate. To aim at bright colours in dress is
like women's beautifying when they colour cheeks and hair with hues
other than their own. The tunic ought to be thick enough not to want
other help to keep the wearer warm. The shoes should be cheap but
serviceable. In a word, what one has to regard in dress is the
necessary. So too as to food; for a man in good health bread will
suffice, and water will quench thirst; such dishes of vegetables may
be added as conduce to strengthening the body for the discharge of its
functions. One ought not to eat with any exhibition of savage
gluttony, but in everything that concerns our pleasures to maintain
moderation, quiet, and self-control; and, all through, not to let the
mind forget to think of God, but to make even the nature of our food,
and the constitution of the body that takes it, a ground and means for
offering Him the glory, bethinking us how the various kinds of food,
suitable to the needs of our bodies, are due to the provision of the
great Steward of the Universe. Before meat let grace be said, in
recognition alike of the gifts which God gives now, and which He keeps
in store for time to come. Say grace after meat in gratitude for
gifts given and petition for gifts promised. Let there be one fixed
hour for taking food, always the same in regular course, that of all
the four and twenty of the day and night barely this one may be spent
upon the body. The rest the ascetic [1756] ought to spend in mental
exercise. Let sleep be light and easily interrupted, as naturally
happens after a light diet; it should be purposely broken by thoughts
about great themes. To be overcome by heavy torpor, with limbs
unstrung, so that a way is readily opened to wild fancies, is to be
plunged in daily death. What dawn is to some this midnight is to
athletes of piety; then the silence of night gives leisure to their
soul; no noxious sounds or sights obtrude upon their hearts; the mind
is alone with itself and God, correcting itself by the recollection of
its sins, giving itself precepts to help it to shun evil, and
imploring aid from God for the perfecting of what it longs for.]
Footnotes
[1743] Placed circa 358, on Basil's retiring to Pontus. Translated in
part by Newman, The Church of the Fathers, p. 131, ed. 1840. With the
exception of the passages in brackets [], the version in the text is
that of Newman.
[1744] Matt. xvi. 24.
[1745] gunaikos phulake, rather "guardianship of his wife."
[1746] oiketon prostasiai, rather "protection of his servants."
[1747] Rather "for just as it is impossible to write on the wax
without previously erasing the marks on it, so is it impossible to
communicate divine doctrines to the soul without removing from it its
preconceived and habitual notions."
[1748] The following paragraph is altogether omitted by Newman.
[1749] Rather "season."
[1750] Omitted by Newman.
[1751] Clause omitted by Newman.
[1752] Omitted by Newman.
[1753] Here Newman notes that Basil seems sometimes to have fallen
short of his own ideal. His translation ends at this point.
[1754] Basil's admirable little summary of the main principles of
conversation may have been suggested by the recollection of many well
known writers. On such a subject no wide reader could be original.
cf. inter alios, the akoue polla lalei d' olina of Bias; the glotta me
protrecheto tou nou of Pittacus. Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. i. 15),
referring to the Glosses toi thesauros en anthropoisin aristos
Pheidoles pleiste de charis kata metron iouses of Hesiod, says:
"Hesiodus poetarum prudentissimus linguam non vulgandam sed
recondendam esse dicit, perinde ut thesaurum. Ejusque esse in
promendo gratiam plurimam, si modesta et parca et modulata sit." On
the desirability of gentleness in blame, cf. Ambrose, In Lucam.:
"Plus proficit amica correctio quam accusatio turbulenta: illa
pudorem incutit, hæc indignationem movet."
[1755] This was the mark of the old heathen philosophers. cf.
Aristoph., Birds 1282, errupon esokraton.
[1756] asketes, firstly an artisan, came to=athletes, and by
ecclesiastical writers is used for hermit or monk. The eremites, or
desert dweller, lives either in retreat as an anchoret, or solitary,
monachos, whence "monk;" or in common with others, in a koinobion, as
a "coenobite." All would be asketai.
Letter III. [1757]
To Candidianus. [1758]
1. When I took your letter into my hand, I underwent an experience
worth telling. I looked at it with the awe due to a document making
some state announcement, and as I was breaking the wax, I felt a dread
greater than ever guilty Spartan felt at sight of the Laconian
scytale. [1759]
When, however, I had opened the letter, and read it through, I could
not help laughing, partly for joy at finding nothing alarming in it;
partly because I likened your state of affairs to that of
Demosthenes. Demosthenes, you remember, when he was providing for a
certain little company of chorus dancers and musicians, requested to
be styled no longer Demosthenes, but "choragus." [1760]You are
always the same, whether playing the "choragus" or not. "Choragus"
you are indeed to soldiers myriads more in number than the individuals
to whom Demosthenes supplied necessaries; and yet you do not when you
write to me stand on your dignity, but keep up the old style. You do
not give up the study of literature, but, as Plato [1761] has it, in
the midst of the storm and tempest of affairs, you stand aloof, as it
were, under some strong wall, and keep your mind clear of all
disturbance; nay, more, as far as in you lies, you do not even let
others be disturbed. Such is your life; great and wonderful to all
who have eyes to see; and yet not wonderful to any one who judges by
the whole purpose of your life.
Now let me tell my own story, extraordinary indeed, but only what
might have been expected.
2. One of the hinds who live with us here at Annesi, [1762] on the
death of my servant, without alleging any breach of contract with him,
without approaching me, without making any complaint, without asking
me to make him any voluntary payment, without any threat of violence
should he fail to get it, all on a sudden, with certain mad fellows
like himself, attacked my house, brutally assaulted the women who were
in charge of it, broke in the doors, and after appropriating some of
the contents himself, and promising the rest to any one who liked,
carried off everything. I do not wish to be regarded as the ne plus
ultra of helplessness, and a suitable object for the violence of any
one who likes to attack me. Shew me, then, now, I beg you, that
kindly interest which you have always shewn in my affairs. Only on
one condition can my tranquillity be secured,--that I be assured of
having your energy on my side. It would be quite punishment enough,
from my point of view, if the man were apprehended by the district
magistrate and locked up for a short period in the gaol. It is not
only that I am indignant at the treatment I have suffered, but I want
security for the future.
Footnotes
[1757] Placed at the beginning of the retreat in Pontus.
[1758] A governor of Cappadocia, friendly to Basil and to Gregory of
Nazianzus. (cf. Greg., Ep. cxciv.)
[1759] i.e. the staff or baton used at Sparta for dispatches. The
strip of leather on which the communication was to be made is said to
have been rolled slantwise round it, and the message was then written
lengthwise. The correspondent was said to have a staff of a size
exactly corresponding, and so by rewinding the strip could read what
was written. Vide Aulus Gellius xvii. 9.
[1760] Plutarch pol. parang xxii. e to tou Demosthenous hoti nun ouk
esti Demosthenes alla kai thesmothetes e choregos e stephanephoros.
[1761] Rep. vi. 10. hoion en cheimoni koniortou kai zales hupo
pneumatos pheromenou hupo teichion apostas.
[1762] Vide Prolegomena.
Letter IV. [1763]
To Olympius. [1764]
What do you mean, my dear Sir, by evicting from our retreat my dear
friend and nurse of philosophy, Poverty? Were she but gifted with
speech, I take it you would have to appear as defendant in an action
for unlawful ejectment. She might plead "I chose to live with this
man Basil, an admirer of Zeno, [1765] who, when he had lost everything
in a shipwreck, cried, with great fortitude, `well done, Fortune! you
are reducing me to the old cloak;' [1766] a great admirer of
Cleanthes, who by drawing water from the well got enough to live on
and pay his tutors' fees as well; [1767] an immense admirer of
Diogenes, who prided himself on requiring no more than was absolutely
necessary, and flung away his bowl after he had learned from some lad
to stoop down and drink from the hollow of his hand." In some such
terms as these you might be chidden by my dear mate Poverty, whom your
presents have driven from house and home. She might too add a threat;
"if I catch you here again, I shall shew that what went before was
Sicilian or Italian luxury: so I shall exactly requite you out of my
own store."
But enough of this. I am very glad that you have already begun a
course of medicine, and pray that you may be benefited by it. A
condition of body fit for painless activity would well become so pious
a soul.
Footnotes
[1763] Placed about 358. Olympius sends Basil a present in his
retreat, and he playfully remonstrates.
[1764] cf. Letters xii., xiii., lxiii., lxiv., and ccxi.
[1765] The founder of the Stoic school.
[1766] The tribon, dim. tribonion, or worn cloak, was emblematic of
the philosopher and later of the monk, as now the cowl. cf. Lucian,
Pereg. 15, and Synesius, Ep. 147.
[1767] Cleanthes, the Lydian Stoic, was hence called phreantlos, or
well drawer. On him vide Val. Max. viii. 7 and Sen., Ep. 44.
Letter V. [1768]
To Nectarius. [1769]
1. I heard of your unendurable loss, and was much distressed. Three
or four days went by, and I was still in some doubt because my
informant was not able to give me any clear details of the melancholy
event. While I was incredulous about what was noised abroad, because
I prayed that it might not be true, I received a letter from the
Bishop fully confirming the unhappy tidings. I need not tell you how
I sighed and wept. Who could be so stony-hearted, so truly inhuman,
as to be insensible to what has occurred, or be affected by merely
moderate grief? He is gone; heir of a noble house, prop of a family,
a father's hope, offspring of pious parents, nursed with innumerable
prayers, in the very bloom of manhood, torn from his father's hands.
These things are enough to break a heart of adamant and make it feel.
It is only natural then that I am deeply touched at this trouble; I
who have been intimately connected with you from the beginning and
have made your joys and sorrows mine. But yesterday it seemed that
you had only little to trouble you, and that your life's stream was
flowing prosperously on. In a moment, by a demon's malice, [1770] all
the happiness of the house, all the brightness of life, is destroyed,
and our lives are made a doleful story. If we wish to lament and weep
over what has happened, a lifetime will not be enough and if all
mankind mourns with us they will be powerless to make their
lamentation match our loss. Yes, if all the streams run tears [1771]
they will not adequately weep our woe.
2. But we mean,--do we not?--to bring out the gift which God has
stored in our hearts; I mean that sober reason which in our happy days
is wont to draw lines of limitation round our souls, and when troubles
come about us to recall to our minds that we are but men, and to
suggest to us, what indeed we have seen and heard, that life is full
of similar misfortunes, and that the examples of human sufferings are
not a few. Above all, this will tell us that it is God's command that
we who trust in Christ should not grieve over them who are fallen
asleep, because we hope in the resurrection; and that in reward for
great patience great crowns of glory are kept in store by the Master
of life's course. Only let us allow our wiser thoughts to speak to us
in this strain of music, and we may peradventure discover some slight
alleviation of our trouble. Play the man, then, I implore you; the
blow is a heavy one, but stand firm; do not fall under the weight of
your grief; do not lose heart. Be perfectly assured of this, that
though the reasons for what is ordained by God are beyond us, yet
always what is arranged for us by Him Who is wise and Who loves us is
to be accepted, be it ever so grievous to endure. He Himself knows
how He is appointing what is best for each and why the terms of life
that He fixes for us are unequal. There exists some reason
incomprehensible to man why some are sooner carried far away from us,
and some are left a longer while behind to bear the burdens of this
painful life. So we ought always to adore His loving kindness, and
not to repine, remembering those great and famous words of the great
athlete Job, when he had seen ten children at one table, in one short
moment, crushed to death, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
away." [1772]As the Lord thought good so it came to pass. Let us
adopt those marvellous words. At the hands of the righteous Judge,
they who show like good deeds shall receive a like reward. We have
not lost the lad; we have restored him to the Lender. His life is not
destroyed; it is changed for the better. He whom we love is not
hidden in the ground; he is received into heaven. Let us wait a
little while, and we shall be once more with him. The time of our
separation is not long, for in this life we are all like travellers on
a journey, hastening on to the same shelter. While one has reached
his rest another arrives, another hurries on, but one and the same end
awaits them all. He has outstripped us on the way, but we shall all
travel the same road, and the same hostelry awaits us all. God only
grant that we through goodness may be likened to his purity, to the
end that for the sake of our guilelessness of life we may attain the
rest which is granted to them that are children in Christ.
Footnotes
[1768] Placed about 358.
[1769] cf. Letter 290. The identification of the two Nectarii is
conjectural. "Tillemont is inclined to identify Basil's correspondent
with the future bishop of Constantinople, but without sufficient
grounds." D.C.B. see.
[1770] cf. Luke xiii. 16 and 2 Cor. xii. 7.
[1771] cf. Lam. ii. 18.
[1772] Job i. 21.
Letter VI. [1773]
To the wife of Nectarius.
1. I hesitated to address your excellency, from the idea that, just
as to the eye when inflamed even the mildest of remedies causes pain,
so to a soul distressed by heavy sorrow, words offered in the moment
of agony, even though they do bring much comfort, seem to be somewhat
out of place. But I bethought me that I should be speaking to a
Christian woman, who has long ago learned godly lessons, and is not
inexperienced in the vicissitudes of human life, and I judged it right
not to neglect the duty laid upon me. I know what a mother's heart
is, [1774] and when I remember how good and gentle you are to all, I
can reckon the probable extent of your misery at this present time.
You have lost a son whom, while he was alive, all mothers called
happy, with prayers that their own might be like him, and on his death
bewailed, as though each had hidden her own in the grave. His death
is a blow to two provinces, both to mine and to Cilicia. With him has
fallen a great and illustrious race, dashed to the ground as by the
withdrawal of a prop. Alas for the mighty mischief that the contact
with an evil demon was able to wreak! Earth, what a calamity thou
hast been compelled to sustain! If the sun had any feeling one would
think he might have shuddered at so sad a sight. Who could utter all
that the spirit in its helplessness would have said?
2. But our lives are not without a Providence. So we have learnt in
the Gospel, for not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of
our Father. [1775]Whatever has come to pass has come to pass by the
will of our Creator. And who can resist God's will? Let us accept
what has befallen us; for if we take it ill we do not mend the past
and we work our own ruin. Do not let us arraign the righteous
judgment of God. We are all too untaught to assail His ineffable
sentences. The Lord is now making trial of your love for Him. Now
there is an opportunity for you, through your patience, to take the
martyr's lot. The mother of the Maccabees [1776] saw the death of
seven sons without a sigh, without even shedding one unworthy tear.
She gave thanks to God for seeing them freed from the fetters of the
flesh by fire and steel and cruel blows, and she won praise from God,
and fame among men. The loss is great, as I can say myself; but great
too are the rewards laid up by the Lord for the patient. When first
you were made a mother, and saw your boy, and thanked God, you knew
all the while that, a mortal yourself, you had given birth to a
mortal. What is there astonishing in the death of a mortal? But we
are grieved at his dying before his time. Are we sure that this was
not his time? We do not know how to pick and choose what is good for
our souls, or how to fix the limits of the life of man. Look round at
all the world in which you live; remember that everything you see is
mortal, and all subject to corruption. Look up to heaven; even it
shall be dissolved; look at the sun, not even the sun will last for
ever. All the stars together, all living things of land and sea, all
that is fair on earth, aye, earth itself, all are subject to decay;
yet a little while and all shall be no more. Let these considerations
be some comfort to you in your trouble. Do not measure your loss by
itself; if you do it will seem intolerable; but if you take all human
affairs into account you will find that some comfort is to be derived
from them. Above all, one thing I would strongly urge; spare your
husband. Be a comfort to others. Do not make his trouble harder to
bear by wearing yourself away with sorrow. Mere words I know cannot
give comfort. Just now what is wanted is prayer; and I do pray the
Lord Himself to touch your heart by His unspeakable power, and through
good thoughts to cause light to shine upon your soul, that you may
have a source of consolation in yourself.
Footnotes
[1773] To be placed with Letter V.
[1774] i.e.from his knowledge of what Emmelia had been to him. Yet to
the celibate the wife of Nectarius might have anticipated the well
known retort of Constance to Pandulph in King John.
[1775] Matt. x. 29.
[1776] 2 Mac. vii.
Letter VII. [1777]
To Gregory my friend. [1778]
When I wrote to you, I was perfectly well aware that no theological
term is adequate to the thought of the speaker, or the want of the
questioner, because language is of natural necessity too weak to act
in the service of objects of thought. If then our thought is weak,
and our tongue weaker than our thought, what was to be expected of me
in what I said but that I should be charged with poverty of
expression? Still, it was not possible to let your question pass
unnoticed. It looks like a betrayal, if we do not readily give an
answer about God to them that love the Lord. What has been said,
however, whether it seems satisfactory, or requires some further and
more careful addition, needs a fit season for correction. For the
present I implore you, as I have implored you before, to devote
yourself entirely to the advocacy of the truth, and to the
intellectual energies God gives you for the establishment of what is
good. With this be content, and ask nothing more from me. I am
really much less capable than is supposed, and am more likely to do
harm to the word by my weakness than to add strength to the truth by
my advocacy.
Footnotes
[1777] Written from the retirement in Pontus.
[1778] i.e. Gregory of Nazianzus.
Letter VIII. [1779]
To the Cæsareans. A defence of his withdrawal, and concerning the
faith.
1. I have often been astonished at your feeling towards me as you do,
and how it comes about that an individual so small and insignificant,
and having, may be, very little that is lovable about him, should have
so won your allegiance. You remind me of the claims of friendship and
of fatherland, [1780] and press me urgently in your attempt to make me
come back to you, as though I were a runaway from a father's heart and
home. That I am a runaway I confess. I should be sorry to deny it;
since you are already regretting me, you shall be told the cause. I
was astounded like a man stunned by some sudden noise. I did not
crush my thoughts, but dwelt upon them as I fled, and now I have been
absent from you a considerable time. Then I began to yearn for the
divine doctrines, and the philosophy that is concerned with them.
How, said I, could I overcome the mischief dwelling with us? Who is
to be my Laban, setting me free from Esau, and leading me to the
supreme philosophy? By God's help, I have, so far as in me lies,
attained my object; I have found a chosen vessel, a deep well; I mean
Gregory, Christ's mouth. Give me, therefore, I beg you, a little
time. I am not embracing a city life. [1781]I am quite well aware
how the evil one by such means devises deceit for mankind, but I do
hold the society of the saints most useful. For in the more constant
change of ideas about the divine dogmas I am acquiring a lasting habit
of contemplation. Such is my present situation.
2. Friends godly and well beloved, do, I implore you, beware of the
shepherds of the Philistines; let them not choke your wills unawares;
let them not befoul the purity of your knowledge of the faith. This
is ever their object, not to teach simple souls lessons drawn from
Holy Scripture, but to mar the harmony of the truth by heathen
philosophy. Is not he an open Philistine who is introducing the terms
"unbegotten" and "begotten" into our faith, and asserts that there was
once a time when the Everlasting was not; [1782] that He who is by
nature and eternally a Father became a Father; that the Holy Ghost is
not eternal? He bewitches our Patriarch's sheep that they may not
drink "of the well of water springing up into everlasting life,"
[1783] but may rather bring upon themselves the words of the prophet,
"They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them
out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water;" [1784] when
all the while they ought to confess that the Father is God, the Son
God, and the Holy Ghost God, [1785] as they have been taught by the
divine words, and by those who have understood them in their highest
sense. Against those who cast it in our teeth that we are Tritheists,
let it be answered that we confess one God not in number but in
nature. For everything which is called one in number is not one
absolutely, nor yet simple in nature; but God is universally confessed
to be simple and not composite. God therefore is not one in number.
What I mean is this. We say that the world is one in number, but not
one by nature nor yet simple; for we divide it into its constituent
elements, fire, water, air, and earth. [1786]Again, man is called
one in number. We frequently speak of one man, but man who is
composed of body and soul is not simple. Similarly we say one angel
in number, but not one by nature nor yet simple, for we conceive of
the hypostasis of the angel as essence with sanctification. If
therefore everything which is one in number is not one in nature, and
that which is one and simple in nature is not one in number; and if we
call God one in nature how can number be charged against us, when we
utterly exclude it from that blessed and spiritual nature? Number
relates to quantity; and quantity is conjoined with bodily nature, for
number is of bodily nature. We believe our Lord to be Creator of
bodies. Wherefore every number indicates those things which have
received a material and circumscribed nature. Monad and Unity on the
other hand signify the nature which is simple and incomprehensible.
Whoever therefore confesses either the Son of God or the Holy Ghost to
be number or creature introduces unawares a material and circumscribed
nature. And by circumscribed I mean not only locally limited, but a
nature which is comprehended in foreknowledge by Him who is about to
educe it from the non-existent into the existent and which can be
comprehended by science. Every holy thing then of which the nature is
circumscribed and of which the holiness is acquired is not
insusceptible of evil. But the Son and the Holy Ghost are the source
of sanctification by which every reasonable creature is hallowed in
proportion to its virtue.
3. We in accordance with the true doctrine speak of the Son as
neither like, [1787] nor unlike [1788] the Father. Each of these
terms is equally impossible, for like and unlike are predicated in
relation to quality, and the divine is free from quality. We, on the
contrary, confess identity of nature and accepting the
consubstantiality, and rejecting the composition of the Father, God in
substance, Who begat the Son, God in substance. From this the
consubstantiality [1789] is proved. For God in essence or substance
is co-essential or con-substantial with God in essence or substance.
But when even man is called "god" as in the words, "I have said ye are
gods," [1790] and "dæmon" as in the words, "The gods of the nations
are dæmons," [1791] in the former case the name is given by favour, in
the latter untruly. God alone is substantially and essentially God.
When I say "alone" I set forth the holy and uncreated essence and
substance of God. For the word "alone" is used in the case of any
individual and generally of human nature. In the case of an
individual, as for instance of Paul, that he alone was caught into the
third heaven and "heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a
man to utter," [1792] and of human nature, as when David says, "as for
man his days are as grass," [1793] not meaning any particular man, but
human nature generally; for every man is short-lived and mortal. So
we understand these words to be said of the nature, "who alone hath
immortality" [1794] and "to God only wise," [1795] and "none is good
save one, that is God," [1796] for here "one" means the same as
alone. So also, "which alone spreadest out the heavens," [1797] and
again "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou
serve." [1798]"There is no God beside me." [1799]In Scripture
"one" and "only" are not predicated of God to mark distinction from
the Son and the Holy Ghost, but to except the unreal gods falsely so
called. As for instance, "The Lord alone did lead them and there was
no strange god with them," [1800] and "then the children of Israel did
put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and did serve the Lord only." [1801]
And so St. Paul, "For as there be gods many and lords many, but to us
there is but one god, the Father, of whom are all things; and one Lord
Jesus Christ by Whom are all things." [1802]Here we enquire why
when he had said "one God" he was not content, for we have said that
"one" and "only" when applied to God, indicate nature. Why did he add
the word Father and make mention of Christ? Paul, a chosen vessel,
did not, I imagine, think it sufficient only to preach that the Son is
God and the Holy Ghost God, which he had expressed by the phrase "one
God," without, by the further addition of "the Father," expressing Him
of Whom are all things; and, by mentioning the Lord, signifying the
Word by Whom are all things; and yet further, by adding the words
Jesus Christ, announcing the incarnation, setting forth the passion
and publishing the resurrection. For the word Jesus Christ suggests
all these ideas to us. For this reason too before His passion our
Lord deprecates the designation of "Jesus Christ," and charges His
disciples to "tell no man that He was Jesus, the Christ." [1803]For
His purpose was, after the completion of the oeconomy, [1804] after
His resurrection from the dead, and His assumption into heaven, to
commit to them the preaching of Him as Jesus, the Christ. Such is the
force of the words "That they may know Thee the only true God and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent," [1805] and again "Ye believe in
God, believe also in me." [1806]Everywhere the Holy Ghost secures
our conception of Him to save us from falling in one direction while
we advance in the other, heeding the theology but neglecting the
oeconomy, [1807] and so by omission falling into impiety.
4. Now let us examine, and to the best of our ability explain, the
meaning of the words of Holy Scripture, which our opponents seize and
wrest to their own sense, and urge against us for the destruction of
the glory of the Only-begotten. First of all take the words "I live
because of the Father," [1808] for this is one of the shafts hurled
heavenward by those who impiously use it. These words I do not
understand to refer to the eternal life; for whatever lives because of
something else cannot be self-existent, just as that which is warmed
by another cannot be warmth itself; but He Who is our Christ and God
says, "I am the life." [1809]I understand the life lived because of
the Father to be this life in the flesh, and in this time. Of His own
will He came to live the life of men. He did not say "I have lived
because of the Father," but "I live because of the Father," clearly
indicating the present time, and the Christ, having the word of God in
Himself, is able to call the life which He leads, life, and that this
is His meaning we shall learn from what follows. "He that eateth me,"
He says, "he also shall live because of me;" [1810] for we eat His
flesh, and drink His blood, being made through His incarnation and His
visible life partakers of His Word and of His Wisdom. For all His
mystic sojourn among us He called flesh and blood, and set forth the
teaching consisting of practical science, of physics, and of theology,
whereby our soul is nourished and is meanwhile trained for the
contemplation of actual realities. This is perhaps the intended
meaning of what He says. [1811]
5. And again, "My Father is greater than I." [1812]This passage is
also employed by the ungrateful creatures, the brood of the evil one.
I believe that even from this passage the consubstantiality of the Son
with the Father is set forth. For I know that comparisons may
properly be made between things which are of the same nature. We
speak of angel as greater than angel, of man as juster than man, of
bird as fleeter than bird. If then comparisons are made between
things of the same species, and the Father by comparison is said to be
greater than the Son, then the Son is of the same substance as the
Father. But there is another sense underlying the expression. In
what is it extraordinary that He who "is the Word and was made flesh"
[1813] confesses His Father to be greater than Himself, when He was
seen in glory inferior to the angels, and in form to men? For "Thou
hast made him a little lower than the angels," [1814] and again "Who
was made a little lower than the angels," [1815] and "we saw Him and
He had neither form nor comeliness, his form was deficient beyond all
men." [1816]All this He endured on account of His abundant loving
kindness towards His work, that He might save the lost sheep and bring
it home when He had saved it, and bring back safe and sound to his own
land the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and so fell among
thieves. [1817]Will the heretic cast in His teeth the manger out of
which he in his unreasonableness was fed by the Word of reason? Will
he, because the carpenter's son had no bed to lie on, complain of His
being poor? This is why the Son is less than the Father; for your
sakes He was made dead to free you from death and make you sharer in
heavenly life. It is just as though any one were to find fault with
the physician for stooping to sickness, and breathing its foul breath,
that he may heal the sick.
6. It is on thy account that He knows not the hour and the day of
judgment. Yet nothing is beyond the ken of the real Wisdom, for "all
things were made by Him;" [1818] and even among men no one is ignorant
of what he has made. But this is His dispensation [1819] because of
thine own infirmity, that sinners be not plunged into despair by the
narrow limits of the appointed period, [1820] no opportunity for
repentance being left them; and that, on the other hand, those who are
waging a long war with the forces of the enemy may not desert their
post on account of the protracted time. For both of these classes He
arranges [1821] by means of His assumed ignorance; for the former
cutting the time short for their glorious struggle's sake; for the
latter providing an opportunity for repentance because of their sins.
In the gospels He numbered Himself among the ignorant, on account, as
I have said, of the infirmity of the greater part of mankind. In the
Acts of the Apostles, speaking, as it were, to the perfect apart, He
says, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the
Father hath put in His own power." [1822]Here He implicitly excepts
Himself. So much for a rough statement by way of preliminary attack.
Now let us enquire into the meaning of the text from a higher point of
view. Let me knock at the door of knowledge, if haply I may wake the
Master of the house, Who gives the spiritual bread to them who ask
Him, since they whom we are eager to entertain are friends and
brothers.
7. Our Saviour's holy disciples, after getting beyond the limits of
human thought, and then being purified by the word, [1823] are
enquiring about the end, and longing to know the ultimate blessedness
which our Lord declared to be unknown to His angels and to Himself.
He calls all the exact comprehension of the purposes of God, a day;
and the contemplation of the One-ness and Unity, knowledge of which He
attributes to the Father alone, an hour. I apprehend, therefore, that
God is said to know of Himself what is; and not to know what is not;
God, Who is, of His own nature, very righteousness and wisdom, is said
to know righteousness and wisdom; but to be ignorant of
unrighteousness and wickedness; for God who created us is not
unrighteousness and wickedness. If, then, God is said to know about
Himself that which is, and not to know that which is not; and if our
Lord, according to the purpose of the Incarnation and the denser
doctrine, is not the ultimate object of desire; then our Saviour does
not know the end and the ultimate blessedness. But He says the angels
do not know; [1824] that is to say, not even the contemplation which
is in them, nor the methods of their ministries are the ultimate
object of desire. For even their knowledge, when compared with the
knowledge which is face to face, is dense. [1825]Only the Father,
He says, knows, since He is Himself the end and the ultimate
blessedness, for when we no longer know God in mirrors and not
immediately, [1826] but approach Him as one and alone, then we shall
know even the ultimate end. For all material knowledge is said to be
the kingdom of Christ; while immaterial knowledge, and so to say the
knowledge of actual Godhead, is that of God the Father. But our Lord
is also Himself the end and the ultimate blessedness according to the
purpose of the Word; for what does He say in the Gospel? "I will
raise him up at the last day." [1827]He calls the transition from
material knowledge to immaterial contemplation a resurrection,
speaking of that knowledge after which there is no other, as the last
day: for our intelligence is raised up and roused to a height of
blessedness at the time when it contemplates the One-ness and Unity of
the Word. But since our intelligence is made dense and bound to
earth, it is both commingled with clay and incapable of gazing
intently in pure contemplation, being led through adornments [1828]
cognate to its own body. It considers the operations of the Creator,
and judges of them meanwhile by their effects, to the end that growing
little by little it may one day wax strong enough to approach even the
actual unveiled Godhead. This is the meaning, I think, of the words
"my Father is greater than I," [1829] and also of the statement, "It
is not mine to give save to those for whom it is prepared by my
Father." [1830]This too is what is meant by Christ's "delivering up
the kingdom to God even the Father;" [1831] inasmuch as according to
the denser doctrine which, as I said, is regarded relatively to us and
not to the Son Himself, He is not the end but the first fruits. It is
in accordance with this view that when His disciples asked Him again
in the Acts of the Apostles, "When wilt thou restore the kingdom of
Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or the
seasons which the Father hath put in His own power." [1832]That is
to say, the knowledge of such a kingdom is not for them that are bound
in flesh and blood. This contemplation the Father hath put away in
His own power, meaning by "power" those that are empowered, and by
"His own" those who are not held down by the ignorance of things
below. Do not, I beg you, have in mind times and seasons of sense but
certain distinctions of knowledge made by the sun apprehended by
mental perception. For our Lord's prayer must be carried out. It is
Jesus Who prayed "Grant that they may be one in us as I and Thou are
one, Father." [1833]For when God, Who is one, is in each, He makes
all out; and number is lost in the in-dwelling of Unity.
This is my second attempt to attack the text. If any one has a better
interpretation to give, and can consistently with true religion amend
what I say, let him speak and let him amend, and the Lord will reward
him for me. There is no jealousy in my heart. I have not approached
this investigation of these passages for strife and vain glory. I
have done so to help my brothers, lest the earthen vessels which hold
the treasure of God should seem to be deceived by stony-hearted and
uncircumcised men, whose weapons are the wisdom of folly. [1834]
8. Again, as is said through Solomon the Wise in the Proverbs, "He
was created;" and He is named "Beginning of ways" [1835] of good news,
which lead us to the kingdom of heaven. He is not in essence and
substance a creature, but is made a "way" according to the oeconomy.
Being made and being created signify the same thing. As He was made a
way, so was He made a door, a shepherd, an angel, a sheep, and again a
High Priest and an Apostle, [1836] the names being used in other
senses. What again would the heretics say about God unsubjected, and
about His being made sin for us? [1837]For it is written "But when
all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself
be subject unto Him that put all things under Him." [1838]Are you
not afraid, sir, of God called unsubjected? For He makes thy
subjection His own; and because of thy struggling against goodness He
calls himself unsubjected. In this sense too He once spoke of Himself
as persecuted--"Saul, Saul," He says, "why persecutest thou me?"
[1839] on the occasion when Saul was hurrying to Damascus with a
desire to imprison the disciples. Again He calls Himself naked, when
any one of his brethren is naked. "I was naked," He says, "and ye
clothed me;" [1840] and so when another is in prison He speaks of
Himself as imprisoned, for He Himself took away our sins and bare our
sicknesses. [1841]Now one of our infirmities is not being subject,
and He bare this. So all the things which happen to us to our hurt He
makes His own, taking upon Him our sufferings in His fellowship with
us.
9. But another passage is also seized by those who are fighting
against God to the perversion of their hearers: I mean the words "The
Son can do nothing of Himself." [1842]To me this saying too seems
distinctly declaratory of the Son's being of the same nature as the
Father. For if every rational creature is able to do anything of
himself, and the inclination which each has to the worse and to the
better is in his own power, but the Son can do nothing of Himself,
then the Son is not a creature. And if He is not a creature, then He
is of one essence and substance with the Father. Again; no creature
can do what he likes. But the Son does what He wills in heaven and in
earth. Therefore the Son is not a creature. Again; all creatures are
either constituted of contraries or receptive of contraries. But the
Son is very righteousness, and immaterial. Therefore the Son is not a
creature, and if He is not a creature, He is of one essence and
substance with the Father.
10. This examination of the passages before us is, so far as my
ability goes, sufficient. Now let us turn the discussion on those who
attack the Holy Spirit, and cast down every high thing of their
intellect that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. [1843]
You say that the Holy Ghost is a creature. And every creature is a
servant of the Creator, for "all are thy servants." [1844]If then
He is a servant, His holiness is acquired; and everything of which the
holiness is acquired is receptive of evil; but the Holy Ghost being
holy in essence is called "fount of holiness." [1845]Therefore the
Holy Ghost is not a creature. If He is not a creature, He is of one
essence and substance with the Father. How, tell me, can you give the
name of servant to Him Who through your baptism frees you from your
servitude? "The law," it is said, "of the Spirit of life hath made me
free from the law of sin." [1846]But you will never venture to call
His nature even variable, so long as you have regard to the nature of
the opposing power of the enemy, which, like lightning, is fallen from
heaven and fell out of the true life because its holiness was
acquired, and its evil counsels were followed by its change. So when
it had fallen away from the Unity and had cast from it its angelic
dignity, it was named after its character "Devil," [1847] its former
and blessed condition being extinct and this hostile power being
kindled.
Furthermore if he calls the Holy Ghost a creature he describes His
nature as limited. How then can the two following passages stand?
"The Spirit of the Lord filleth the world;" [1848] and "Whither shall
I go from thy Spirit?" [1849]But he does not, it would seem,
confess Him to be simple in nature; for he describes Him as one in
number. And, as I have already said, everything that is one in number
is not simple. And if the Holy Spirit is not simple, He consists of
essence and sanctification, and is therefore composite. But who is
mad enough to describe the Holy Spirit as composite, and not simple,
and consubstantial with the Father and the Son?
11. If we ought to advance our argument yet further, and turn our
inspection to higher themes, let us contemplate the divine nature of
the Holy Spirit specially from the following point of view. In
Scripture we find mention of three creations. The first is the
evolution from non-being into being. [1850]The second is change
from the worse to the better. The third is the resurrection of the
dead. In these you will find the Holy Ghost cooperating with the
Father and the Son. There is a bringing into existence of the
heavens; and what says David? "By the word of the Lord were the
heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth."
[1851]Again, man is created through baptism, for "if any man be in
Christ he is a new creature." [1852]And why does the Saviour say to
the disciples, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost"? Here
too you see the Holy Ghost present with the Father and the Son. And
what would you say also as to the resurrection of the dead when we
shall have failed and returned to our dust? Dust we are and unto dust
we shall return. [1853]And He will send the Holy Ghost and create
us and renew the face of the earth. [1854]For what the holy Paul
calls resurrection David describes as renewal. Let us hear, once
more, him who was caught into the third heaven. What does he say?
"You are the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you." [1855]Now
every temple [1856] is a temple of God, and if we are a temple of the
Holy Ghost, then the Holy Ghost is God. It is also called Solomon's
temple, but this is in the sense of his being its builder. And if we
are a temple of the Holy Ghost in this sense, then the Holy Ghost is
God, for "He that built all things is God." [1857]If we are a
temple of one who is worshipped, and who dwells in us, let us confess
Him to be God, for thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only
shalt thou serve. [1858]Supposing them to object to the word "God,"
let them learn what this word means. God is called Theos either
because He placed (tetheikenai) all things or because He beholds
(Theasthai) all things. If He is called Theos because He "placed" or
"beholds" all things, and the Spirit knoweth all the things of God, as
the Spirit in us knoweth our things, then the Holy Ghost is God.
[1859]Again, if the sword of the spirit is the word of God, [1860]
then the Holy Ghost is God, inasmuch as the sword belongs to Him of
whom it is also called the word. Is He named the right hand of the
Father? For "the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to
pass;" [1861] and "thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the
enemy." [1862]But the Holy Ghost is the finger of God, as it is
said "if I by the finger of God cast out devils," [1863] of which the
version in another Gospel is "if I by the Spirit of God cast out
devils." [1864]So the Holy Ghost is of the same nature as the
Father and the Son.
12. So much must suffice for the present on the subject of the
adorable and holy Trinity. It is not now possible to extend the
enquiry about it further. Do ye take seeds from a humble person like
me, and cultivate the ripe ear for yourselves, for, as you know, in
such cases we look for interest. But I trust in God that you, because
of your pure lives, will bring forth fruit thirty, sixty, and a
hundred fold. For, it is said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God. [1865]And, my brethren, entertain no other
conception of the kingdom of the heavens than that it is the very
contemplation of realities. This the divine Scriptures call
blessedness. For "the kingdom of heaven is within you." [1866]
The inner man consists of nothing but contemplation. The kingdom of
the heavens, then, must be contemplation. Now we behold their shadows
as in a glass; hereafter, set free from this earthly body, clad in the
incorruptible and the immortal, we shall behold their archetypes, we
shall see them, that is, if we have steered our own life's course
aright, and if we have heeded the right faith, for otherwise none
shall see the Lord. For, it is said, into a malicious soul Wisdom
shall not enter, nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin.
[1867]And let no one urge in objection that, while I am ignoring
what is before our eyes, I am philosophizing to them about bodiless
and immaterial being. It seems to me perfectly absurd, while the
senses are allowed free action in relation to their proper matter, to
exclude mind alone from its peculiar operation. Precisely in the same
manner in which sense touches sensible objects, so mind apprehends the
objects of mental perception. This too must be said that God our
Creator has not included natural faculties among things which can be
taught. No one teaches sight to apprehend colour or form, nor hearing
to apprehend sound and speech, nor smell, pleasant and unpleasant
scents, nor taste, flavours and savours, nor touch, soft and hard, hot
and cold. Nor would any one teach the mind to reach objects of mental
perception; and just as the senses in the case of their being in any
way diseased, or injured, require only proper treatment and then
readily fulfil their own functions; just so the mind, imprisoned in
flesh, and full of the thoughts that arise thence, requires faith and
right conversation which make "its feet like hinds' feet, and set it
on its high places." [1868]The same advice is given us by Solomon
the wise, who in one passage offers us the example of the diligent
worker the ant, [1869] and recommends her active life; and in another
the work of the wise bee in forming its cells, [1870] and thereby
suggests a natural contemplation wherein also the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity is contained, if at least the Creator is considered in
proportion to the beauty of the things created.
But with thanks to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost let me make
an end to my letter, for, as the proverb has it, pan metron ariston.
[1871]
Footnotes
[1779] This important letter was written a.d. 360, when Basil, shocked
at the discovery that Dianius, the bishop who had baptized him, had
subscribed the Arian creed of Ariminum, as revised at Nike (Theod.,
Hist. Ecc. II. xvi.), left Cæsarea, and withdrew to his friend Gregory
at Nazianzus. The Benedictine note considers the traditional title an
error, and concludes the letter to have been really addressed to the
monks of the Coenobium over which Basil had presided. But it may have
been written to monks in or near Cæsarea, so that title and sense will
agree.
[1780] patris seems to be used of the city or neighbourhood of
Cæsarea, and so far to be in favour of Basil's birth there.
[1781] i.e. the life of the city, presumably Nazianzus, from which he
is writing.
[1782] cf. the Arian formula en pote hote ouk en.
[1783] John iv. 14.
[1784] Jer. ii. 13.
[1785] cf. p. 16, note. This is one of the few instances of St.
Basil's use of the word theos of the Holy Ghost.
[1786] For the four elements of ancient philosophy modern chemistry
now catalogues at least sixty-seven. Of these, earth generally
contains eight; air is a mixture of two; water is a compound of two;
and fire is the visible evidence of a combination between elements
which produces light and heat. On the "elements" of the Greek
philosophers vide Arist., Met. i. 3. Thales (/-c. 550 b.c.) said
water; Anaximenes (/-c. b.c. 480) air; and Heraclitus (/-c. b.c. 500)
fire. To these Empedocles (who "ardentem frigidus Ætnam insiluit, c.
b.c. 440) added a fourth, earth.
[1787] Asserted at Seleucia and Ariminum.
[1788] cf. D. Sp. S. § 4 on Aetius' responsibility for the Anomoean
formula.
[1789] to homoousion.
[1790] Ps. lxxxii. 6.
[1791] Ps. xcvi. 5, LXX.
[1792] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
[1793] Ps. cii. 15.
[1794] 1 Tim. vi. 16.
[1795] Rom. xvi. 27.
[1796] Luke xviii. 19.
[1797] Job ix. 8.
[1798] Deut. vi. 13, LXX., where the text runs kurion ton theon sou
phobethese. St. Basil may quote the version in Matt. iv. 10 and Luke
iv. 8, proskuneseis. The Hebrew="fear".
[1799] Deut. xxxii. 39, LXX.
[1800] Deut. xxxii. 12, LXX.
[1801] 1 Sam. vii. 4.
[1802] 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6.
[1803] Matt. xvi. 19.
[1804] i.e. of His work on earth as God manifest in the flesh. Vide
note, p. 7.
[1805] John xvii. 3.
[1806] John xiv. 1.
[1807] cf. note, p. 7.
[1808] John vi. 57, R.V. The Greek is ego zo dia ton patera, i.e. not
through or by the Father, but "because of" or "on account of" the
Father. "The preposition (Vulg. propter Patrem) describes the ground
or object, not the instrument or agent (by, through dia tou p.).
Complete devotion to the Father is the essence of the life of the Son;
and so complete devotion to the Son is the life of the believer. It
seems better to give this full sense to the word than to take it as
equivalent to `by reason of;' that is, `I live because the Father
lives.'" Westcott, St. John ad loc.
[1809] John xi. 25.
[1810] John vi. 57, R.V.
[1811] With this striking exposition of Basil's view of the spiritual
meaning of eating the flesh and drinking the blood, cf. the passage
from Athanasius quoted by Bp. Harold Browne in his Exposition of the
XXXIX. Articles, p. 693. It is not easy for Roman commentators to
cite passages even apparently in support of the less spiritual view of
the manducation, e.g. Fessler, Inst. Pat. i. 530, and the quotations
under the word "Eucharistia," in the Index of Basil ed Migne.
Contrast Gregory of Nyssa, in chap. xxxvii. of the Greater Catechism.
[1812] John xiv. 28.
[1813] John i. 14.
[1814] Ps. viii. 5.
[1815] Heb. ii. 9.
[1816] Isa. liii. 2, 3, LXX.
[1817] cf. Luke x. 30.
[1818] John i. 3.
[1819] touto oikonomei.
[1820] to steno tes prothesmias. he prothesmia sc. hemera was in Attic
Law a day fixed beforehand before which money must be paid, actions
brought, etc. cf. Plat. Legg, 954, D. It is the "time appointed" of
the Father in Gal. iv. 2.
[1821] oikonomei.
[1822] Acts i. 7.
[1823] cf. John xv. 3, "Now ye are clean through the word."
[1824] Mark xiii. 32.
[1825] The Ben. note is Tota hæc explicandi ratio non sua sponte
deducta, sed vi pertracta multis videbitur. Sed illud ad excusandum
difficilius, quod ait Basilius angelorum scientiam crassam esse, si
comparetur cum ea quæ est facie ad faciem. Videtur subtilis
explicatio, quam hic sequitur, necessitatem ei imposuisse ita de
angelis sentiendi. Nam cum diem et horam idem esse statueret, ac
extremam beatitudinem; illud Scriptura, sed neque angeli sciunt,
cogebat illis visionem illam, quæ fit facie ad faciem, denegare; quia
idem de illis non poterat dici ac de Filio, eos de se ipsis scire id
quod sunt, nescire quod non sunt. Quod si hanc hausit opinionem ex
origenis fontibus, qui pluribus locis eam insinuat, certe cito
deposuit. Ait enim tom II. p. 320. Angelos in di'inum phachiem
chontinenter intentos ochulos eabere. Idem dochet in Chom. Is. p.
515, n. 185, et De Sp. S. cap. XVI.
[1826] dia ton allotrion. cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 12, where St. Paul's word
is esoptron. St. Basil's katoptron may rather be suggested by 2 Cor.
iii. 18, where the original is katoptrizomenoi.
[1827] John vi. 40.
[1828] kosmon. The Ben. note quotes Combefis as saying, "Dura mihi
hic vox: sit pro stoicheion, per cognata corpori elementa," and then
goes on, sed hac in re minus vidit vir eruditus; non enim idem sonat
illa vox acmundi, quasi plures ejusmodi mundos admittat Basilius; sed
idem ac ornatus, sive ut ait Basilius in Epist. vi. ta peri gen kalle,
pulchritudines quæ sunt circa terram. In Com. in Is. n. 58, p. 422.
Ecclesia dicitur prepousin heaute kosmiois kekosmemene, convenientibus
sibi ornamentis instructa eadem voce utitur Gregorius Nazianz. Ep.
cvii.
[1829] John xiv. 28.
[1830] Matt. xx. 23. cf. n. Theodoret, p. 28.
[1831] 1 Cor. xv. 24.
[1832] Acts i. 6, 7.
[1833] John xvii. 21 and 22, slightly varied.
[1834] Basil also refers to this passage in the treatise, C. Eunomium
i. 20: "Since the Son's origin (arche) is from (apo) the Father, in
this respect the Father is greater, as cause and origin (hos aitios
kai arche). Whence also the Lord said thus my Father is greater than
I, clearly inasmuch as He is Father (katho pater). Yea; what else
does the word Father signify unless the being cause and origin of that
which is begotten by Him?" And in iii. 1: "The Son is second in
order (taxei) to the Father, because He is from Him (apo) and in
dignity (axiomati) because the Father is the origin and cause of His
being." Quoted by Bp. Westcott in his St. John in the additional
notes on xiv. 16, 28, pp. 211 seqq., where also will be found
quotations from other Fathers on this passage.
[1835] The text of Prov. viii. 22 in the LXX. is kurios ektise me
archen hodon autou eis erga autou. The rendering of A.V. is
"possessed," with "formed" in the margin. The Hebrew verb occurs some
eighty times in the Old Testament, and in only four other passages is
translated by possess, viz., Gen. xiv. 19, 22, Ps. cxxxix. 13, Jer.
xxxii. 15, and Zec. xi. 5. In the two former, though the LXX. renders
the word in the Psalms ekteso, it would have borne the sense of
"create." In the passage under discussion the Syriac agrees with the
LXX., and among critics adopting the same view Bishop Wordsworth cites
Ewald, Hitzig, and Genesius. The ordinary meaning of the Hebrew is
"get" or "acquire," and hence it is easy to see how the idea of
getting or possessing passed in relation to the Creator into that of
creation. The Greek translators were not unanimous and Aquila wrote
ektesato. The passage inevitably became the Jezreel or Low Countries
of the Arian war, and many a battle was fought on it. The
depreciators of the Son found in it Scriptural authority for calling
Him ktisma, e.g. Arius in the Thalia, is quoted by Athanasius in Or.
c. Ar. I. iii. § 9, and such writings of his followers as the Letter
of Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus of Tyre cited in Theod., Ecc.
Hist. I. v., and Eunomius as quoted by Greg. Nyss., c. Eunom. II. 10;
but as Dr. Liddon observes in his Bampton Lect. (p. 60, ed. 1868),
"They did not doubt that this created Wisdom was a real being or
person." ektisewas accepted by the Catholic writers, but explained to
refer to the manhood only, cf. Eustathius of Antioch, quoted in
Theod., Dial. I. The view of Athanasius will be found in his
dissertation on the subject in the Second Discourse against the
Arians, pp. 357-385 of Schaff & Wace's edition. cf. Bull, Def. Fid.
Nic. II. vi. 8.
[1836] Heb. iii. 1.
[1837] cf. 2 Cor. v. 21.
[1838] 1 Cor. xv. 28. i.e. Because the Son then shall be subjected,
He is previously anupotaktos, not as being "disobedient" (1 Tim. i.
9), or "unruly" (Tit. i. 6, 10), but as being made man, and humanity,
though subject unto Him, is not yet seen to be "put under Him" (Heb.
ii. 8).
[1839] Acts ix. 4.
[1840] Matt. xxv. 36.
[1841] cf. Isa. liii. 4 and Matt. viii. 17.
[1842] John v. 19.
[1843] 2 Cor. xi. 5.
[1844] Ps. xix. 91.
[1845] Rom. i. 4.
[1846] Rom. viii. 2.
[1847] In Letter cciv. The name of Diabolos is more immediately
connected with Diaballein, to caluminate. It is curious that the
occasional spelling (e.g. in Burton) Divell, which is nearer to the
original, and keeps up the association with Diable, Diavolo, etc.,
should have given place to the less correct and misleading "Devil."
[1848] Wisdom i. 7.
[1849] Ps. cxxxix. 7.
[1850] paragoge apo tou me ontos eis to einai. For paragoge it is not
easy to give an equivalent; it is leading or bringing with a notion of
change, sometimes a change into error, as when it means a quibble. It
is not quite the Ben. Latin "productio." It is not used
intransitively; if there is a paragoge, there must be ho paragon, and
similarly if there is evolution or development, there must be an
evolver or developer.
[1851] Ps. xxxiii. 6. to pneumati tou stomatos autou, LXX.
[1852] 2 Cor. v. 17.
[1853] cf. Gen. iii. 19.
[1854] cf. Ps. ciii. 30.
[1855] 1 Cor. vi. 19.
[1856] The Greek word naos (naio)=dwelling-place. The Hebrew probably
indicates capacity. Our "temple," from the latin Templum
(temenos--vTAM) is derivatively a place cut off.
[1857] Heb. iii. 4.
[1858] Matt. iv. 10. cf. note on p. .
[1859] 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11. On the derivation of Theos from theo
(tithemi) or theaomai, cf. Greg. Naz. Skeat rejects the theory of
connexion with the Latin Deus, and thinks that the root of tithemi may
be the origin.
[1860] Eph. vi. 17.
[1861] Ps. cxviii. 16. P.B. "doeth valiantly," A.V. epoiese duna min,
LXX.
[1862] Ex. xv. 6.
[1863] Luke xi. 20.
[1864] Matt. xii. 28.
[1865] Matt. v. 8.
[1866] Luke xvii. 21, entos humon. Many modern commentators interpret
"in your midst," "among you." So Alford, who quotes Xen., Anab. I. x.
3 for the Greek, Bp. Walsham How, Bornemann, Meyer. The older view
coincided with that of Basil; so Theophylact, Chrysostom, and with
them Olshausen and Godet. To the objection that the words were said to
the Pharisees, and that the kingdom was not in their hearts, it may be
answered that our Lord might use "you" of humanity, even when
addressing Pharisees. He never, like a merely human preacher, says
"we."
[1867] Wisdom i. 4.
[1868] Ps. xviii. 33.
[1869] cf. Prov. vi. 6.
[1870] Ecclus. xi. 3. The ascription of this book to Solomon is said
by Rufinus to be confined to the Latin church, while the Greeks know
it as the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach (vers. Orig., Hom. in Num.
xvii.).
[1871] Attributed to Cleobulus of Lindos. Thales is credited with the
injunction metro chro. cf. my note on Theodoret, Ep. cli. p. 329.
Letter IX. [1872]
To Maximus the Philosopher.
1. Speech is really an image of mind: so I have learned to know you
from your letters, just as the proverb tells us we may know "the lion
from his claws." [1873]
I am delighted to find that your strong inclinations lie in the
direction of the first and greatest of good things--love both to God
and to your neighbour. Of the latter I find proof in your kindness to
myself; of the former, in your zeal for knowledge. It is well known
to every disciple of Christ that in these two all is contained.
2. You ask for the writings of Dionysius; [1874] they did indeed
reach me, and a great many they were; but I have not the books with
me, and so have not sent them. My opinion is, however, as follows. I
do not admire everything that is written; indeed of some things I
totally disapprove. For it may be, that of the impiety of which we
are now hearing so much, I mean the Anomoean, it is he, as far as I
know, who first gave men the seeds. I do not trace his so doing to
any mental depravity, but only to his earnest desire to resist
Sabellius. I often compare him to a woodman trying to straighten some
ill-grown sapling, pulling so immoderately in the opposite direction
as to exceed the mean, and so dragging the plant awry on the other
side. This is very much what we find to be the case with Dionysius.
While vehemently opposing the impiety of the Libyan, [1875] he is
carried away unawares by his zeal into the opposite error. It would
have been quite sufficient for him to have pointed out that the Father
and the Son are not identical in substance, [1876] and thus to score
against the blasphemer. But, in order to win an unmistakable and
superabundant victory, he is not satisfied with laying down a
difference of hypostases, but must needs assert also difference of
substance, diminution of power, and variableness of glory. So he
exchanges one mischief for another, and diverges from the right line
of doctrine. In his writings he exhibits a miscellaneous
inconsistency, and is at one time to be found disloyal to the
homoousion, because of his opponent [1877] who made a bad use of it to
the destruction of the hypostases, and at another admitting it in his
Apology to his namesake. [1878]Besides this he uttered very
unbecoming words about the Spirit, separating Him from the Godhead,
the object of worship, and assigning Him an inferior rank with created
and subordinate nature. Such is the man's character.
3. If I must give my own view, it is this. The phrase "like in
essence," [1879] if it be read with the addition "without any
difference," [1880] I accept as conveying the same sense as the
homoousion, in accordance with the sound meaning of the homoousion.
Being of this mind the Fathers at Nicæa spoke of the Only-begotten as
"Light of Light," "Very God of very God," and so on, and then
consistently added the homoousion. It is impossible for any one to
entertain the idea of variableness of light in relation to light, of
truth in relation to truth, nor of the essence of the Only begotten in
relation to that of the Father. If, then, the phrase be accepted in
this sense, I have no objection to it. But if any one cuts off the
qualification "without any difference" from the word "like," as was
done at Constantinople, [1881] then I regard the phrase with
suspicion, as derogatory to the dignity of the Only-begotten. We are
frequently accustomed to entertain the idea of "likeness" in the case
of indistinct resemblances, coming anything but close to the
originals. I am myself for the homoousion, as being less open to
improper interpretation. But why, my dear sir, should you not pay me
a visit, that we may talk of these high topics face to face, instead
of committing them to lifeless letters,--especially when I have
determined not to publish my views? And pray do not adopt, to me, the
words of Diogenes to Alexander, that "it is as far from you to me as
from me to you." I am almost obliged by ill-health to remain like the
plants, in one place; moreover I hold "the living unknown" [1882] to
be one of the chief goods. You, I am told, are in good health; you
have made yourself a citizen of the world, and you might consider in
coming to see me that you are coming home. It is quite right for you,
a man of action, to have crowds and towns in which to show your good
deeds. For me, quiet is the best aid for the contemplation and mental
exercise whereby I cling to God. This quiet I cultivate in abundance
in my retreat, with the aid of its giver, God. Yet if you cannot but
court the great, and despise me who lie low upon the ground, then
write, and in this way make my life a happier one.
Footnotes
[1872] To be ascribed to the same period as the preceding.
[1873] In Lucian (Hermot. 54) the proverb is traced to a story of
Pheidias, who, "after a look at a claw, could tell how big the whole
lion, formed in proportion would be." A parallel Greek adage was
ektou kraspedou to pan huphasma. Vide Leutsch., Corp. Paroemiog.
Græc. I. 252.
[1874] i.e. of Alexandria.
[1875] i.e. Sabellius. Basil is the first writer who asserts his
African birth. In Ep. ccvii. he is "Sabellius the Libyan." His
active life was Roman; his views popular in the Pentapolis.
[1876] ou tauton to hupokeimeno. Aristotle, Metaph. vi. 3, 1, says,
malista dokei einai ousia to hupokeimenon to proton. On the
distinction between homoousios and tauton to hupokeimeno, cf. Athan.,
Exp. Fid. ii., where the Sabellians are accused of holding an
huiopator, and Greg. Nyss answer to Eunomius, Second Book, p. 254 in
Schaff and Wace's ed. Vide also Prolegg. to Athan., p. xxxi. in this
series. Epiphanius says of Noetus, monotupos ton auton patera kai
Hui& 232;n kai hagion pneuma...hegsamenos (Hæres. lvii. 2) and of
Sabellius, Dogmatizei houtos kai hoi ap' aupou Sabellianoi ton auton
einai Patera ton auton Hui& 232;n ton auton einai hagion pneuma, hos
einai en mia hupostasei treis onomasias. (Hæres. lxii. i.)
[1877] Sabellius.
[1878] Dionysius of Rome.
[1879] homoion kat' ousian
[1880] aparallaktos.
[1881] i.e. at the Acacian council of Constantinople in 360, at which
fifty bishops accepted the creed of Arminum as revised at Nike,
proscribing ousia and hupostasis, and pronounced the Son to be "like
the Father, as say the Holy Scriptures." cf. Theod. II. xvi. and Soc.
II. xli. In 366 Semiarian deputies from the council of Lampsacus
represented to Liberius at Rome that kata panta homoios and homoousios
were equivalent.
[1882] lathe biosas is quoted by Theodoret in Ep. lxii. as a saying of
"one of the men once called wise." It is attributed to Epicurus.
Horace imitates it in Ep. I. xvii. 10: "Nec vixit male qui natus
moriensque fefellit." So Ovid, Tristia III. iv. 25: "crede mihi;
bene qui latuit, bene vixit," and Eurip., Iph. in Aul. 17: Zelo se,
geron, Zelo d' andron hos akindunon Bion exeperas' agnos aklees.
Plutarch has an essay on the question, ei kalos e& 176;retai to lathe
biosas.
Letter X. [1883]
To a widow. [1884]
The art of snaring pigeons is as follows. When the men who devote
themselves to this craft have caught one, they tame it, and make it
feed with them. Then they smear its wings with sweet oil, and let it
go and join the rest outside. Then the scent of that sweet oil makes
the free flock the possession of the owner of the tame bird, for all
the rest are attracted by the fragrance, and settle in the house. But
why do I begin my letter thus? Because I have taken your son
Dionysius, once Diomedes, [1885] and anointed the wings of his soul
with the sweet all of God, and sent him to you that you may take
flight with him, and make for the nest which he has built under my
roof. If I live to see this, and you, my honoured friend, translated
to our lofty life, I shall require many persons worthy of God to pay
Him all the honour that is His due.
Footnotes
[1883] Placed during the retreat.
[1884] pros eleutheran. The Benedictine note, after giving reasons
why the name Julitta should not be introduced into the address,
continues: "neque etiam in hac et pluribus aliis Basilii epistolis
eleuthera nomen proprium est, sed viduam matronam designat. Sic
Gregorius Naz. in Epist. cxlvii., eleutheran Alypii, id est viduam,
apellat Simpliciam quam ipsius quondam conjugem fuisse dixerat in
Epist. cxlvi." The usage may be traceable to Rom. vii. 3.
[1885] A second name was given at baptism, or assumed with some
religious motive. In the first three centuries considerations of
prudence would prevent an advertisement of Christianity through a name
of peculiar meaning, and even baptismal names were not biblical or of
pious meaning and association. Later the early indifference of
Christians as to the character of their names ceased, and after the
fourth century heathen names were discouraged. cf. D.C.A. ii. 1368.
"Dionysius," though of pagan origin, is biblical; but "martyrs often
encountered death bearing the names of these very divinities to whom
they refuse to offer sacrifice." So we have Apollinarius, Hermias,
Demetrius, Origenes (sprung from Horus), Arius, Athenodorus,
Aphrodisius, and many more.
Letter XI. [1886]
Without address. To some friends. [1887]
After by God's grace I had passed the sacred day with our sons, and
had kept a really perfect feast to the Lord because of their exceeding
love to God, I sent them in good health to your excellency, with a
prayer to our loving God to give them an angel of peace to help and
accompany them, and to grant them to find you in good health and
assured tranquillity, to the end that wherever your lot may be cast, I
to the end of my days, whenever I hear news of you, may be gladdened
to think of you as serving and giving thanks to the Lord. If God
should grant you to be quickly freed from these cares I beg you to let
nothing stand in the way of your coming to stay with me. I think you
will find none to love you so well, or to make more of your
friendship. So long, then, as the Holy One ordains this separation,
be sure that you never lose an opportunity of comforting me by a
letter.
Footnotes
[1886] Of the same period as X.
[1887] Possibly to Olympius, the recipient of XII. cf. Letter ccxi.
Letter XII. [1888]
To Olympius. [1889]
Before you did write me a few words: now not even a few. Your
brevity will soon become silence. Return to your old ways, and do not
let me have to scold you for your laconic behaviour. But I shall be
glad even of a little letter in token of your great love. Only write
to me.
Footnotes
[1888] Of the same date as the preceding.
[1889] Olympius was an influential friend of Basil's, and sympathized
with him in his later troubles, and under the attacks of Eustathius.
cf. Letters ccxi., lxiii., lxiv.
Letter XIII. [1890]
To Olympius.
As all the fruits of the season come to us in their proper time,
flowers in spring, corn in summer, and apples [1891] in autumn, so the
fruit for winter is talk.
Footnotes
[1890] Placed with the preceding.
[1891] melon. But, like the Latin malum, this word served for more
than we mean by "apple." So the malum Cydonium was quince, the malum
Persicum, peach, etc.
Letter XIV. [1892]
To Gregory his friend.
My brother Gregory writes me word that he has long been wishing to be
with me, and adds that you are of the same mind; however, I could not
wait, partly as being hard of belief, considering I have been so often
disappointed, and partly because I find myself pulled all ways by
business. I must at once make for Pontus, where, perhaps, God
willing, I may make an end of wandering. After renouncing, with
trouble, the idle hopes which I once had, [about you] [1893] or rather
the dreams, (for it is well said that hopes are waking dreams), I
departed into Pontus in quest of a place to live in. There God has
opened on me a spot exactly answering to my taste, so that I actually
see before my eyes what I have often pictured to my mind in idle
fancy. There is a lofty mountain covered with thick woods, watered
towards the north with cool and transparent streams. A plain lies
beneath, enriched by the waters which are ever draining off from it;
and skirted by a spontaneous profusion of trees almost thick enough to
be a fence; so as even to surpass Calypso's Island, which Homer seems
to have considered the most beautiful spot on the earth. Indeed it is
like an island, enclosed as it is on all sides; for deep hollows cut
off two sides of it; the river, which has lately fallen down a
precipice, runs all along the front and is impassable as a wall; while
the mountain extending itself behind, and meeting the hollows in a
crescent, stops up the path at its roots. There is but one pass, and
I am master of it. Behind my abode there is another gorge, rising
into a ledge up above, so as to command the extent of the plains and
the stream which bounds it, which is not less beautiful, to my taste,
than the Strymon as seen from Amphipolis. [1894]For while the
latter flows leisurely, and swells into a lake almost, and is too
still to be a river, the former is the most rapid stream I know, and
somewhat turbid, too, from the rocks just above; from which, shooting
down, and eddying in a deep pool, it forms a most pleasant scene for
myself or any one else; and is an inexhaustible resource to the
country people, in the countless fish which its depths contain. What
need to tell of the exhalations from the earth, or the breezes from
the river? Another might admire the multitude of flowers, and singing
birds; but leisure I have none for such thoughts. However, the chief
praise of the place is, that being happily disposed for produce of
every kind, it nurtures what to me is the sweetest produce of all,
quietness; indeed, it is not only rid of the bustle of the city, but
is even unfrequented by travellers, except a chance hunter. It
abounds indeed in game, as well as other things, but not, I am glad to
say, in bears or wolves, such as you have, but in deer, and wild
goats, and hares, and the like. Does it not strike you what a foolish
mistake I was near making when I was eager to change this spot for
your Tiberina, [1895] the very pit of the whole earth?
Pardon me, then, if I am now set upon it; for not Alcmæon himself, I
suppose, could endure to wander further when he had found the
Echinades. [1896]
Footnotes
[1892] Placed after Basil's choice of his Pontic retreat. Translated
by Newman, whose version is here given (Church of the Fathers, 126).
On the topography, cf. Letters iii., x., ccxxiii., and remarks in the
Prolegomena.
[1893] Omitted by Newman.
[1894] The hill, of which the western half is covered by the ruins of
Amphipolis, is insulated by the Strymon on the north-west and south,
and a valley on the east. To the north-west the Strymon widens into a
lake, compared by Dr. Arnold to that formed by the Mincio at Mantua.
cf. Thucyd. iv. 108 and v. 7.
[1895] Tiberina was a district in the neighbourhood of Gregory's home
at Arianzus. cf. Greg. Naz., Ep. vi. and vii.
[1896] "Alcmæon slew his mother; but the awful Erinnys, the avenger of
matricide, inflicted on him a long and terrible punishment, depriving
him of his reason, and chasing him about from place to place without
the possibility of repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and
cure from the god at Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the
temple, as an offering, the precious necklace of Kadmus, that
irresistible bribe which had originally corrupted Eriphyle. He
further intimated to the unhappy sufferer that, though the whole earth
was tainted with his crime and had become uninhabitable for him, yet
there was a spot of ground which was not under the eye of the sun at
the time when the matricide was committed, and where, therefore,
Alcmæon might yet find a tranquil shelter. The promise was realised
at the mouth of the river Achelous, whose turbid stream was
perpetually depositing new earth and forming additional islands. Upon
one of these Alcmæon settled permanently and in peace." Grote, Hist.
Gr. i. 381.
Letter XV. [1897]
To Arcadius, Imperial Treasurer. [1898]
The townsmen of our metropolis have conferred on me a greater favour
than they have received, in giving me an opportunity of writing to
your excellency. The kindness, to win which they have received this
letter from me, was assured them even before I wrote, on account of
your wonted and inborn courtesy to all. But I have considered it a
very great advantage to have the opportunity of addressing your
excellency, praying to the holy God that I may continue to rejoice,
and share in the pleasure of the recipients of your bounty, while you
please Him more and more, and while the splendour of your high place
continues to increase. I pray that in due time I may with joy once
more welcome those who are delivering this my letter into your hands,
[1899] and send them forth praising, as do many, your considerate
treatment of them, and I trust that they will have found my
recommendation of them not without use in approaching your exalted
excellency.
Footnotes
[1897] Written from the Pontic retreat.
[1898] Comes rei privatæ, "who managed the enormous revenues of the
fiscus and kept account of the privileges granted by the Emperor
(liber beneficiorum, Hyginus, De Const. Limit. p. 203, ed. Lachm. and
Du Cange s.v.)." D.C.B. i. 634.
[1899] There is confusion here in the text, and the Benedictines think
it unmanageable as it stands. But the matter is of no importance.
Letter XVI. [1900]
Against Eunomius the heretic. [1901]
He who maintains that it is possible to arrive at the discovery of
things actually existing, has no doubt by some orderly method advanced
his intelligence by means of the knowledge of actually existing
things. It is after first training himself by the apprehension of
small and easily comprehensible objects, that he brings his
apprehensive faculty to bear on what is beyond all intelligence. He
makes his boast that he has really arrived at the comprehension of
actual existences; let him then explain to us the nature of the least
of visible beings; let him tell us all about the ant. Does its life
depend on breath and breathing? Has it a skeleton? Is its body
connected by sinews and ligaments? Are its sinews surrounded with
muscles and glands? Does its marrow go with dorsal vertebræ from brow
to tail? Does it give impulse to its moving members by the enveloping
nervous membrane? Has it a liver, with a gall bladder near the
liver? Has it kidneys, heart, arteries, veins, membranes,
cartilages? Is it hairy or hairless? Has it an uncloven hoof, or are
its feet divided? How long does it live? What is its mode of
reproduction? What is its period of gestation? How is it that ants
neither all walk nor all fly, but some belong to creeping things, and
some travel through the air? The man who glories in his knowledge of
the really-existing ought to tell us in the meanwhile about the nature
of the ant. Next let him give us a similar physiological account of
the power that transcends all human intelligence. But if your
knowledge has not yet been able to apprehend the nature of the
insignificant ant, how can you boast yourself able to form a
conception of the power of the incomprehensible God? [1902]
Footnotes
[1900] Placed by the Ben. Ed. in the reign of Julian 361-363.
[1901] Eunomius the Anomoean, bp. of Cyzicus, against whose Liber
Apologeticus Basil wrote his counter-work. The first appearance of
the hairetikos anthropos, the "chooser" of his own way rather than the
common sense of the Church, is in Tit. iii. 10. hairetizein is a
common word in the LXX., but does not occur in Is. xlii. 1, though it
is introduced into the quotation in Matt. xii. 18. hairesis is used
six times by St. Luke for "sect;" twice by St. Paul and once by St.
Peter for "heresy." Augustine, C. Manich. writes: "Qui in ecclesia
Christi morbidum aliquid pravumque quid sapiunt, si, correcti ut sanum
rectumque sapiant, resistunt contumaciter suaque pestifera et
mortifera dogmata emendare nolunt, sed defensare persistunt hæretici
sunt."
[1902] As an argument against Eunomius this Letter has no particular
force, inasmuch as a man may be a good divine though a very poor
entomologist, and might tell us all about the ant without being better
able to decide between Basil and Eunomius. It is interesting,
however, as shewing how far Basil was abreast of the physiology of his
time, and how far that physiology was correct.
Letter XVII. [1903]
To Origenes. [1904]
It is delightful to listen to you, and delightful to read you; and I
think you give me the greater pleasure by your writings. All thanks
to our good God Who has not suffered the truth to suffer in
consequence of its betrayal by the chief powers in the State, but by
your means has made the defence of the doctrine of true religion full
and satisfactory. Like hemlock, monkshood, and other poisonous herbs,
after they have bloomed for a little while, they will quickly wither
away. But the reward which the Lord will give you in requital of all
that you have said in defence of His name blooms afresh for ever.
Wherefore I pray God grant you all happiness in your home, and make
His blessing descend to your sons. I was delighted to see and embrace
those noble boys, express images of your excellent goodness, and my
prayers for them ask all that their father can ask.
Footnotes
[1903] Placed during the reign of Julian.
[1904] Nothing is known of this Origen beyond what is suggested in
this letter. He is conjectured to have been a layman, who, alike as a
rhetorician and a writer, was popularly known as a Christian
apologist.
Letter XVIII. [1905]
To Macarius [1906] and John.
The labours of the field come as no novelty to tillers of the land;
sailors are not astonished if they meet a storm at sea; sweats in the
summer heat are the common experience of the hired hind; and to them
that have chosen to live a holy life the afflictions of this present
world cannot come unforeseen. Each and all of these have the known
and proper labour of their callings, not chosen for its own sake, but
for the sake of the enjoyment of the good things to which they look
forward. What in each of these cases acts as a consolation in trouble
is that which really forms the bond and link of all human
life,--hope. Now of them that labour for the fruits of the earth, or
for earthly things, some enjoy only in imagination what they have
looked for, and are altogether disappointed; and even in the case of
others, where the issue has answered expectation, another hope is soon
needed, so quickly has the first fled and faded out of sight. Only of
them that labour for holiness and truth are the hopes destroyed by no
deception; no issue can destroy their labours, for the kingdom of the
heavens that awaits them is firm and sure. So long then as the word
of truth is on our side, never be in any wise distressed at the
calumny of a lie; let no imperial threats scare you; do not be grieved
at the laughter and mockery of your intimates, nor at the condemnation
of those who pretend to care for you, and who put forward, as their
most attractive bait to deceive, a pretence of giving good advice.
Against them all let sound reason do battle, invoking the championship
and succour of our Lord Jesus Christ, the teacher of true religion,
for Whom to suffer is sweet, and "to die is gain." [1907]
Footnotes
[1905] Placed in the reign of Julian.
[1906] MS. variations are Macrinus and Machrinus.
[1907] Phil. i. 21.
Letter XIX. [1908]
To Gregory my friend. [1909]
I received a letter from you the day before yesterday. It is shewn to
be yours not so much by the handwriting as by the peculiar style.
Much meaning is expressed in few words. I did not reply on the spot,
because I was away from home, and the letter-carrier, after he had
delivered the packet to one of my friends, went away. Now, however, I
am able to address you through Peter, and at the same time both to
return your greeting, and give you an opportunity for another letter.
There is certainly no trouble in writing a laconic dispatch like those
which reach me from you.
Footnotes
[1908] Placed by the Ben. Ed. shortly after Basil's ordination as
priest.
[1909] i.e.Gregory of Nazianzus, and so Letter xiv.
Letter XX. [1910]
To Leontius the Sophist. [1911]
I too do not write often to you, but not more seldom than you do to
me, though many have travelled hitherward from your part of the
world. If you had sent a letter by every one of them, one after the
other, there would have been nothing to prevent my seeming to be
actually in your company, and enjoying it as though we had been
together, so uninterrupted has been the stream of arrivals. But why
do you not write? It is no trouble to a Sophist to write. Nay, if
your hand is tired, you need not even write; another will do that for
you. Only your tongue is needed. And though it does not speak to me,
it may assuredly speak to one of your companions. If nobody is with
you, it will talk by itself. Certainly the tongue of a Sophist and of
an Athenian is as little likely to be quiet as the nightingales when
the spring stirs them to song. In my own case, the mass of business
in which I am now engaged may perhaps afford some excuse for my lack
of letters. And peradventure the fact of my style having been spoilt
by constant familiarity with common speech may make me somewhat
hesitate to address Sophists like you, who are certain to be annoyed
and unmerciful, unless you hear something worthy of your wisdom. You,
on the other hand, ought assuredly to use every opportunity of making
your voice heard abroad, for you are the best speaker of all the
Hellenes that I know; and I think I know the most renowned among you;
so that there really is no excuse for your silence. But enough on
this point.
I have sent you my writings against Eunomius. Whether they are to be
called child's play, or something a little more serious, I leave you
to judge. So far as concerns yourself, I do not think you stand any
longer in need of them; but I hope they will be no unworthy weapon
against any perverse men with whom you may fall in. I do not say this
so much because I have confidence in the force of my treatise, as
because I know well that you are a man likely to make a little go a
long way. If anything strikes you as weaker than it ought to be, pray
have no hesitation in showing me the error. The chief difference
between a friend and a flatterer is this; the flatterer speaks to
please, the friend will not leave out even what is disagreeable.
Footnotes
[1910] Placed in 364.
[1911] cf. Letter xxxv.
Letter XXI. [1912]
To Leontius the Sophist.
The excellent Julianus [1913] seems to get some good for his private
affairs out of the general condition of things. Everything nowadays
is full of taxes demanded and called in, and he too is vehemently
dunned and indicted. Only it is a question not of arrears of rates
and taxes, but of letters. But how he comes to be a defaulter I do
not know. He has always paid a letter, and received a letter--as he
has this. But possibly you have a preference for the famous
"four-times-as-much." [1914] For even the Pythagoreans were not so
fond of their Tetractys, [1915] as these modern tax-collectors of
their "four-times-as-much." Yet perhaps the fairer thing would have
been just the opposite, that a Sophist like you, so very well
furnished with words, should be bound in pledge to me for
"four-times-as-much." But do not suppose for a moment that I am
writing all this out of ill-humour. I am only too pleased to get even
a scolding from you. The good and beautiful do everything, it is
said, with the addition of goodness and beauty. [1916]Even grief
and anger in them are becoming. At all events any one would rather
see his friend angry with him than any one else flattering him. Do
not then cease preferring charges like the last! The very charge will
mean a letter; and nothing can be more precious or delightful to me.
Footnotes
[1912] Of about the same date as the preceding.
[1913] cf. Ep. ccxciii.
[1914] The Ben. note quotes Ammianus Marcellinus xxvi. 6, where it is
said of Petronius, father-in-law of Valens: "ad nudandos sine
discretione cunctos immaniter flagrans nocentes pariter et insontes
post exquisita tormenta quadrupli nexibus vinciebat, debita jam inde a
temporibus principio Aureliani perscrutans, et impendio mærens si
quemquam absolvisset indemnem;" and adds: "Est ergo quadruplum hoc
loco non quadrimenstrua pensio, non superexactio, sed debitorum, quæ
soluta non fuerant, crudelis inquisitio et quadrupli poena his qui non
solverant imposita."
[1915] tetraktus was the Pythagorean name for the sum of the first
four numbers (1+2+3+4=10), held by them to be the root of all
creation. cf. the Pythagorean oath: Nai ma ton hametera psucha
paradonta tetraktun, Pagan aenaou phuseos rhizomat' echousan cf. my
note on Theodoret, Ep. cxxx. for the use of tetraktus for the Four
Gospels.
[1916] Tois kalois panta meta tes tou kalou prosthekes ginesthai. The
pregnant sense of kalos makes translation difficult.
Letter XXII. [1917]
Without address. On the Perfection of the Life of Solitaries.
1. Many things are set forth by inspired Scripture as binding upon
all who are anxious to please God. But, for the present, I have only
deemed it necessary to speak by way of brief reminder concerning the
questions which have recently been stirred among you, so far as I have
learnt from the study of inspired Scripture itself. I shall thus
leave behind me detailed evidence, easy of apprehension, for the
information of industrious students, who in their turn will be able to
inform others. The Christian ought to be so minded as becomes his
heavenly calling, [1918] and his life and conversation ought to be
worthy of the Gospel of Christ. [1919]The Christian ought not to be
of doubtful mind, [1920] nor by anything drawn away from the
recollection of God and of His purposes and judgments. The Christian
ought in all things to become superior to the righteousness existing
under the law, and neither swear nor lie. [1921]He ought not to
speak evil; [1922] to do violence; [1923] to fight; [1924] to avenge
himself; [1925] to return evil for evil; [1926] to be angry. [1927]
The Christian ought to be patient, [1928] whatever he have to suffer,
and to convict the wrong-doer in season, [1929] not with the desire of
his own vindication, but of his brother's reformation, [1930]
according to the commandment of the Lord. The Christian ought not to
say anything behind his brother's back with the object of calumniating
him, for this is slander, even if what is said is true. [1931]He
ought to turn away from the brother who speaks evil against him;
[1932] he ought not to indulge in jesting; [1933] he ought not to
laugh nor even to suffer laugh makers. [1934]He must not talk idly,
saying things which are of no service to the hearers nor to such usage
as is necessary and permitted us by God; [1935] so that workers may do
their best as far as possible to work in silence; and that good words
be suggested to them by those who are entrusted with the duty of
carefully dispensing the word to the building up of the faith, lest
God's Holy Spirit be grieved. Any one who comes in ought not to be
able, of his own free will, to accost or speak to any of the brothers,
before those to whom the responsibility of general discipline is
committed have approved of it as pleasing to God, with a view to the
common good. [1936]The Christian ought not to be enslaved by wine;
[1937] nor to be eager for flesh meat, [1938] and as a general rule
ought not to be a lover of pleasure in eating or drinking, [1939] "for
every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things."
[1940]The Christian ought to regard all the things that are given
him for his use, not as his to hold as his own or to lay up; [1941]
and, giving careful heed to all things as the Lord's, not to overlook
any of the things that are being thrown aside and disregarded, should
this be the case. No Christian ought to think of himself as his own
master, but each should rather so think and act as though given by God
to be slave to his like minded brethren; [1942] but "every man in his
own order." [1943]
2. The Christian ought never to murmur [1944] either in scarcity of
necessities, or in toil or labour, for the responsibility in these
matters lies with such as have authority in them. There never ought
to be any clamour, or any behaviour or agitation by which anger is
expressed, [1945] or diversion of mind from the full assurance of the
presence of God. [1946]
The voice should be modulated; no one ought to answer another, or do
anything, roughly or contemptuously, [1947] but in all things
moderation [1948] and respect should be shewn to every one. [1949]
No wily glances of the eye are to be allowed, nor any behaviour or
gestures which grieve a brother and shew contempt. [1950]Any
display in cloak or shoes is to be avoided; it is idle ostentation.
[1951]Cheap things ought to be used for bodily necessity; and
nothing ought to be spent beyond what is necessary, or for mere
extravagance; this is a misuse of our property. The Christian ought
not to seek for honour, or claim precedence. [1952]Every one ought
to put all others before himself. [1953]The Christian ought not to
be unruly. [1954]He who is able to work ought not to eat the bread
of idleness, [1955] but even he who is busied in deeds well done for
the glory of Christ ought to force himself to the active discharge of
such work as he can do. [1956]Every Christian, with the approval of
his superiors, ought so to do everything with reason and assurance,
even down to actual eating and drinking, as done to the glory of God.
[1957]The Christian ought not to change over from one work to
another without the approval of those who are appointed for the
arrangement of such matters; unless some unavoidable necessity
suddenly summon any one to the relief of the helpless. Every one
ought to remain in his appointed post, not to go beyond his own bounds
and intrude into what is not commanded him, unless the responsible
authorities judge any one to be in need of aid. No one ought to be
found going from one workshop to another. Nothing ought to be done in
rivalry or strife with any one.
3. The Christian ought not to grudge another's reputation, nor
rejoice over any man's faults; [1958] he ought in Christ's love to
grieve and be afflicted at his brother's faults, and rejoice over his
brother's good deeds. [1959]He ought not to be indifferent or
silent before sinners. [1960]He who shows another to be wrong ought
to do so with all tenderness, [1961] in the fear of God, and with the
object of converting the sinner. [1962]He who is proved wrong or
rebuked ought to take it willingly, recognizing his own gain in being
set right. When any one is being accused, it is not right for
another, before him or any one else, to contradict the accuser; but if
at any time the charge seems groundless to any one, he ought privately
to enter into discussion with the accuser, and either produce, or
acquire, conviction. Every one ought, as far as he is able, to
conciliate one who has ground of complaint against him. No one ought
to cherish a grudge against the sinner who repents, but heartily to
forgive him. [1963]He who says that he has repented of a sin ought
not only to be pricked with compunction for his sin, but also to bring
forth fruits worthy of repentance. [1964]He who has been corrected
in first faults, and received pardon, if he sins again prepares for
himself a judgment of wrath worse than the former. [1965]He, who
after the first and second admonition [1966] abides in his fault,
ought to be brought before the person in authority, [1967] if haply
after being rebuked by more he may be ashamed. [1968]If even thus
he fail to be set right he is to be cut off from the rest as one that
maketh to offend, and regarded as a heathen and a publican, [1969] for
the security of them that are obedient, according to the saying, When
the impious fall the righteous tremble. [1970]He should be grieved
over as a limb cut from the body. The sun ought not to go down upon a
brother's wrath, [1971] lest haply night come between brother and
brother, and make the charge stand in the day of judgment. A
Christian ought not to wait for an opportunity for his own amendment,
[1972] because there is no certainty about the morrow; for many after
many devices have not reached the morrow. He ought not to be beguiled
by over eating, whence come dreams in the night. He ought not to be
distracted by immoderate toil, nor overstep the bounds of sufficiency,
as the apostle says, "Having food and raiment let us be therewith
content;" [1973] unnecessary abundance gives appearance of
covetousness, and covetousness is condemned as idolatry. [1974]A
Christian ought not to be a lover of money, [1975] nor lay up treasure
for unprofitable ends. He who comes to God ought to embrace poverty
in all things, and to be riveted in the fear of God, according to the
words, "Rivet my flesh in thy fear, for I am afraid of thy judgments."
[1976]The Lord grant that you may receive what I have said with
full conviction and shew forth fruits worthy of the Spirit to the
glory of God, by God's good pleasure, and the cooperation of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Footnotes
[1917] Placed in 364.
[1918] cf. Heb. iii.
[1919] cf. Phil. i. 27.
[1920] cf. Luke xii. 29.
[1921] cf. Matt. v. 20.
[1922] Tit. iii. 2.
[1923] 1 Tim. ii. 13.
[1924] 2 Tim. ii. 24.
[1925] Rom. xii. 19.
[1926] Rom. xii. 17.
[1927] Matt. v. 22.
[1928] James v. 8.
[1929] Tit. ii. 15.
[1930] Matt. xv. 18.
[1931] cf. 2 Cor. xii. 20 and 1 Peter ii. 1.
[1932] cf. 1 Peter iii. 16, 17, and James iv. 11.
[1933] Eph. v. 4.
[1934] This charge is probably founded on Luke vi. 21 and 25, and
James iv. 9. Yet our Lord's promise that they who hunger and weep
"shall laugh," admits of fulfilment in the kingdom of God on earth.
Cheerfulness is a note of the Church, whose members, "if sorrowful,"
are yet "alway rejoicing." (2 Cor. vi. 10.)
[1935] Eph. v. 4.
[1936] It is less easy to find explicit Scriptural sanction even for
such a modified rule of silence as is here given by St. Basil. St.
Paul can only be quoted for the "silence" of the woman. But even St.
Basil's "silence" with a view to preserving his coenobium from vain
conversation, is a long way off the "silence" of St. Bruno's
Carthusians.
[1937] 1 Pet. iv. 3.
[1938] Rom. xiv. 21.
[1939] 2 Tim. iii. 4.
[1940] 1 Cor. ix. 25.
[1941] cf. Acts iv. 32.
[1942] cf. 1 Cor. ix. 19.
[1943] cf. 1 Cor. xv. 23.
[1944] cf. 1 Cor. x. 10.
[1945] cf. Eph. iv. 31.
[1946] cf. Heb. iv. 13.
[1947] cf. Tit. iii. 2.
[1948] Phil. iv. 5, to epieikes. In 1 Tim. iii. 3, "patient" is
epieikes.
[1949] Rom. xii. 10 and 1 Pet. ii. 17.
[1950] Rom. xiv. 10.
[1951] Matt. vi. 29, Luke xii. 27.
[1952] Mark ix. 37.
[1953] Phil. ii. 3.
[1954] Tit. i. 10.
[1955] 2 Thess. iii. 10.
[1956] 1 Thess. iv. 11.
[1957] 1 Cor. x. 31.
[1958] 1 Cor. xiii. 6.
[1959] 1 Cor. xii. 26.
[1960] 1 Tim. v. 20.
[1961] 2 Tim. iv. 2.
[1962] 2 Tim. iv. 2.
[1963] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[1964] Luke iii. 8.
[1965] Heb. x. 26, 27.
[1966] Tit. iii. 10.
[1967] to proestoti. & 233; proestos is the "president" in Justin
Martyr's description of the Christian service in Apol. Maj. i.
[1968] cf. Tit. ii. 8.
[1969] Matt. xviii. 17.
[1970] Prov. xxix. 16, LXX.
[1971] Eph. iv. 26.
[1972] cf. Matt. xxiv. 14; Luke xii. 40.
[1973] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[1974] Col. iii. 5.
[1975] cf. Mark x. 23, 24; Luke xviii. 24.
[1976] Ps. cxix. 120, LXX.
Letter XXIII. [1977]
To a Solitary.
A certain man, as he says, on condemning the vanity of this life, and
perceiving that its joys are ended here, since they only provide
material for eternal fire and then quickly pass away, has come to me
with the desire of separating from this wicked and miserable life, of
abandoning the pleasures of the flesh, and of treading for the future
a road which leads to the mansions of the Lord. Now if he is
sincerely firm in his truly blessed purpose, and has in his soul the
glorious and laudable passion, loving the Lord his God with all his
heart, with all his strength, and with all his mind, it is necessary
for your reverence to show him the difficulties and distresses of the
strait and narrow way, and establish him in the hope of the good
things which are as yet unseen, but are laid up in promise for all
that are worthy of the Lord. I therefore write to entreat your
incomparable perfection in Christ, if it be possible to mould his
character, and, without me, to bring about his renunciation according
to what is pleasing to God, and to see that he receive elementary
instruction in accordance with what has been decided by the Holy
Fathers, and put forth by them in writing. See too that he have put
before him all things that are essential to ascetic discipline, and
that so he may be introduced to the life, after having accepted, of
his own accord, the labours undergone for religion's sake, subjected
himself to the Lord's easy yoke, adopted a conversation in imitation
of Him Who for our sakes became poor [1978] and took flesh, and may
run without fail to the prize of his high calling, and receive the
approbation of the Lord. He is wishful to receive here the crown of
God's loves, but I have put him off, because I wish, in conjunction
with your reverence, to anoint him for such struggles, and to appoint
over him one of your number whom he may select to be his trainer,
training him nobly, and making him by his constant and blessed care a
tried wrestler, wounding and overthrowing the prince of the darkness
of this world, and the spiritual powers of iniquity, with whom, as the
blessed Apostle says, is "our wrestling." [1979]What I wish to do
in conjunction with you, let your love in Christ do without me.
Footnotes
[1977] Written at Cæsarea during his presbyterate.
[1978] 2 Cor. viii. 9.
[1979] Eph. vi. 12.
Letter XXIV. [1980]
To Athanasius, father of Athanasius bishop of Ancyra. [1981]
That one of the things hardest to achieve, if indeed it be not
impossible, is to rise superior to calumny, I am myself fully
persuaded, and so too, I presume, is your excellency. Yet not to give
a handle by one's own conduct, either to inquisitive critics of
society, or to mischief makers who lie in wait to catch us tripping,
is not only possible, but is the special characteristic of all who
order their lives wisely and according to the rule of true religion.
And do not think me so simple and credulous as to accept depreciatory
remarks from any one without due investigation. I bear in mind the
admonition of the Spirit, "Thou shalt not receive a false report."
[1982]But you, learned men, yourselves say that "The seen is
significant of the unseen." I therefore beg;--(and pray do not take
it ill if I seem to be speaking as though I were giving a lesson; for
"God has chosen the weak" and "despised things of the world," [1983]
and often by their means brings about the salvation of such as are
being saved); what I say and urge is this; that by word and deed we
act with scrupulous attention to propriety, and, in accordance with
the apostolic precept, "give no offence in anything." [1984]The
life of one who has toiled hard in the acquisition of knowledge, who
has governed cities and states, and who is jealous of the high
character of his forefathers, ought to be an example of high character
itself. You ought not now to be exhibiting your disposition towards
your children in word only, as you have long exhibited its ever since
you became a father; you ought not only to shew that natural affection
which is shewn by brutes, as you yourself have said, and as experience
shews. You ought to make your love go further, and be a love all the
more personal and voluntary in that you see your children worthy of a
father's prayers. On this point I do not need to be convinced. The
evidence of facts is enough. One thing, however, I will say for
truth's sake, that it is not our brother Timotheus, the Chorepiscopus,
who has brought me word of what is noised abroad. For neither by word
of mouth nor by letter has he ever conveyed anything in the shape of
slander, be it small or great. That I have heard something I do not
deny, but it is not Timotheus who accuses you. Yet while I hear
whatever I do, at least I will follow the example of Alexander, and
will keep one ear clear for the accused. [1985]
Footnotes
[1980] Placed before Basil's episcopate.
[1981] Vide note on Letter xxv. Nothing more is known of the elder of
these two Athanasii than is to be gathered from this letter.
[1982] Ex. xxiii. 1, LXX. and marg.
[1983] 1 Cor. i. 27, 28.
[1984] 2 Cor. vi. 3.
[1985] cf. Plut., Vit. Alex.
Letter XXV. [1986]
To Athanasius, bishop of Ancyra. [1987]
1. I have received intelligence from those who come to me from
Ancyra, and they are many and more than I can count, but they all
agree in what they say, that you, a man very dear to me, (how can I
speak so as to give no offence?) do not mention me in very pleasant
terms, nor yet in such as your character would lead me to expect. I,
however, learned long ago the weakness of human nature, and its
readiness to turn from one extreme to another; and so, be well
assured, nothing connected with it can astonish me, nor does any
change come quite unexpected. Therefore that my lot should have
changed for the worse, and that reproaches and insults should have
arisen in the place of former respect, I do not make much ado. But
one thing does really strike me as astonishing and monstrous, and that
is that it should be you who have this mind about me, and go so far as
to feel anger and indignation against me, and, if the report of your
hearers is to be believed, have already proceeded to such extremities
as to utter threats. At these threats, I will not deny, I really have
laughed. Truly I should have been but a boy to be frightened at such
bugbears. But it does seem to me alarming and distressing that you,
who, as I have trusted, are preserved for the comfort of the churches,
a buttress of the truth where many fall away, and a seed of the
ancient and true love, should so far fall in with the present course
of events as to be more influenced by the calumny of the first man you
come across than by your long knowledge of me, and, without any proof,
should be seduced into suspecting absurdities.
2. But, as I said, for the present I postpone the case. Would it
have been too hard a task, my dear sir, to discuss in a short letter,
as between friend and friend, points which you wish to raise; or, if
you objected to entrusting such things to writing, to get me to come
to you? But if you could not help speaking out, and your
uncontrollable anger allowed no time for delay, at least you might
have employed one of those about you who are naturally adapted for
dealing with confidential matters, as a means of communication with
me. But now, of all those who for one reason or another approach you,
into whose ears has it not been dinned that I am a writer and composer
of certain "pests"? For this is the word which those, who quote you
word for word, say that you have used. The more I bring my mind to
bear upon the matter the more hopeless is my puzzle. This idea has
struck me. Can any heretic have grieved your orthodoxy, and driven
you to the utterance of that word by malevolently putting my name to
his own writings? For you, a man who has sustained great and famous
contests on behalf of the truth, could never have endured to inflict
such an outrage on what I am well known to have written against those
who dare to say that God the Son is in essence unlike God the Father,
or who blasphemously describe the Holy Ghost as created and made. You
might relieve me from my difficulty yourself, if you would tell me
plainly what it is that has stirred you to be thus offended with me.
Footnotes
[1986] Placed, like the former, before the episcopate.
[1987] This Athanasius was appointed to the see of Ancyra (Angora) by
the influence of Acacius the one-eyed, bp. of Cæsarea, the inveterate
opponent of Cyril of Jerusalem, and leader of the Homoeans. He
therefore started his episcopate under unfavorable auspices, but
acquired a reputation for orthodoxy. cf. Greg. Nyss., Contra Eunom.
I. ii. 292. On Basil's high opinion of him, cf. Letter xxix.
Letter XXVI. [1988]
To Cæsarius, brother of Gregory. [1989]
Thanks to God for shewing forth His wonderful power in your person,
and for preserving you to your country and to us your friends, from so
terrible a death. It remains for us not to be ungrateful, nor
unworthy of so great a kindness, but, to the best of our ability, to
narrate the marvellous works of God, to celebrate by deed the kindness
which we have experienced, and not return thanks by word only. We
ought to become in very deed what I, grounding my belief on the
miracles wrought in you, am persuaded that you now are. We exhort you
still more to serve God, ever increasing your fear more and more, and
advancing on to perfection, that we may be made wise stewards of our
life, for which the goodness of God has reserved us. For if it is a
command to all of us "to yield ourselves unto God as those that are
alive from the dead," [1990] how much more strongly is not this
commanded them who have been lifted up from the gates of death? And
this, I believe, would be best effected, did we but desire ever to
keep the same mind in which we were at the moment of our perils. For,
I ween, the vanity of our life came before us, and we felt that all
that belongs to man, exposed as it is to vicissitudes, has about it
nothing sure, nothing firm. We felt, as was likely, repentance for
the past; and we gave a promise for the future, if we were saved, to
serve God and give careful heed to ourselves. If the imminent peril
of death gave me any cause for reflection, I think that you must have
been moved by the same or nearly the same thoughts. We are therefore
bound to pay a binding debt, at once joyous at God's good gift to us,
and, at the same time, anxious about the future. I have ventured to
make these suggestions to you. It is yours to receive what I say well
and kindly, as you were wont to do when we talked together face to
face.
Footnotes
[1988] Placed in 368.
[1989] Cæsarius was the youngest brother of Gregory of Nazianzus.
After a life of distinguished service under Julian, Valens, and
Valentinian, he was led, shortly after the escape narrated in this
letter, to retire from the world. A work entitled Pusteis, or
Quæstiones (sive Dialogi) de Rebus Divinus, attributed to him, is of
doubtful genuineness. Vide D.C.B. s.v. The earthquake, from the
effects of which Cæsarius was preserved, took place on the tenth of
October, 368. cf. Greg. Naz, Orat. x.
[1990] Rom. vii. 13.
Letter XXVII. [1991]
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata. [1992]
When by God's grace, and the aid of your prayers, I had seemed to be
somewhat recovering from my sickness, and had got my strength again,
then came winter, keeping me a prisoner at home, and compelling me to
remain where I was. True, its severity was much less than usual, but
this was quite enough to keep me not merely from travelling while it
lasted, but even from so much as venturing to put my head out of
doors. But to me it is no slight thing to be permitted, if only by
letter, to communicate with your reverence, and to rest tranquil in
the hope of your reply. However, should the season permit, and
further length of life be allowed me, and should the dearth not
prevent me from undertaking the journey, [1993] peradventure through
the aid of your prayers I may be able to fulfil my earnest wish, may
find you at your own fireside, and, with abundant leisure, may take my
fill of your vast treasures of wisdom.
Footnotes
[1991] Placed in 368.
[1992] This, the first of twenty-two letters addressed by Basil to
Eusebius of Samosata, has no particular interest. Eusebius, the
friend of Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and of Meletius, was bishop of
Samosata (in Commagene on the Euphrates, now Samsat) from 360 to 373,
and was of high character and sound opinions. Theodoret (Ecc. Hist.
iv. 15), in mentioning his exile to Thrace in the persecution under
Valens, calls him "that unflagging labourer in apostolic work," and
speaks warmly of his zeal. Concerning the singular and touching
circumstances of his death, vide Theodoret, E.H. v. 4, and my note in
the edition of this series, p. 134.
[1993] Samosata was about two hundred miles distant from Cæsarea, as
the crow flies.
Letter XXVIII. [1994]
To the Church of Neocæsarea. Consolatory. [1995]
1. What has befallen you strongly moved me to visit you, with the
double object of joining with you, who are near and dear to me, in
paying all respect to the blessed dead, and of being more closely
associated with you in your trouble by seeing your sorrow with my own
eyes, and so being able to take counsel with you as to what is to be
done. But many causes hinder my being able to approach you in person,
and it remains for me to communicate with you in writing. The
admirable qualities of the departed, on account of which we chiefly
estimate the greatness of our loss, are indeed too many to be
enumerated in a letter; and it is, besides, no time to be discussing
the multitude of his good deeds, when our spirits are thus prostrated
with grief. For of all that he did, what can we ever forget? What
could we deem deserving of silence? To tell all at once were
impossible; to tell a part would, I fear, involve disloyalty to the
truth. A man has passed away who surpassed all his contemporaries in
all the good things that are within man's reach; a prop of his
country; an ornament of the churches; a pillar and support of the
truth; a stay of the faith of Christ; a protector of his friends; a
stout foe of his opponents; a guardian of the principles of his
fathers; an enemy of innovation; exhibiting in himself the ancient
fashion of the Church, and making the state of the Church put under
him conform to the ancient constitution, as to a sacred model, so that
all who lived with him seemed to live in the society of them that used
to shine like lights in the world two hundred years ago and more. So
your bishop put forth nothing of his own, no novel invention; but, as
the blessing of Moses has it, he knew how to bring out of the secret
and good stores of his heart, "old store, and the old because of the
new." [1996]Thus it came about that in meetings of his fellow
bishops he was not ranked according to his age, but, by reason of the
old age of his wisdom, he was unanimously conceded precedence over all
the rest. And no one who looks at your condition need go far to seek
the advantages of such a course of training. For, so far as I know,
you alone, or, at all events, you and but very few others, in the
midst of such a storm and whirlwind of affairs, were able under his
good guidance to live your lives unshaken by the waves. You were
never reached by heretics' buffering blasts, which bring shipwreck and
drowning on unstable souls; and that you may for ever live beyond
their reach I pray the Lord who ruleth over all, and who granted long
tranquillity to Gregory His servant, the first founder of your church.
[1997]
Do not lose that tranquillity now; do not, by extravagant lamentation,
and by entirely giving yourself up to grief, put the opportunity for
action into the hands of those who are plotting your bane. If lament
you must, (which I do not allow, lest you be in this respect like
"them which have no hope,") [1998] do you, if so it seem good to you,
like some wading chorus, choose your leader, and raise with him a
chant of tears.
2. And yet, if he whom you mourn had not reached extreme old age,
certainly, as regards his government of your church, he was allowed no
narrow limit of life. He had as much strength of body as enabled him
to show strength of mind in his distresses. Perhaps some of you may
suppose that time increases sympathy and adds affection, and is no
cause of satiety, so that, the longer you have experienced kind
treatment, the more sensible you are of its loss. You may think that
of a righteous person the good hold even the shadow in honour. Would
that many of you did feel so! Far be it from me to suggest anything
like disregard of our friend! But I do counsel you to bear your pain
with manly endurance. I myself am by no means insensible of all that
may be said by those who are weeping for their loss. Hushed is a
tongue whose words flooded our ears like a mighty stream: a depth of
heart, never fathomed before, has fled, humanly speaking, like an
unsubstantial dream. Whose glance so keen as his to look into the
future? Who with like fixity and strength of mind able to dart like
lightning into the midst of action? O Neocæsarea, already a prey to
many troubles, never before smitten with so deadly a loss! Now
withered is the bloom of you, beauty; your church is dumb; your
assemblies are full of mournful faces; your sacred synod craves for
its leader; your holy utterances wait for an expounder; your boys have
lost a father, your elders a brother, your nobles one first among
them, your people a champion, your poor a supporter. All, calling him
by the name that comes most nearly home to each, lift up the wailing
cry which to each man's own sorrow seems most appropriate and fit.
But whither are my words carried away by my tearful joy? Shall we not
watch? Shall we not meet together? Shall we not look to our common
Lord, Who suffers each of his saints to serve his own generation, and
summons him back to Himself at His own appointed time? Now in season
remember the voice of him who when preaching to you used always to say
"Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers." [1999]The dogs are many.
Why do I say dogs? Rather grievous wolves, hiding their guile under
the guise of sheep, are, all over the world, tearing Christ's flock.
Of these you must beware, under the protection of some wakeful
bishop. Such an one it is yours to ask, purging your souls of all
rivalry and ambition: such an one it is the Lord's to show you. That
Lord, from the time of Gregory the great champion of your church down
to that of the blessed departed, setting over you one after another,
and from time to time fitting one to another like gem set close to
gem, has bestowed on you glorious ornaments for your church. You
have, then, no need to despair of them that are to come. The Lord
knoweth who are His. He may bring into our midst those for whom
peradventure we are not looking.
3. I meant to have come to an end long before this, but the pain at
my heart does not allow me. Now I charge you by the Fathers, by the
true faith, by our blessed friend, lift up your souls, each man making
what is being done his own immediate business, each reckoning that he
will be the first to reap the consequences of the issue, whichever way
it turn out, lest your fate be that which so very frequently befalls,
every one leaving to his neighbour the common interests of all; and
then, while each one makes little in his own mind of what is going on,
all of you unwittingly draw your own proper misfortunes on yourselves
by your neglect. Take, I beg you, what I say with all kindliness,
whether it be regarded as an expression of the sympathy of a
neighbour, or as fellowship between fellow believers, or, which is
really nearer the truth, of one who obeys the law of love, and shrinks
from the risk of silence. I am persuaded that you are my boasting, as
I am yours, till the day of the Lord, and that it depends upon the
pastor who will be granted you whether I shall be more closely united
to you by the bond of love, or wholly severed from you. This latter
God forbid. By God's grace it will not so be; and I should be sorry
now to say one ungracious word. But this I do wish you to know, that
though I had not that blessed man always at my side, in my efforts for
the peace of the churches, because, as he himself affirmed, of certain
prejudices, yet, nevertheless, at no time did I fail in unity of
opinion with him, and I have always invoked his aid in my struggles
against the heretics. Of this I call to witness God and all who know
me best.
Footnotes
[1994] Placed in 368.
[1995] i.e. on the death of Musonius, bp. of Neocæsarea. Musonius is
not named, but he is inferred to be the bishop referred to in Ep.
ccx., in which Basil asserts that sound doctrine prevailed in
Neocæsarea up to the time of "the blessed Musonius, whose teaching
still rings in your ears."
[1996] Lev. xxvi. 10.
[1997] i.e. Gregory Thaumaturgus.
[1998] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[1999] Phil. iii. 2.
Letter XXIX. [2000]
To the Church of Ancyra. Consolatory. [2001]
My amazement at the most distressing news of the calamity which has
befallen you for a long time kept me silent. I felt like a man whose
ears are stunned by a loud clap of thunder. Then I somehow recovered
a little from my state of speechlessness. Now I have mourned, as none
could help mourning, over the event, and, in the midst of my
lamentations, have sent you this letter. I write not so much to
console you,--for who could find words to cure a calamity so
great?--as to signify to you, as well as I can by these means, the
agony of my own heart. I need now the lamentations of Jeremiah, or of
any other of the Saints who has feelingly lamented a great woe. A man
has fallen who was really a pillar and stay of the Church or rather he
himself has been taken from us and is gone to the blessed life, and
there is no small danger lest many at the removal of this prop from
under them fall too, and lest some men's unsoundness be brought to
light. A mouth is sealed gushing with righteous eloquence and words
of grace to the edification of the brotherhood. Gone are the counsels
of a mind which truly moved in God. Ah! how often, for I must accuse
myself, was it my lot to feel indignation against him, because, wholly
desiring to depart and be with Christ, he did not prefer for our sakes
to remain in the flesh! [2002]To whom for the future shall I commit
the cares of the Churches? Whom shall I take to share my troubles?
Whom to participate in my gladness? O loneliness terrible and sad!
How am I not like to a pelican of the wilderness? [2003]Yet of a
truth the members of the Church, united by his leadership as by one
soul, and fitted together into close union of feeling and fellowship,
are both preserved and shall ever be preserved by the bond of peace
for spiritual communion. God grants us the boon, that all the works
of that blessed soul, which he did nobly in the churches of God, abide
firm and immovable. But the struggle is no slight one, lest, once
more strifes and divisions arising over the choice of the bishop, all
your work be upset by some quarrel.
Footnotes
[2000] Placed in 368.
[2001] cf. Letters xxiv. and xxv., and note.
[2002] cf. Phil. i. 23, 24.
[2003] cf. Ps. cii. 6.
Letter XXX. [2004]
To Eusebius of Samosata.
If I were to write at length all the causes which, up to the present
time, have kept me at home, eager as I have been to set out to see
your reverence, I should tell an interminable story. I say nothing of
illnesses coming one upon another, hard winter weather, and press of
work, for all this has been already made known to you. Now, for my
sins, I have lost my Mother, [2005] the only comfort I had in life.
Do not smile, if, old as I am, I lament my orphanhood. Forgive me if
I cannot endure separation from a soul, to compare with whom I see
nothing in the future that lies before me. So once more my complaints
have come back to me; once more I am confined to my bed, tossing about
in my weakness, and every hour all but looking for the end of life;
and the Churches are in somewhat the same condition as my body, no
good hope shining on them, and their state always changing for the
worse. In the meantime Neocæsarea and Ancyra have decided to have
successors of the dead, and so far they are at peace. Those who are
plotting against me have not yet been permitted to do anything worthy
of their bitterness and wrath. This we make no secret of attributing
to your prayers on behalf of the Churches. Weary not then in praying
for the Churches and in entreating God. Pray give all salutations to
those who are privileged to minister to your Holiness.
Footnotes
[2004] Placed in 369.
[2005] Emmelia. Vide account of Basil's family in the prolegomena.
Letter XXXI. [2006]
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
The death is still with us, and I am therefore compelled to remain
where I am, partly by the duty of distribution, and partly out of
sympathy for the distressed. Even now, therefore, I have not been
able to accompany our reverend brother Hypatius, [2007] whom I am able
to style brother, not in mere conventional language, but on account of
relationship, for we are of one blood. You know how ill he is. It
distresses me to think that all hope of comfort is cut off for him, as
those who have the gifts of healing have not been allowed to apply
their usual remedies in his case. Wherefore again he implores the aid
of your prayers. Receive my entreaty that you will give him the usual
protection alike for your own sake, for you are always kind to the
sick, and for mine who am petitioning on his behalf. If possible,
summon to your side the very holy brethren that he may be treated
under your own eyes. If this be impossible, be so good as to send him
on with a letter, and recommend him to friends further on.
Footnotes
[2006] Placed in 369. cf. note on Letter ccxxxvi.
[2007] Nothing more is known of this Hypatius. Gregory of Nazianzus
(Ep. 192) writes to a correspondent of the same name.
Letter XXXII. [2008]
To Sophronius the Master. [2009]
Our God--beloved brother, Gregory the bishop, [2010] shares the
troubles of the times, for he too, like everybody else, is distressed
at successive outrages, and resembles a man buffeted by unexpected
blows. For men who have no fear of God, possibly forced by the
greatness of their troubles, are reviling him, on the ground that they
have lent Cæsarius [2011] money. It is not indeed the question of any
loss which is serious, for he has long learnt to despise riches. The
matter rather is that those who have so freely distributed all the
effects of Cæsarius that were worth anything, after really getting
very little, because his property was in the hands of slaves, and of
men of no better character than slaves, did not leave much for the
executors. [2012]This little they supposed to be pledged to no one,
and straightway spent it on the poor, not only from their own
preference, but because of the injunctions of the dead. For on his
death bed Cæsarius is declared to have said "I wish my goods to belong
to the poor." In obedience then to the wishes of Cæsarius they made a
proper distribution of them. Now, with the poverty of a Christian,
Gregory is immersed in the bustle of a chafferer. So I bethought me
of reporting the matter to your excellency, in order that you may
state what you think proper about Gregory to the Comes Thesaurorum,
and so may honour a man whom you have known for many years, glorify
the Lord who takes as done to Himself what is done to His servants,
and honour me who am specially bound to you. You will, I hope, of
your great sagacity devise a means of relief from these outrageous
people and intolerable annoyances.
2. No one is so ignorant of Gregory as to have any unworthy suspicion
of his giving an inexact account of the circumstances because he is
fond of money. We have not to go far to find a proof of his
liberality. What is left of the property of Cæsarius he gladly
abandons to the Treasury, so that the property may be kept there, and
the Treasurer may give answer to those who attack it and demand their
proofs; for we are not adapted for such business. Your excellency may
be informed that, so long as it was possible, no one went away without
getting what he wanted, and each one carried off what he demanded
without any difficulty. The consequence indeed was that a good many
were sorry that they had not asked for more at first; and this made
still more objectors, for with the example of the earlier successful
applicants before them, one false claimant starts up after another. I
do then entreat your excellency to make a stand against all this and
to come in, like some intervening stream, and solve the continuity of
these troubles. You know how best you will help matters, and need not
wait to be instructed by me. I am inexperienced in the affairs of
this life, and cannot see my way out of our difficulties. Of your
great wisdom discover some means of help. Be our counsellor. Be our
champion.
Footnotes
[2008] Placed in 369.
[2009] i.e. Magister officiorum. Sophronius was a fellow student with
Basil at Athens, and a friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. He secured the
favour of Valens, who was staying at Cæsarea in 365, by conveying him
intelligence of the usurpation of Procopius at Constantinople. (Amm.
Marc. xxv. 9.) On the circumstance which gave rise to this letter,
cf. Greg. Naz., Ep. xviii. Letters lxxvi., xcvi., clxxvii., clxxx.,
cxcii., and cclxxii. are addressed to the same correspondent, the
last, as it will be seen, indicating a breach in their long
friendship.
[2010] The word Episcopus in this and in the following letter is
supposed by Maran to have crept into the text from the margin.
Gregory of Nazianzus is referred to, who was not then a bishop.
Gregory the Elder, bishop of Nazianzus, was in good circumstances, and
had not adopted the monastic life.
[2011] cf. Letter xxvi. Cæsarius died in 368, leaving his brother
Gregory as executor.
[2012] toutois. So the mss., but the editors here substituted touto,
i.e. Gregory, and similarly the singular in the following words.
Letter XXXIII. [2013]
To Aburgius. [2014]
Who knows so well as you do how to respect an old friendship, to pay
reverence to virtue, and to sympathise with the sick? Now my
God-beloved brother Gregory the bishop has become involved in matters
which would be under any circumstances disagreeable, and are quite
foreign to his bent of mind. I have therefore thought it best to
throw myself on your protection, and to endeavour to obtain from you
some solution of our difficulties. It is really an intolerable state
of things that one who is neither by nature nor inclination adapted
for anything of the kind should be compelled to be thus responsible;
that demands for money should be made on a poor man; and that one who
has long determined to pass his life in retirement should be dragged
into publicity. It would depend upon your wise counsel whether you
think it of any use to address the Comes Thesaurorum or any other
persons.
Footnotes
[2013] Placed in 369.
[2014] cf. Ep. xxxiii., lxxv., cxlvii., clxxviii., ccciv., and also
cxcvi., though the last is also attributed to Greg. Naz. He was an
important lay compatriot of Basil. Tillemont was of opinion that the
dear brother Gregory referred to in this letter is Gregory of Nyssa;
but Maran points out that the events referred to are the same as those
described in Letter xxxii., and supposes the word episcopus to have
been inserted by a commentator.
Letter XXXIV. [2015]
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
How could I be silent at the present juncture? And if I cannot be
silent, how am I to find utterance adequate to the circumstances, so
as to make my voice not like a mere groan but rather a lamentation
intelligibly indicating the greatness of the misfortune? Ah me!
Tarsus is undone. [2016]This is a trouble grievous to be borne, but
it does not come alone. It is still harder to think that a city so
placed as to be united with Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Assyria, should
be lightly thrown away by the madness of two or three individuals,
while you are all the while hesitating, settling what to do, and
looking at one another's faces. It would have been far better to do
like the doctors. (I have been so long an invalid that I have no lack
of illustrations of this kind.) When their patients' pain becomes
excessive they produce insensibility; so should we pray that our souls
may be made insensible to the pain of our troubles, that we be not put
under unendurable agony. In these hard straits I do not fail to use
one means of consolation. I look to your kindness; I try to make my
troubles milder by my thought and recollection of you. [2017]When
the eyes have looked intently on any brilliant objects it relieves
them to turn again to what is blue and green; the recollection of your
kindness and attention has just the same effect on my soul; it is a
mild treatment that takes away my pain. I feel this the more when I
reflect that you individually have done all that man could do. You
have satisfactorily shewn us, men, if we judge things fairly, that the
catastrophe is in no way due to you personally. The reward which you
have won at God's hand for your zeal for right is no small one. May
the Lord grant you to me and to His churches to the improvement of
life and the guidance of souls, and may He once more allow me the
privilege of meeting you.
Footnotes
[2015] Placed in 369.
[2016] Silvanus, Metropolitan of Tarsus, one of the best of the
Semi-Arians (Ath., De synod. 41), died, according to Tillemont, in
373, according to Maran four years earlier, and was succeeded by an
Arian; but events did not turn out so disastrously as Basil had
anticipated. The majority of the presbyters were true to the Catholic
cause, and Basil maintained friendship and intercourse with them. cf.
Letters lxvii., cxiii., cxiv.
[2017] Basil is supposed to have in the meanwhile carried out his
previously-expressed intention of paying Eusebius a visit.
Letter XXXV. [2018]
Without address.
I have written to you about many people as belonging to myself; now I
mean to write about more. The poor can never fail, and I can never
say, no. There is no one more intimately associated with me, nor
better able to do me kindnesses wherever he has the ability, than the
reverend brother Leontius. So treat his house as if you had found me,
not in that poverty in which now by God's help I am living, but
endowed with wealth and landed property. There is no doubt that you
would not have made me poor, but would have taken care of what I had,
or even added to my possessions. This is the way I ask you to behave
in the house of Leontius. You will get your accustomed reward from
me; my prayers to the holy God for the trouble you are taking in
shewing yourself a good man and true, and in anticipating the
supplication of the needy.
Footnotes
[2018] Placed before 370.
Letter XXXVI. [2019]
Without address.
It has, I think, been long known to your excellency that the presbyter
of this place is a foster brother of my own. What more can I say to
induce you in your kindness, to view him with a friendly eye, and give
him help in his affairs? If you love me, as I know you do, I am sure
that you will endeavour, to the best of your power, to relieve any one
whom I look upon as a second self. What then do I ask? That he do
not lose his old rating. Really he takes no little trouble in
ministering to my necessities, because I, as you know, have nothing of
my own, but depend upon the means of my friends and relatives. Look,
then, upon my brother's house as you would on mine, or let me rather
say, on your own. In return for your kindness to him God will not
cease to help alike yourself, your house, and your family. Be sure
that I am specially anxious lest any injury should be done to him by
the equalization of rates.
Footnotes
[2019] Placed before 370.
Letter XXXVII. [2020]
Without address.
I look with suspicion on the multiplication of letters. Against my
will, and because I cannot resist the importunity of petitioners, I am
compelled to speak. I write because I can think of no other means of
relieving myself than by assenting to the supplications of those who
are always asking letters from me. I am really afraid lest, since
many are carrying letters off, one of the many be reckoned to be that
brother. I have, I own, many friends and relatives in my own country,
and I am placed in loco parentis by the position [2021] which the Lord
has given me. Among them is this my foster brother, son of my nurse,
and I pray that the house in which I was brought up may remain at its
old assessment, so that the sojourn among us of your excellency, so
beneficial to us all, may turn out no occasion of trouble to him. Now
too I am supported from the same house, because I have nothing of my
own, but depend upon those who love me. I do then entreat you to
spare the house in which I was nursed as though you were keeping up
the supply of support for me. May God in return grant you His
everlasting rest. One thing however, and it is most true, I think
your excellency ought to know, and that is that the greater number of
the slaves were given him from the outset by us, as an equivalent for
my sustenance, by the gift of my father and mother. At the same time
this was not to be regarded as an absolute gift; he was only to have
the use for life, so that, if anything serious happen to him on their
account, he is at liberty to send them back to me, and I shall thus in
another way be responsible for rates and to collectors.
Footnotes
[2020] Of the same time as the preceding.
[2021] By some supposed to be that of a bishop; but Maran, who dates
the letter before the episcopate, thinks the use of the phrase is
justified by our understanding the presbyterate to be meant. Vide
Prolegomena.
Letter XXXVIII. [2022]
To his Brother Gregory, concerning the difference between ousia and
hupostasis .
1. Many persons, in their study of the sacred dogmas, failing to
distinguish between what is common in the essence or substance, and
the meaning of the hypostases, arrive at the same notions, and think
that it makes no difference whether ousia or hypostasis be spoken of.
The result is that some of those who accept statements on these
subjects without any enquiry, are pleased to speak of "one
hypostasis," just as they do of one "essence" or "substance;" while on
the other hand those who accept three hypostases are under the idea
that they are bound in accordance with this confession, to assert
also, by numerical analogy, three essences or substances. Under these
circumstances, lest you fall into similar error, I have composed a
short treatise for you by way of memorandum. The meaning of the
words, to put it shortly, is as follows:
2. Of all nouns the sense of some, which are predicated of subjects
plural and numerically various, is more general; as for instance man.
When we so say, we employ the noun to indicate the common nature, and
do not confine our meaning to any one man in particular who is known
by that name. Peter, for instance is no more man, than Andrew, John,
or James. The predicate therefore being common, and extending to all
the individuals ranked under the same name, requires some note of
distinction whereby we may understand not man in general, but Peter or
John in particular.
Of some nouns on the other hand the denotation is more limited; and by
the aid of the limitation we have before our minds not the common
nature, but a limitation of anything, having, so far as the
peculiarity extends, nothing in common with what is of the same kind;
as for instance, Paul or Timothy. For, in a word, of this kind there
is no extension to what is common in the nature; there is a separation
of certain circumscribed conceptions from the general idea, and
expression of them by means of their names. Suppose then that two or
more are set together, as, for instance, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,
and that an enquiry is made into the essence or substance of humanity;
no one will give one definition of essence or substance in the case of
Paul, a second in that of Silvanus, and a third in that of Timothy;
but the same words which have been employed in setting forth the
essence or substance of Paul will apply to the others also. Those who
are described by the same definition of essence or substance are of
the same essence or substance [2023] when the enquirer has learned
what is common, and turns his attention to the differentiating
properties whereby one is distinguished from another, the definition
by which each is known will no longer tally in all particulars with
the definition of another, even though in some points it be found to
agree.
3. My statement, then, is this. That which is spoken of in a special
and peculiar manner is indicated by the name of the hypostasis.
Suppose we say "a man." The indefinite meaning of the word strikes a
certain vague sense upon the ears. The nature is indicated, but what
subsists and is specially and peculiarly indicated by the name is not
made plain. Suppose we say "Paul." We set forth, by what is
indicated by the name, the nature subsisting. [2024]
This then is the hypostasis, or "understanding;" not the indefinite
conception of the essence or substance, which, because what is
signified is general, finds no "standing," but the conception which by
means of the expressed peculiarities gives standing and
circumscription to the general and uncircumscribed. It is customary
in Scripture to make a distinction of this kind, as well in many other
passages as in the History of Job. When purposing to narrate the
events of his life, Job first mentions the common, and says "a man;"
then he straightway particularizes by adding "a certain." [2025]As
to the description of the essence, as having no bearing on the scope
of his work, he is silent, but by means of particular notes of
identity, mentioning the place and points of character, and such
external qualifications as would individualize, and separate from the
common and general idea, he specifies the "certain man," in such a way
that from name, place, mental qualities, and outside circumstances,
the description of the man whose life is being narrated is made in all
particulars perfectly clear. If he had been giving an account of the
essence, there would not in his explanation of the nature have been
any mention of these matters. The same moreover would have been the
account that there is in the case of Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar
the Naamathite, and each of the men there mentioned. [2026]
Transfer, then, to the divine dogmas the same standard of difference
which you recognise in the case both of essence and of hypostasis in
human affairs, and you will not go wrong. Whatever your thought
suggests to you as to the mode of the existence of the Father, you
will think also in the case of the Son, and in like manner too of the
Holy Ghost. For it is idle to bait the mind at any detached
conception from the conviction that it is beyond all conception.
[2027]For the account of the uncreate and of the incomprehensible
is one and the same in the case of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost. For one is not more incomprehensible and uncreate
than another. And since it is necessary, by means of the notes of
differentiation, in the case of the Trinity, to keep the distinction
unconfounded, we shall not take into consideration, in order to
estimate that which differentiates, what is contemplated in common, as
the uncreate, or what is beyond all comprehension, or any quality of
this nature; we shall only direct our attention to the enquiry by what
means each particular conception will be lucidly and distinctly
separated from that which is conceived of in common.
4. Now the proper way to direct our investigation seems to me to be
as follows. We say that every good thing, which by God's providence
befalls us, is an operation, of the Grace which worketh in us all
things, as the apostle says, "But all these worketh that one and the
self same Spirit dividing to every man severally as he will." [2028]
If we ask, if the supply of good things which thus comes to the saints
has its origin in the Holy Ghost alone, we are on the other hand
guided by Scripture to the belief that of the supply of the good
things which are wrought in us through the Holy Ghost, the Originator
and Cause is the Only-begotten God; [2029] for we are taught by Holy
Scripture that "All things were made by Him," [2030] and "by Him
consist." [2031]When we are exalted to this conception, again, led
by God-inspired guidance, we are taught that by that power all things
are brought from non-being into being, but yet not by that power to
the exclusion of origination. [2032]On the other hand there is a
certain power subsisting without generation and without origination,
[2033] which is the cause of the cause of all things. For the Son, by
whom are all things, and with whom the Holy Ghost is inseparably
conceived of, is of the Father. [2034]For it is not possible for
any one to conceive of the Son if he be not previously enlightened by
the Spirit. Since, then, the Holy Ghost, from Whom all the supply of
good things for creation has its source, is attached to the Son, and
with Him is inseparably apprehended, and has Its [2035] being attached
to the Father, as cause, from Whom also It proceeds; It has this note
of Its peculiar hypostatic nature, that It is known after the Son
[2036] and together with the Son, and that It has Its subsistence of
the Father. The Son, Who declares the Spirit proceeding from the
Father through Himself and with Himself, shining forth alone and by
only-begetting from the unbegotten light, so far as the peculiar notes
are concerned, has nothing in common either with the Father or with
the Holy Ghost. He alone is known by the stated signs. But God, Who
is over all, alone has, as one special mark of His own hypostasis, His
being Father, and His deriving His hypostasis [2037] from no cause;
and through this mark He is peculiarly known. Wherefore in the
communion of the substance we maintain that there is no mutual
approach or intercommunion of those notes of indication perceived in
the Trinity, whereby is set forth the proper peculiarity of the
Persons delivered in the faith, each of these being distinctively
apprehended by His own notes. Hence, in accordance with the stated
signs of indication, discovery is made of the separation of the
hypostases; while so far as relates to the infinite, the
incomprehensible, the uncreate, the uncircumscribed, and similar
attributes, there is no variableness in the life-giving nature; in
that, I mean, of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but in Them is seen a
certain communion indissoluble and continuous. And by the same
considerations, whereby a reflective student could perceive the
greatness of any one of the (Persons) believed in in the Holy Trinity,
he will proceed without variation. Beholding the glory in Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, his mind all the while recognises no void
interval wherein it may travel between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
for there is nothing inserted between Them; nor beyond the divine
nature is there anything so subsisting as to be able to divide that
nature from itself by the interposition of any foreign matter.
Neither is there any vacuum of interval, void of subsistence, which
can make a break in the mutual harmony of the divine essence, and
solve the continuity by the interjection of emptiness. He who
perceives the Father, and perceives Him by Himself, has at the same
time mental perception of the Son; and he who receives the Son does
not divide Him from the Spirit, but, in consecution so far as order is
concerned, in conjunction so far as nature is concerned, expresses the
faith commingled in himself in the three together. He who makes
mention of the Spirit alone, embraces also in this confession Him of
whom He is the Spirit. And since the Spirit is Christ's and of God,
[2038] as says Paul, then just as he who lays hold on one end of the
chain pulls the other to him, so he who "draws the Spirit," [2039] as
says the prophet, by His means draws to him at the same time both the
Son and the Father. And if any one verily receives the Son, he will
hold Him on both sides, the Son drawing towards him on the one His own
Father, and on the other His own Spirit. For He who eternally exists
in the Father can never be cut off from the Father, nor can He who
worketh all things by the Spirit ever be disjoined from His own
Spirit. Likewise moreover he who receives the Father virtually
receives at the same time both the Son and the Spirit; for it is in no
wise possible to entertain the idea of severance or division, in such
a way as that the Son should be thought of apart from the Father, or
the Spirit be disjoined from the Son. But the communion and the
distinction apprehended in Them are, in a certain sense, ineffable and
inconceivable, the continuity of nature being never rent asunder by
the distinction of the hypostases, nor the notes of proper distinction
confounded in the community of essence. Marvel not then at my
speaking of the same thing as being both conjoined and parted, and
thinking as it were darkly in a riddle, of a certain [2040] new and
strange conjoined separation and separated conjunction. Indeed, even
in objects perceptible to the senses, any one who approaches the
subject in a candid and uncontentious spirit, may find similar
conditions of things.
5. Yet receive what I say as at best a token and reflexion of the
truth; not as the actual truth itself. For it is not possible that
there should be complete correspondence between what is seen in the
tokens and the objects in reference to which the use of tokens is
adopted. Why then do I say that an analogy of the separate and the
conjoined is found in objects perceptible to the senses? You have
before now, in springtime, beheld the brightness of the bow in the
cloud; the bow, I mean, which, in our common parlance, is called Iris,
and is said by persons skilled in such matters to be formed when a
certain moisture is mingled with the air, and the force of the winds
expresses what is dense and moist in the vapour, after it has become
cloudy, into rain. The bow is said to be formed as follows. When the
sunbeam, after traversing obliquely the dense and darkened portion of
the cloud-formation, has directly cast its own orb on some cloud, the
radiance is then reflected back from what is moist and shining, and
the result is a bending and return, as it were, of the light upon
itself. For flame-like flashings are so constituted that if they fall
on any smooth surface they are refracted on themselves; and the shape
of the sun, which by means of the beam is formed on the moist and
smooth part of the air, is round. The necessary consequence therefore
is that the air adjacent to the cloud is marked out by means of the
radiant brilliance in conformity with the shape of the sun's disc.
Now this brilliance is both continuous and divided. It is of many
colours; it is of many forms; it is insensibly steeped in the
variegated bright tints of its dye; imperceptibly abstracting from our
vision the combination of many coloured things, with the result that
no space, mixing or paring within itself the difference of colour, can
be discerned either between blue and flame-coloured, or between
flame-coloured and red, or between red and amber. For all the rays,
seen at the same time, are far shining, and while they give no signs
of their mutual combination, are incapable of being tested, so that it
is impossible to discover the limits of the flame-coloured or of the
emerald portion of the light, and at what point each originates before
it appears as it does in glory. As then in the token we clearly
distinguish the difference of the colours, and yet it is impossible
for us to apprehend by our senses any interval between them; so in
like manner conclude, I pray you, that you may reason concerning the
divine dogmas; that the peculiar properties of the hypostases, like
colours seen in the Iris, flash their brightness on each of the
Persons Whom we believe to exist in the Holy Trinity; but that of the
proper nature no difference can be conceived as existing between one
and the other, the peculiar characteristics shining, in community of
essence, upon each. Even in our example, the essence emitting the
many-coloured radiance, and refracted by the sunbeam, was one essence;
it is the colour of the phænomenon which is multiform. My argument
thus teaches us, even by the aid of the visible creation, not to feel
distressed at points of doctrine whenever we meet with questions
difficult of solution, and when at the thought of accepting what is
proposed to us, our brains begin to reel. In regard to visible
objects experience appears better than theories of causation, and so
in matters transcending all knowledge, the apprehension of argument is
inferior to the faith which teaches us at once the distinction in
hypostasis and the conjunction in essence. Since then our discussion
has included both what is common and what is distinctive in the Holy
Trinity, the common is to be understood as referring to the essence;
the hypostasis on the other hand is the several distinctive sign.
[2041]
6. It may however be thought that the account here given of the
hypostasis does not tally with the sense of the Apostle's words, where
he says concerning the Lord that He is "the brightness of His glory,
and the express image of His person," [2042] for if we have taught
hypostasis to be the conflux of the several properties; and if it is
confessed that, as in the case of the Father something is contemplated
as proper and peculiar, whereby He alone is known, so in the same way
is it believed about the Only-begotten; how then does Scripture in
this place ascribe the name of the hypostasis to the Father alone, and
describes the Son as form of the hypostasis, and designated not by His
own proper notes, but by those of the Father? For if the hypostasis
is the sign of several existence, and the property of the Father is
confined to the unbegotten being, and the Son is fashioned according
to His Father's properties, then the term unbegotten can no longer be
predicated exclusively of the Father, the existence of the
Only-begotten being denoted by the distinctive note of the Father.
7. My opinion is, however, that in this passage the Apostle's
argument is directed to a different end; and it is looking to this
that he uses the terms "brightness of glory," and "express image of
person." Whoever keeps this carefully in view will find nothing that
clashes with what I have said, but that the argument is conducted in a
special and peculiar sense. For the object of the apostolic argument
is not the distinction of the hypostases from one another by means of
the apparent notes; it is rather the apprehension of the natural,
inseparable, and close relationship of the Son to the Father. He does
not say "Who being the glory of the Father" (although in truth He is);
he omits this as admitted, and then in the endeavour to teach that we
must not think of one form of glory in the case of the Father and of
another in that of the Son, He defines the glory of the Only-begotten
as the brightness of the glory of the Father, and, by the use of the
example of the light, causes the Son to be thought of in indissoluble
association with the Father. For just as the brightness is emitted by
the flame, and the brightness is not after the flame, but at one and
the same moment the flame shines and the light beams brightly, so does
the Apostle mean the Son to be thought of as deriving existence from
the Father, and yet the Only-begotten not to be divided from the
existence of the Father by any intervening extension in space, but the
caused to be always conceived of together with the cause. Precisely
in the same manner, as though by way of interpretation of the meaning
of the preceding cause, and with the object of guiding us to the
conception of the invisible by means of material examples, he speaks
also of "express image of person." For as the body is wholly in form,
and yet the definition of the body and the definition of the form are
distinct, and no one wishing to give the definition of the one would
be found in agreement with that of the other; and yet, even if in
theory you separate the form from the body, nature does not admit of
the distinction, and both are inseparably apprehended; just so the
Apostle thinks that even if the doctrine of the faith represents the
difference of the hypostases as unconfounded and distinct, he is bound
by his language to set forth also the continuous and as it were
concrete relation of the Only-begotten to the Father. And this he
states, not as though the Only-begotten had not also a hypostatic
being, but in that the union does not admit of anything intervening
between the Son and the Father, with the result that he, who with his
soul's eyes fixes his gaze earnestly on the express image of the
Only-begotten, is made perceptive also of the hypostasis of the
Father. Yet the proper quality contemplated in them is not subject to
change, nor yet to commixture, in such wise as that we should
attribute either an origin of generation to the Father or an origin
without generation to the Son, but so that if we could compass the
impossibility of detaching one from the other, that one might be
apprehended severally and alone, for, since the mere name implies the
Father, it is not possible that any one should even name the Son
without apprehending the Father. [2043]
8. Since then, as says the Lord in the Gospels, [2044] he that hath
seen the Son sees the Father also; on this account he says that the
Only-begotten is the express image of His Father's person. That this
may be made still plainer I will quote also other passages of the
apostle in which he calls the Son "the image of the invisible God,"
[2045] and again "image of His goodness;" [2046] not because the image
differs from the Archetype according to the definition of
indivisibility and goodness, but that it may be shewn that it is the
same as the prototype, even though it be different. For the idea of
the image would be lost were it not to preserve throughout the plain
and invariable likeness. He therefore that has perception of the
beauty of the image is made perceptive of the Archetype. So he, who
has, as it were mental apprehension of the form of the Son, prints the
express image of the Father's hypostasis, beholding the latter in the
former, not beholding in the reflection the unbegotten being of the
Father (for thus there would be complete identity and no distinction),
but gazing at the unbegotten beauty in the Begotten. Just as he who
in a polished mirror beholds the reflection of the form as plain
knowledge of the represented face, so he, who has knowledge of the
Son, through his knowledge of the Son receives in his heart the
express image of the Father's Person. For all things that are the
Father's are beheld in the Son, and all things that are the Son's are
the Father's; because the whole Son is in the Father and has all the
Father in Himself. [2047]Thus the hypostasis of the Son becomes as
it were form and face of the knowledge of the Father, and the
hypostasis of the Father is known in the form of the Son, while the
proper quality which is contemplated therein remains for the plain
distinction of the hypostases.
Footnotes
[2022] This important letter is included as among the works of Gregory
of Nyssa, as addressed to Peter, bp. of Sebaste, brother of Basil and
Gregory. The Ben. note says: "Stylus Basilii fetum esse clamitat."
It was moreover, referred to at Chalcedon as Basil's. [Mansi, T. vii.
col. 464.]
[2023] homoousioi.
[2024] huphestosan. & 195;postasis is derivatively that which "stands
under" or subsists, ho huphesteke. cf. my note on Theodoret, p. 36.
[2025] Job i. 1, LXX.
[2026] Job ii. 11.
[2027] The mss. vary as to this parenthetical clause, and are
apparently corrupt. The rendering above is conjectural, but not
satisfactory.
[2028] 1 Cor. xii. 11.
[2029] ho monogenes theos is the reading of the Sinaitic and Vatican
mss. in John i. 18. The insertion of the words oude ho uiios, adopted
by R.V. in Matt. xxiv. 36, but of which St. Basil knows nothing, as
appears from his argument on the difference between the statements of
St. Matthew and St. Mark on this subject in Letter ccxxxvi., is
supported by these same two mss.
[2030] John i. 3.
[2031] Col. i. 17.
[2032] anarchos.
[2033] agennetos kai anarchos huphestosa.
[2034] For similar statements by St. Basil, cf. De Sp. S. p. cf. also
Cont. Eunom. i: epeide gar apo tou patros he arche to hui& 254;, kata
touto meizon ho pater hos aitios kai arche.
[2035] cf. notes, pp. 15, 24.
[2036] meta ton hui& 231;n. So the Benedictine text with four mss. in
the Paris Library, and the note. "meta tou huiou" is a reading which
is inadmissible, repeating as it does the sense of the following
clause kai sun auto. The sense in which the Son is both "after the
Son" and "with the Son" is explained further on by St. Basil, where he
says that the three Persons are known in consecution of order but in
conjunction of nature.
[2037] hupostenai.
[2038] Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. ii. 12.
[2039] Apparently a mistaken interpretation of the LXX. version of Ps.
cxix. 131, heilkusa pneuma="I drew breath." A.V. and R.V., "I
panted." Vulg., attraxi spiritum.
[2040] hosper ek ainigmati. cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 12. en ainigmati or ex
ainigmaton, as in Æsch., Ag. 1113=by dark hints. The bold oxymoron
concluding this sentence is illustrated by Ovid's "impietate pia"
(Met. viii. 477), Lucan's "concordia discors" (Phars. i. 98), or
Tennyson's "faith unfaithful."
[2041] The scientific part of the analogy of the rainbow is of course
obsolete and valueless. The general principle holds good that what is
beyond comprehension in theology finds its parallel in what is beyond
comprehension in the visible world. We are not to be staggered and
turn dizzy in either sphere of thought at the discovery that we have
reached a limit beyond which thought cannot go. We may live in a
finite world, though infinite space is beyond our powers of thought:
we may trust in God revealed in the Trinity, though we cannot analyse
or define Him.
[2042] Heb. i. 3.
[2043] The simpler explanation of the use of the word hypostasis in
the passage under discussion is that it has the earlier sense,
equivalent to ousia. cf. Athan., Or. c. Ar. iii. 65, iv. 33, and Ad.
Apos. 4.
[2044] John xiv. 9.
[2045] Col. i. 15.
[2046] This phrase is not in the Epistles, nor indeed does the
substantive agathotes occur in the N.T. at all. "Image of his
goodness" is taken from Wisdom vii. 26, and erroneously included among
the "words of the Apostle."
[2047] cf. John xiv. 11.
Letter XXXIX. [2048]
Julian [2049] to Basil.
The proverb says "You are not proclaiming war," [2050] and, let me
add, out of the comedy, "O messenger of golden words." [2051]Come
then; prove this in act, and hasten to me. You will come as friend to
friend. Conspicuous and unremitting devotion to business seems, to
those that treat it as of secondary importance, a heavy burden; yet
the diligent are modest, as I persuade myself, sensible, and ready for
any emergency. I allow myself relaxations so that even rest may be
permitted to one who neglects nothing. Our mode of life is not marked
by the court hypocrisy, of which I think you have had some experience,
and in accordance with which compliments mean deadlier hatred than is
felt to our worst foes; but, with becoming freedom, while we blame and
rebuke where blame is due, we love with the love of the dearest
friends. I may therefore, let me say, with all sincerity, both be
diligent in relaxation and, when at work, not get worn out, and sleep
secure; since when awake I do not wake more for myself, than, as is
fit, for every one else. I am afraid this is rather silly and
trifling, as I feel rather lazy, (I praise myself like Astydamas
[2052] ) but I am writing to prove to you that to have the pleasure of
seeing you, wise man as you are, will be more likely to do me good
than to cause any difficulty. Therefore, as I have said, lose no
time: travel post haste. After you have paid me as long a visit as
you like, you shall go on your journey, whithersoever you will, with
my best wishes.
Footnotes
[2048] To be placed probably in 362, if genuine.
[2049] These Letters are placed in this order by the Ben. Editors as
being written, if genuine, before Basil's episcopate. Maran (Vita S.
Bas. Cap. ii.) is puzzled at Basil's assertion in xli. that he learned
the Bible with Julian, and points out that at Athens they devoted
themselves to profane literature. But this may have allowed intervals
for other work. In 344, when Basil was at Cæsarea, Julian was
relegated by Constantius to the neighbouring fortress of Macellum, and
there, with his elder half-brother Gallus, spent six years in
compulsory retirement. Sozomen tells us that the brothers studied the
Scripture and became Readers (Soz. v. 2; Amm. Marc. xv. 2, 7). Their
seclusion, in which they were reduced to the society of their own
household (Greg. Naz., Or. iii., Julian, Ad. Ath. 271 c.), may not
have been so complete as to prevent all intercourse with a harmless
schoolboy like Basil. "Malgré l'authorité de dom Maran, nous croyons
avec Tillemont, Dupont et M. Albert de Broglie, que cette lettre a été
réellement adressée par Julien, non a un homonyme de St. Basile mais à
St. Basile lui-même." Étude historique et littéraire sur St. Basile.
Fialon.
[2050] i.e."your words are friendly." cf. Plat., Legg. 702 D. ou
polemon ge epangelleis, o Kleinia.
[2051] o chruson angeilas epon. Aristoph., Plut. 268.
[2052] A playwright of Athens, who put a boastful epigram on his own
statue, and became a byword for self-praise. Vide Suidas s.v., sauton
epaineis.
Letter XL. [2053]
Julian to Basil.
While showing up to the present time the gentleness and benevolence
which have been natural to me from my boyhood, I have reduced all who
dwell beneath the sun to obedience. For lo! every tribe of barbarians
to the shores of ocean has come to lay its gifts before my feet. So
too the Sagadares who dwell beyond the Danube, wondrous with their
bright tattooing, and hardly like human beings, so wild and strange
are they, now grovel at my feet, and pledge themselves to obey all the
behests my sovereignty imposes on them. I have a further object. I
must as soon as possible march to Persia and rout and make a tributary
of that Sapor, descendant of Darius. I mean too to devastate the
country of the Indians and the Saracens until they all acknowledge my
superiority and become my tributaries. You, however, profess a wisdom
above and beyond these things; you call yourself clad with piety, but
your clothing is really impudence and everywhere you slander me as one
unworthy of the imperial dignity. Do you not know that I am the
grandson of the illustrious Constantius? [2054]I know this of you,
and yet I do not change the old feelings which I had to you, and you
to me in the days when we were both young. [2055]But of my merciful
will I command that a thousand pounds of gold be sent me from you,
when I pass by Cæsarea; for I am still on the march, and with all
possible dispatch am hurrying to the Persian campaign. If you refuse
I am prepared to destroy Cæsarea, to overthrow the buildings that have
long adorned it; to erect in their place temples and statues; and so
to induce all men to submit to the Emperor of the Romans and not exalt
themselves. Wherefore I charge you to send me without fail by the
hands of some trusty messenger the stipulated gold, after duly
counting and weighing it, and sealing it with your ring. In this way
I may show mercy to you for your errors, if you acknowledge, however
late, that no excuses will avail. I have learned to know, and to
condemn, what once I read. [2056]
Footnotes
[2053] If genuine, which is exceedingly doubtful, this letter would be
placed in the June or July of 362.
[2054] i.e. of Constantius Chlorus. Vide pedigree prefixed to
Theodoret in this edition, p. 32. Julian was the youngest son of
Julius Constantius, half-brother of Constantine the Great.
[2055] The fact of the early acquaintance of Basil and Julian does not
rest wholly on the authority of this doubtful letter. cf. Greg. Naz.,
Orat. iv.
[2056] A strong argument against the genuineness of this letter is the
silence of Gregory of Nazianzus as to this demand on Basil (Or. v.
39). For Julian's treatment of Cæsarea, vide Sozomen v. 4. Maran
(Vita S. Bas. viii.) remarks that when Julian approached Cæsarea Basil
was in his Pontic retreat. On the punning conclusion, vide note on
Letter xli. (ha anegnon egnon kai kategnon.)
Letter XLI. [2057]
Basil to Julian.
1. The heroic deeds of your present splendour are small, and your
grand attack against me, or rather against yourself, is paltry. When
I think of you robed in purple, a crown on your dishonoured head,
which, so long as true religion is absent, rather disgraces than
graces your empire, I tremble. And you yourself who have risen to be
so high and great, now that vile and honour-hating demons have brought
you to this pass, have begun not only to exalt yourself above all
human nature, but even to uplift yourself against God, and insult His
Church, mother and nurse of all, by sending to me, most insignificant
of men, orders to forward you a thousand pounds of gold. I am not so
much astonished at the weight of the gold, although it is very
serious; but it has made me shed bitter tears over your so rapid
ruin. I bethink me how you and I have learned together the lessons of
the best and holiest books. Each of us went through the sacred and
God-inspired Scriptures. Then nothing was hid from you. Nowadays you
have become lost to proper feeling, beleaguered as you are with
pride. Your serene Highness did not find out for the first time
yesterday that I do not live in the midst of superabundant wealth.
To-day you have demanded a thousand pounds of gold of me. I hope your
serenity will deign to spare me. My property amounts to so much, that
I really shall not have enough to eat as much as I shall like to-day.
Under my roof the art of cookery is dead. My servants' knife never
touches blood. The most important viands, in which lies our
abundance, are leaves of herbs with very coarse bread and sour wine,
so that our senses are not dulled by gluttony, and do not indulge in
excess.
2. Your excellent tribune Lausus, trusty minister of your orders, has
also reported to me that a certain woman came as a suppliant to your
serenity on the occasion of the death of her son by poison; that it
has been judged by you that poisoners are not allowed to exist; [2058]
if any there be, that they are to be destroyed, or, only those are
reserved, who are to fight with beasts. And, this rightly decided by
you, seems strange to me, for your efforts to cure the pain of great
wounds by petty remedies are to the last degree ridiculous. After
insulting God, it is useless for you to give heed to widows and
orphans. The former is mad and dangerous; the latter the part of a
merciful and kindly man. It is a serious thing for a private
individual like myself to speak to an emperor; it will be more serious
for you to speak to God. No one will appear to mediate between God
and man. What you read you did not understand. If you had
understood, you would not have condemned. [2059]
Footnotes
[2057] If genuine, of the same date as xl.
[2058] pharmakous medamou einai. The Ben. Ed. compares with the form
of expression the phrase of St. Cyprian: "legibus vestris bene atque
utiliter censuistis delatores non esse." cf. Letter lv.
[2059] 'A anegnos ouk egnos; eigar egnos, ouk an kategnos. In Soz. v.
18, Julian's words, ha anegnon egnon kai kategnon, are stated to have
been written to `the bishops' in reference to Apologies by the younger
Apollinarius, bp. of the Syrian Laodicea (afterwards the heresiarch)
and others. The reply is credited to `the bishops,' with the remark
that some attribute it to Basil.
Letter XLII. [2060]
To Chilo, his disciple.
1. If, my true brother, you gladly suffer yourself to be advised by
me as to what course of action you should pursue, specially in the
points in which you have referred to me for advice, you will owe me
your salvation. Many men have had the courage to enter upon the
solitary life; but to live it out to the end is a task which perhaps
has been achieved by few. The end is not necessarily involved in the
intention; yet in the end is the guerdon of the toil. No advantage,
therefore, accrues to men who fail to press on to the end of what they
have in view and only adopt the solitary's life in its inception.
Nay, they make their profession ridiculous, and are charged by
outsiders with unmanliness and instability of purpose. Of these,
moreover, the Lord says, who wishing to build a house "sitteth not
down first and counteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish
it? lest haply after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to
finish it," the passers-by "begin to mock him saying," this man laid a
foundation "and was not able to finish." [2061]Let the start, then,
mean that you heartily advance in virtue. The right noble athlete
Paul, wishing us not to rest in easy security on so much of our life
as may have been lived well in the past, but, every day to attain
further progress, says "Forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high calling." [2062]So truly stands the
whole of human life, not contented with what has gone before and fed
not so much on the past as on the future. For how is a man the better
for having his belly filled yesterday, if his natural hunger fails to
find its proper satisfaction in food to-day? In the same way the soul
gains nothing by yesterday's virtue unless it be followed by the right
conduct of to-day. For it is said "I shall judge thee as I shall find
thee."
2. Vain then is the labour of the righteous man, and free from blame
is the way of the sinner, if a change befall, and the former turn from
the better to the worse, and the latter from the worse to the better.
So we hear from Ezekiel teaching as it were in the name of the Lord,
when he says, "if the righteous turneth away and committeth iniquity,
I will not remember the righteousness which he committed before; in
his sin he shall die," [2063] and so too about the sinner; if he turn
away from his wickedness, and do that which is right, he shall live.
Where were all the labours of God's servant Moses, when the gainsaying
of one moment shut him out from entering into the promised land? What
became of the companionship of Gehazi with Elissæus, when he brought
leprosy on himself by his covetousness? What availed all Solomon's
vast wisdom, and his previous regard for God, when afterwards from his
mad love of women he fell into idolatry? Not even the blessed David
was blameless, when his thoughts went astray and he sinned against the
wife of Uriah. One example were surely enough for keeping safe one
who is living a godly life, the fall from the better to the worse of
Judas, who, after being so long Christ's disciple, for a mean gain
sold his Master and got a halter for himself. Learn then, brother,
that it is not he who begins well who is perfect. It is he who ends
well who is approved in God's sight. Give then no sleep to your eyes
or slumber to your eyelids [2064] that you may be delivered "as a roe
from the net and a bird from the snare." [2065]For, behold, you are
passing through the midst of snares; you are treading on the top of a
high wall whence a fall is perilous to the faller; wherefore do not
straightway attempt extreme discipline; above all things beware of
confidence in yourself, lest you fall from a height of discipline
through want of training. It is better to advance a little at a
time. Withdraw then by degrees from the pleasures of life, gradually
destroying all your wonted habits, lest you bring on yourself a crowd
of temptations by irritating all your passions at once. When you have
mastered one passion, then begin to wage war against another, and in
this manner you will in good time get the better of all. Indulgence,
so far as the name goes, is one, but its practical workings are
diverse. First then, brother, meet every temptation with patient
endurance. And by what various temptations the faithful man is
proved; by worldly loss, by accusations, by lies, by opposition, by
calumny, by persecution! These and the like are the tests of the
faithful. Further, be quiet, not rash in speech, not quarrelsome, not
disputatious, not covetous of vain glory, not more anxious to get than
to give knowledge, [2066] not a man of many words, but always more
ready to learn than to teach. Do not trouble yourself about worldly
life; from it no good can come to you. It is said, "That my mouth
speak not the works of men." [2067]The man who is fond of talking
about sinners' doings, soon rouses the desire for self indulgence;
much better busy yourself about the lives of good men for so you will
get some profit for yourself. Do not be anxious to go travelling
about [2068] from village to village and house to house; rather avoid
them as traps for souls. If any one, for true pity's sake, invite you
with many pleas to enter his house, let him be told to follow the
faith of the centurion, who, when Jesus was hastening to him to
perform an act of healing, besought him not to do so in the words,
"Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but
speak the word only and my servant shall be healed," [2069] and when
Jesus had said to him "Go thy way; as thou hast believed, so be it
done unto thee," [2070] his servant was healed from that hour. Learn
then, brother, that it was the faith of the suppliant, not the
presence of Christ, which delivered the sick man. So too now, if you
pray, in whatever place you be, and the sick man believes that he will
be aided by your prayers, all will fall out as he desires.
3. You will not love your kinsfolk more than the Lord. "He that
loveth," He says, "father, or mother, or brother, more than me, is not
worthy of me." [2071]What is the meaning of the Lord's
commandment? "He that taketh not up his cross and followeth after me,
cannot be my disciple?" [2072]If, together with Christ, you died to
your kinsfolk according to the flesh, why do you wish to live with
them again? If for your kinsfolk's sake you are building up again
what you destroyed for Christ's sake, you make yourself a
transgressor. Do not then for your kinsfolk's sake abandon your
place: if you abandon your place, perhaps you will abandon your mode
of life. Love not the crowd, nor the country, nor the town; love the
desert, ever abiding by yourself with no wandering mind, [2073]
regarding prayer and praise as your life's work. Never neglect
reading, especially of the New Testament, because very frequently
mischief comes of reading the Old; not because what is written is
harmful, but because the minds of the injured are weak. All bread is
nutritious, but it may be injurious to the sick. Just so all
Scripture is God inspired and profitable, [2074] and there is nothing
in it unclean: only to him who thinks it is unclean, to him it is
unclean. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good; abstain
from every form of evil." [2075]"All things are lawful but all
things are not expedient." [2076]Among all, with whom you come in
contact, be in all things a giver of no offence, [2077] cheerful,
"loving as a brother," [2078] pleasant, humble-minded, never missing
the mark of hospitality through extravagance of meats, but always
content with what is at hand. Take no more from any one than the
daily necessaries of the solitary life. Above all things shun gold as
the soul's foe, the father of sin and the agent of the devil. Do not
expose yourself to the charge of covetousness on the pretence of
ministering to the poor; but, if any one brings you money for the poor
and you know of any who are in need, advise the owner himself to
convey it to his needy brothers, lest haply your conscience may be
defiled by the acceptance of money.
4. Shun pleasures; seek after continence; train your body to hard
work; accustom your soul to trials. Regarding the dissolution of soul
and body as release from every evil, await that enjoyment of
everlasting good things in which all the saints have part. Ever, as
it were, holding the balance against every suggestion of the devil
throw in a holy thought, and, as the scale inclines do thou go with
it. Above all when the evil thought starts up and says, "What is the
good of your passing your life in this place? What do you gain by
withdrawing yourself from the society of men? Do you not know that
those, who are ordained by God to be bishops of God's churches,
constantly associate with their fellows, and indefatigably attend
spiritual gatherings at which those who are present derive very great
advantage? There are to be enjoyed explanations of hard sayings,
expositions of the teachings of the apostles, interpretations of the
thoughts of the gospels, lessons in theology and the intercourse of
spiritual brethren, who do great good to all they meet if only by the
sight of their faces. You, however, who have decided to be a stranger
to all these good things, are sitting here in a wild state like the
beasts. You see round you a wide desert with scarcely a fellow
creature in it, lack of all instruction, estrangement from your
brothers, and your spirit inactive in carrying out the commandments of
God." Now, when the evil thought rises against you, with all these
ingenious pretexts and wishes to destroy you, oppose to it in pious
reflection your own practical experience, and say, You tell me that
the things in the world are good; the reason why I came here is
because I judged myself unfit for the good things of the world. With
the world's good things are mingled evil things, and the evil things
distinctly have the upper hand. Once when I attended the spiritual
assemblies I did with difficulty find one brother, who, so far as I
could see, feared God, but he was a victim of the devil, and I heard
from him amusing stories and tales made up to deceive those whom he
met. After him I fell in with many thieves, plunderers, tyrants. I
saw disgraceful drunkards; I saw the blood of the oppressed; I saw
women's beauty, which tortured my chastity. From actual fornication I
fled, but I defiled my virginity by the thoughts of my heart. I heard
many discourses which were good for the soul, but I could not discover
in the case of any one of the teachers that his life was worthy of his
words. After this, again, I heard a great number of plays, which were
made attractive by wanton songs. Then I heard a lyre sweetly played,
the applause of tumblers, the talk of clowns, all kinds of jests and
follies and all the noises of a crowd. I saw the tears of the robbed,
the agony of the victims of tyranny, the shrieks of the tortured. I
looked and lo, there was no spiritual assembly, but only a sea,
wind-tossed and agitated, and trying to drown every one at once under
its waves. [2079]Tell me, O evil thought, tell me, dæmon of short
lived pleasure and vain glory, what is the good of my seeing and
hearing all these things, when I am powerless to succour any of those
who are thus wronged; when I am allowed neither to defend the helpless
nor correct the fallen; when I am perhaps doomed to destroy myself
too. For just as a very little fresh water is blown away by a storm
of wind and dust, in like manner the good deeds, that we think we do
in this life, are overwhelmed by the multitude of evils. Pieces acted
for men in this life are driven through joy and merriment, like stakes
into their hearts, so that the brightness of their worship is
be-dimmed. But the wails and lamentations of men wronged by their
fellows are introduced to make a show of the patience of the poor.
5. What good then do I get except the loss of my soul? For this
reason I migrate to the hills like a bird. "I am escaped as a bird
out of the snare of the fowlers." [2080]I am living, O evil
thought, in the desert in which the Lord lived. Here is the oak of
Mamre; here is the ladder going up to heaven, and the stronghold of
the angels which Jacob saw; here is the wilderness in which the people
purified received the law, and so came into the land of promise and
saw God. Here is Mount Carmel where Elias sojourned and pleased God.
Here is the plain whither Esdras withdrew, and at God's bidding
uttered all the God inspired books. [2081]Here is the wilderness in
which the blessed John ate locusts and preached repentance to men.
Here is the Mount of Olives, whither Christ came and prayed, and
taught us to pray. Here is Christ the lover of the wilderness, for He
says "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I
in the midst of them." [2082]"Here is the strait and narrow way
which leadeth unto life." [2083]Here are the teachers and prophets
"wandering in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the
earth." [2084]Here are apostles and evangelists and solitaries'
life remote from cities. This I have embraced with all my heart, that
I may win what has been promised to Christ's martyrs and all His other
saints, and so I may truly say, "Because of the words of thy lips I
have kept hard ways." [2085]I have heard of Abraham, God's friend,
who obeyed the divine voice and went into the wilderness; of Isaac who
submitted to authority; of Jacob, the patriarch, who left his home; of
Joseph, the chaste, who was sold; of the three children, who learnt
how to fast, and fought with the fire; of Daniel thrown twice into the
lion's den; [2086] of Jeremiah speaking boldly, and thrown into a pit
of mud; of Isaiah, who saw unspeakable things, cut asunder with a saw;
of Israel led away captive; of John the rebuker of adultery, beheaded;
of Christ's martyrs slain. But why say more? Here our Saviour
Himself was crucified for our sakes that by His death He might give us
life, and train and attract us all to endurance. To Him I press on,
and to the Father and to the Holy Ghost. I strive to be found true,
judging myself unworthy of this world's goods. And yet not I because
of the world, but the world because of me. Think of all these things
in your heart; follow them with zeal; fight, as you have been
commanded, for the truth to the death. For Christ was made "obedient"
even "unto death." [2087]The Apostle says, "Take heed lest there be
in any of you an evil heart...in departing from the living God. But
exhort one another...(and edify one another [2088] ) while it is
called to-day." [2089]To-day means the whole time of our life.
Thus living, brother, you will save yourself, you will make me glad,
and you will glorify God from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.
Footnotes
[2060] This and the four succeeding letters must be placed before the
episcopate. Their genuineness has been contested, but apparently
without much reason. In one of the Parisian Codices the title of
xlii. is given with the note: "Some attribute this work to the holy
Nilus." Ceillier (iv. 435-437) is of opinion that, so far as style
goes, they must stand or fall together, and points out that xlvii. is
cited entire as Basil's by Metaphrastes.
[2061] Luke xiv. 28, 30.
[2062] Phil. iii. 13, 14.
[2063] cf. Ezek. xviii. 24.
[2064] cf. Ps. cxxxii. 4.
[2065] Prov. vi. 5, LXX.
[2066] me exegetikos alla philopeustos, as suggested by Combefis for
philopistos.
[2067] Ps. xvi. 4, LXX.
[2068] Another reading is (exhibiting yourself).
[2069] Matt. viii. 8.
[2070] Matt. viii. 13.
[2071] Matt. x. 37, with adelphous added perhaps from Luke xiv. 26.
[2072] Luke xiv. 27 and Matt. x. 38.
[2073] For the contrary view of life, cf. Seneca, Ep. 61: "Omnia
nobis mala solitudo persuadet; nemo est cui non sanctius sit cum
quolibet esse quam secum."
[2074] cf. 2 Tim. iii. 16.
[2075] 1 Thess. v. 21, R.V.
[2076] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[2077] cf. 1 Cor. x. 32.
[2078] 1 Pet. iii. 8.
[2079] The Ben. note on this painful picture suggests that the
description applies to Palestine, and compares the account of
Jerusalem to be found in Gregory of Nyssa's letter on Pilgrimages in
this edition, p. 382. On Basil's visit to the Holy Land, cf. Ep.
ccxxiii. § 2.
[2080] Ps. cxxiv. 7.
[2081] cf. Esdras ii. 14; Irenæus, Adv. Hær. iii, 21, 2; Tertullian,
De Cult. Fam. i. 3; Clem. Alex., Strom. i. 22.
[2082] Matt. xviii. 20; a curious misapplication of the text.
[2083] Matt. vii. 14.
[2084] Heb. xi. 38.
[2085] Ps. xvii. 4, LXX.
[2086] Vide Bel and the dragon.
[2087] Phil. ii. 8.
[2088] 1 Thess. v. 11.
[2089] Heb. iii. 12, 13.
Letter XLIII. [2090]
Admonition to the Young.
O faithful man of solitary life, and practiser of true religion, learn
the lessons of the evangelic conversation, of mastery over the body,
of a meek spirit, of purity of mind, of destruction of pride. Pressed
into the service, [2091] add to your gifts, for the Lord's sake;
robbed, never go to law; hated, love; persecuted, endure; slandered,
entreat. Be dead to sin; be crucified to God. Cast all your care
upon the Lord, that you may be found where are tens of thousands of
angels, assemblies of the first-born, the thrones of prophets,
sceptres of patriarchs, crowns of martyrs, praises of righteous men.
Earnestly desire to be numbered with those righteous men in Christ
Jesus our Lord. To Him be glory for ever. Amen.
Footnotes
[2090] Ranked with the preceding, and of dubious genuineness.
[2091] angareuomenos. cf. Matt. v. 41.
Letter XLIV. [2092]
To a lapsed Monk. [2093]
1. I do not wish you joy, for there is no joy for the wicked. Even
now I cannot believe it; my heart cannot conceive iniquity so great as
the crime which you have committed; if, that is, the truth really is
what is generally understood. I am at a loss to think how wisdom so
deep can have been made to disappear; how such exact discipline can
have been undone; whence blindness so profound can have been shed
round you; how with utter inconsiderateness you have wrought such
destruction of souls. If this be true, you have given over your own
soul to the pit, and have slackened the earnestness of all who have
heard of your impiety. You have set at nought the faith; you have
missed the glorious fight. I grieve over you. What cleric [2094]
does not lament as he hears? What ecclesiastic does not beat the
breast? What layman is not downcast? What ascetic is not sad?
Haply, even the sun has grown dark at your fall, and the powers of
heaven have been shaken at your destruction. Even senseless stones
have shed tears at your madness; even your enemies have wept at the
greatness of your iniquity. Oh hardness of heart! Oh cruelty! You
did not fear God; you did not reverence men; you cared nothing for
your friends; you made shipwreck of all at once; at once you were
stripped of all. Once more I grieve over you, unhappy man. You were
proclaiming to all the power of the kingdom, and you fell from it.
You were making all stand in fear of your teaching, and there was no
fear of God before your eyes. You were preaching purity, and you are
found polluted. You were priding yourself on your poverty, and you
are convicted of covetousness; you were demonstrating and explaining
the chastisement of God, and you yourself brought chastisement on your
own head. How am I to lament you, how grieve for you? How is Lucifer
that was rising in the morning fallen and dashed on the ground? Both
the ears of every hearer will tingle. How is the Nazarite, brighter
than gold, become dark above pitch? How has the glorious son of Sion
become an unprofitable vessel! Of him, whose memory of the sacred
Scriptures was in all men's mouths, the memory to-day has perished
with the sound. The man of quick intelligence has quickly perished.
The man of manifold wit has wrought manifold iniquity. All who
profited by your teaching have been injured by your fall. All who
came to listen to your conversation have stopped their ears at your
fall. I, sorrowful and downcast, weakened in every way, eating ashes
for bread and with sackcloth on my wound, am thus recounting your
praises; or rather, with none to comfort and none to cure, am making
an inscription for a tomb. For comfort is hid from my eyes. I have
no salve, no oil, no bandage to put on. My wound is sore, how shall I
be healed?
2. If you have any hope of salvation; if you have the least thought
of God, or any desire for good things to come; if you have any fear of
the chastisements reserved for the impenitent, awake without delay,
lift up your eyes to heaven, come to your senses, cease from your
wickedness, shake off the stupor that enwraps you, make a stand
against the foe who has struck you down. Make an effort to rise from
the ground. Remember the good Shepherd who will follow and rescue
you. Though it be but two legs or a lobe of an ear, [2095] spring
back from the beast that has wounded you. Remember the mercies of God
and how He cures with oil and wine. Do not despair of salvation.
Recall your recollection of how it is written in the Scriptures that
he who is falling rises and he who turns away returns; [2096] the
wounded is healed, the prey of beasts escapes; he who owns his sin is
not rejected. The Lord willeth not the death of a sinner but rather
that he should turn and live. [2097]Do not despise, like the wicked
in the pit of evil. [2098]There is a time of endurance, a time of
long suffering, a time of healing, a time of correction. Have you
stumbled? Arise. Have you sinned? Cease. Do not stand in the way
of sinners, [2099] but spring away. When you are converted and groan
you shall be saved. Out of labour comes health, out of sweat
salvation. Beware lest, from your wish to keep certain obligations,
you break the obligations to God which you professed before many
witnesses. [2100]Pray do not hesitate to come to me for any earthly
considerations. When I have recovered my dead I shall lament, I shall
tend him, I will weep "because of the spoiling of the daughter of my
people." [2101]All are ready to welcome you, all will share your
efforts. Do not sink back. Remember the days of old. There is
salvation; there is amendment. Be of good cheer; do not despair. It
is not a law condemning to death without pity, but mercy remitting
punishment and awaiting improvement. The doors are not yet shut; the
bridegroom hears; sin is not the master. Make another effort, do not
hesitate, have pity on yourself and on all of us in Jesus Christ our
Lord, to Whom be glory and might now and for ever and ever. Amen.
Footnotes
[2092] To be ranked with the former letter.
[2093] One ms. adds, in a later hand, Alexius.
[2094] hiereus. When first this word and its correlatives came to be
used of the Christian ministry it was applied generally to the
clergy. cf. Letter of the Council of Illyricum in Theod., Ecc. Hist.
iv. 8, and note on Letter liv. p. 157.
[2095] cf. Amos iii. 12.
[2096] cf. Jer. viii. 4.
[2097] cf. Ezek. xviii. 32.
[2098] Prov. xviii. 3, LXX.
[2099] cf. Ps. i. 1.
[2100] cf. 1 Tim. vi. 12.
[2101] Is. xxii. 4.
Letter XLV. [2102]
To a lapsed Monk.
1. I am doubly alarmed to the very bottom of my heart, and you are
the cause. I am either the victim of some unkindly prepossession, and
so am driven to make an unbrotherly charge; or, with every wish to
feel for you, and to deal gently with your troubles, I am forced to
take a different and an unfriendly attitude. Wherefore, even as I
take my pen to write, I have nerved my unwilling hand by reflection;
but my face, downcast as it is, because of my sorrow over you, I have
had no power to change. I am so covered with shame, for your sake,
that my lips are turned to mourning and my mouth straightway falls.
Ah me! What am I to write? What shall I think in my perplexity?
If I call to mind your former empty mode of life, when you were
rolling in riches and had abundance of petty mundane reputation, I
shudder; then you were followed by a mob of flatterers, and had the
short enjoyment of luxury, with obvious peril and unfair gain; on the
one hand, fear of the magistrates scattered your care for your
salvation, on the other the agitations of public affairs disturbed
your home, and the continuance of troubles directed your mind to Him
Who is able to help you. Then, little by little, you took to seeking
for the Saviour, Who brings you fears for your good, Who delivers you
and protects you, though you mocked Him in your security. Then you
began to train yourself for a change to a worthy life, treating all
your perilous property as mere dung, and abandoning the care of your
household and the society of your wife. All abroad like a stranger
and a vagabond, wandering through town and country, you betook
yourself to Jerusalem. [2103]There I myself lived with you, and,
for the toil of your ascetic discipline, called you blessed, when
fasting for weeks you continued in contemplation before God, shunning
the society of your fellows, like a routed runaway. Then you arranged
for yourself a quiet and solitary life, and refused all the disquiets
of society. You pricked your body with rough sackcloth; you tightened
a hard belt round your loins; you bravely put wearing pressure on your
bones; you made your sides hang loose from front to back, and all
hollow with fasting; you would wear no soft bandage, and drawing in
your stomach, like a gourd, made it adhere to the parts about your
kidneys. You emptied out all fat from your flesh; all the channels
below your belly you dried up; your belly itself you folded up for
want of food; your ribs, like the caves of a house, you made to
overshadow all the parts about your middle, and, with all your body
contracted, you spent the long hours of the night in pouring out
confession to God, and made your beard wet with channels of tears.
Why particularize? Remember how many mouths of saints you saluted
with a kiss, how many bodies you embraced, how many held your hands as
undefiled, how many servants God, as though in worship, ran and
clasped you by the knees.
2. And what is the end of all this? My ears are wounded by a charge
of adultery, flying swifter than an arrow, and piercing my heart with
a sharper sting. What crafty wiliness of wizard has driven you into
so deadly a trap? What many-meshed devil's nets have entangled you
and disabled all the powers of your virtue? What has become of the
story of your labours? Or must we disbelieve them? How can we avoid
giving credit to what has long been hid when we see what is plain?
What shall we say of your having by tremendous oaths bound souls which
fled for refuge to God, when what is more than yea and nay is
carefully attributed to the devil? [2104]You have made yourself
security for fatal perjury; and, by setting the ascetic character at
nought, you have cast blame even upon the Apostles and the very Lord
Himself. You have shamed the boast of purity. You have disgraced the
promise of chastity; we have been made a tragedy of captives, and our
story is made a play of before Jews and Greeks. You have made a split
in the solitaries' spirit, driving those of exacter discipline into
fear and cowardice, while they still wonder at the power of the devil,
and seducing the careless into imitation of your incontinence. So far
as you have been able, you have destroyed the boast of Christ, Who
said, "Be of good cheer I have overcome the world," [2105] and its
Prince. You have mixed for your country a bowl of ill repute. Verily
you have proved the truth of the proverb, "Like a hart stricken
through the liver." [2106]
But what now? The tower of strength has not fallen, my brother. The
remedies of correction are not mocked; the city of refuge is not
shut. Do not abide in the depths of evil. Do not deliver yourself to
the slayer of souls. The Lord knows how to set up them that are
dashed down. Do not try to flee afar off, but hasten to me. Resume
once more the labours of your youth, and by a fresh course of good
deeds destroy the indulgence that creeps foully along the ground.
Look to the end, that has come so near to our life. See how now the
sons of Jews and Greeks are being driven to the worship of God, and do
not altogether deny the Saviour of the World. Never let that most
awful sentence apply to you, "Depart from me, I never knew you."
[2107]
Footnotes
[2102] To be ranked with the preceding.
[2103] cf. note on Letter xlii. p. 145. Maran, Vit. S. Bas. cap.
xii., regards this implied sojourn at Jerusalem as unfavourable to the
genuineness of the letter; but supposing the letter to be genuine, and
grounds to exist for doubting Basil to have spent any long time in the
Holy Land, there seems no reason why "Jerusalem" may not be taken in a
figurative sense for the companionship of the saints. See also
Proleg. on Basil's baptism.
[2104] cf. Matt. v. 37.
[2105] John xvi. 33.
[2106] cf. Prov. vii. 22, 23, LXX.
[2107] Luke xiii. 27.
Letter XLVI. [2108]
To a fallen virgin.
1. Now is the time to quote the words of the prophet and to say, "Oh
that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I
might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people."
[2109]Though they are wrapped in profound silence and lie stunned
by their misfortune, robbed of all sense of feeling by the fatal blow,
I at all events must not let such a fall go unlamented. If, to
Jeremiah, it seemed that those whose bodies had been wounded in war,
were worthy of innumerable lamentations, what shall be said of such a
disaster of souls? "My slain men," it is said, "are not slain with
the sword, nor dead in battle." [2110]But I am bewailing the sting
of the real death, the grievousness of sin and the fiery darts of the
wicked one, which have savagely set on fire souls as well as bodies.
Truly God's laws would groan aloud on seeing so great a pollution on
the earth. They have pronounced their prohibition of old "Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbour's wife"; [2111] and through the holy gospels
they say that "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath
committed adultery already with her in his heart." [2112]Now they
see the bride of the Lord herself, whose head is Christ, boldly
committing adultery. [2113]So too would groan the companies [2114]
of the Saints. Phinehas, the zealous, because he can now no more take
his spear into his hands and avenge the outrage on the bodies; and
John the Baptist, because he cannot quit the realms above, as in his
life he left the wilderness, to hasten to convict iniquity, and if he
must suffer for the deed, rather lose his head than his freedom to
speak. But, peradventure, like the blessed Abel, he too though dead
yet speaks to us, [2115] and now exclaims, more loudly than John of
old concerning Herodias, "It is not lawful for thee to have her."
[2116]For even if the body of John in obedience to the law of
nature has received the sentence of God, and his tongue is silent, yet
"the word of God is not bound." [2117]John, when he saw the wedlock
of a fellow servant set at nought, was bold to rebuke even to the
death: how would he feel on seeing such an outrage wreaked on the
marriage chamber of the Lord?
2. You have flung away the yoke of that divine union; you have fled
from the undefiled chamber of the true King; you have shamefully
fallen into this disgraceful and impious corruption; and now that you
cannot avoid this painful charge, and have no means or device to
conceal your trouble, you rush into insolence. The wicked man after
falling into a pit of iniquity always begins to despise, and you are
denying your actual covenant with the true bridegroom; you say that
you are not a virgin, and made no promise, although you have
undertaken and publicly professed many pledges of virginity. Remember
the good profession which you witnessed [2118] before God, angels, and
men. Remember the hallowed intercourse, the sacred company of
virgins, the assembly of the Lord, the Church of the holy. Remember
your grandmother, grown old in Christ, still youthful and vigorous in
virtue; and your mother vying with her in the Lord, and striving to
break with ordinary life in strange and unwonted toils; remember your
sister, who copies their doings, nay, endeavours to surpass them, and
goes beyond the good deeds of her fathers in her virgin graces, and
earnestly challenges by word and deed you her sister, as she thinks,
to like efforts, while she earnestly prays that your virginity be
preserved. [2119]All these call to mind, and your holy service of
God with them, your life spiritual, though in the flesh; your
conversation heavenly, though on earth. Remember days of calm, nights
lighted up, spiritual songs, sweet music of psalms, saintly prayers, a
bed pure and undefiled, procession of virgins, and moderate fare.
[2120]What has become of your grave appearance, your gracious
demeanour, your plain dress, meet for a virgin, the beautiful blush of
modesty, the comely and bright pallor due to temperance and vigils,
shining fairer than any brilliance of complexion? How often have you
not prayed, perhaps with tears, that you might preserve your virginity
without spot! How often have you not written to the holy men,
imploring them to offer up prayers in your behalf, not that it should
be your lot to marry, still less to be involved in this shameful
corruption, but that you should not fall away from the Lord Jesus?
How often have you received gifts from the Bridegroom? Why enumerate
the honours given you for His sake by them that are His? Why tell of
your fellowship with virgins, your progress with them, your being
greeted by them with praises on account of virginity, eulogies of
virgins, letters written as to a virgin? Now, nevertheless, at a
little blast from the spirit of the air, "that now worketh in the
children of disobedience," [2121] you have abjured all these; you have
changed the honourable treasure, worth fighting for at all costs, for
short-lived indulgence which does for the moment gratify the appetite;
one day you will find it more bitter than gall.
3. Who would not grieve over such things and say, "How is the
faithful city become an harlot?" [2122]How would not the Lord
Himself say to some of those who are now walking in the spirit of
Jeremiah, "Hast thou seen what the virgin of Israel has done to me?"
[2123]I betrothed her to me in trust, in purity, in righteousness,
in judgment, in pity, and in mercy; [2124] as I promised her through
Hosea the prophet. But she loved strangers, and while I, her husband,
was yet alive, she is called adulteress, and is not afraid to belong
to another husband. What then says the conductor of the bride, [2125]
the divine and blessed Paul, both that one of old, and the later one
of to-day under whose mediation and instruction you left your father's
house and were united to the Lord? Might not either, in sorrow for
such a trouble, say, "The thing which I greatly feared is come upon
me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." [2126]"I have
espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin
to Christ." [2127]I was indeed ever afraid "lest by any means as
the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your mind should be
corrupted;" [2128] wherefore by countless counter-charms I strove to
control the agitation of your senses, and by countless safeguards to
preserve the bride of the Lord. So I continually set forth the life
of the unmarried maid, and described how "the unmarried" alone "careth
for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and
spirit." [2129]I used to describe the high dignity of virginity,
and, addressing you as a temple of God, used as it were to give wings
to your zeal as I strove to lift you to Jesus. Yet through fear of
evil I helped you not to fall by the words "if any man defile the
temple of God, him shall God destroy." [2130]So by my prayers I
tried to make you more secure, if by any means "your body, soul, and
spirit might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ." [2131]Yet all my toil on your behalf has been in vain.
Bitter to me has been the end of those sweet labours. Now I needs
must groan again at that over which I ought to have rejoiced. You
have been deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve; and not only
your mind but also your body has been defiled. Even that last horror
has come to pass which I shrink from saying, and yet cannot leave
unsaid, for it is as a burning and blazing fire in my bones, and I am
undone and cannot endure. You have taken the members of Christ and
made them the members of a harlot. [2132]This is an evil with which
no other can be matched. This outrage in life is new. "For pass over
the Isles of Chittim and see; and send unto Chedar and consider
diligently, and see if there be such a thing. Hath a nation changed
their gods which are yet no gods." [2133]But the virgin has changed
her glory, and her glory is in her shame. The heavens are astonished
at this, and the earth is horribly afraid, saith the Lord, for the
virgin has committed two evils; she has forsaken [2134] Me, the true
and holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has betaken herself to an
impious and lawless destroyer of body and soul alike. She has
revolted from God, her Saviour, and yielded her members servants to
uncleanness and to iniquity. [2135]She forgot me and went after her
lover [2136] from whom she will get no good.
4. It were better for him that a mill-stone had been hanged about his
neck, and that he had been cast into the sea, than that he should have
offended the virgin of the Lord. [2137]What slave ever reached such
a pitch of mad audacity as to fling himself upon his master's bed?
What robber ever attained such a height of folly as to lay hands upon
the very offerings of God, not dead vessels, but bodies living and
enshrining a soul made after the image of God? [2138]
Who was ever known to have the hardihood, in the heart of a city and
at high noon, to mark figures of filthy swine upon a royal statue? He
who has set at naught a marriage of man, with no mercy shewn him, in
the presence of two or three witnesses, dies. [2139]Of how much
sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy who hath
trodden under foot the Son of God, and defiled His pledged bride and
done despite unto the spirit of virginity? [2140]But the woman, he
urges, consented, and I did no violence to her against her will. So,
that unchaste lady of Egypt raged with love for comely Joseph, but the
chaste youth's virtue was not overcome by the frenzy of the wicked
woman, and, even when she laid her hand upon him, he was not forced
into iniquity. But still, he urges, this was no new thing in her
case; she was no longer a maid; if I had been unwilling, she would
have been corrupted by some one else. Yes; and it is written, the Son
of Man was ordained to be betrayed, but woe unto that man by whom He
was betrayed. [2141]It must needs be that offences come, but woe to
that man by whom they come. [2142]
5. In such a state of things as this, "Shall they fall and not
arise? Shall he turn away and not return?" [2143]Why did the
virgin turn shamefully away, though she had heard Christ her
bridegroom saying through the mouth of Jeremiah, "And I said, after
she had done all these things (committed all these fornications,
LXX.), turn thou unto me, but she returned not?" [2144]"Is there no
balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the
health of the daughter of my people recovered?" [2145]You might
indeed find many remedies for evil in Scripture, many medicines to
save from destruction and lead to health; the mysteries of death and
resurrection, the sentences of terrible judgment and everlasting
punishment; the doctrines of repentance and of remission of sins; all
the countless illustrations of conversion, the piece of money, the
sheep, the son who wasted his substance with harlots, who was lost and
was found, who was dead and alive again. Let us not use these
remedies for ill; by these means let us heal our soul. Bethink you of
your last day, for you will surely not, unlike all other women, live
for ever. The distress, the gasping for breath, the hour of death,
the imminent sentence of God, the angels hastening on their way, the
soul fearfully dismayed, and lashed to agony by the consciousness of
sin, turning itself piteously to things of this life and to the
inevitable necessity of that long life to be lived elsewhere. Picture
to me, as it rises in your imagination, the conclusion of all human
life, when the Son of God shall come in His glory with His angels,
"For he shall come and shall not keep silence;" [2146] when He shall
come to judge the quick and dead, to render to every one according to
his work; when that terrible trumpet with its mighty voice shall wake
those that have slept through the ages, and they that have done good
shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, and they that have
done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. [2147]Remember the
vision of Daniel, and how he brings the judgment before us: "I beheld
till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit,
whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the
pure wool;...and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued
and came forth before Him; thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was
set, and the books were opened," [2148] clearly disclosing in the
hearing of all, angels and men, things good and evil, things done
openly and in secret, deeds, words, and thoughts all at once. What
then must those men be who have lived wicked lives? Where then shall
that soul hide which in the sight of all these spectators shall
suddenly be revealed in its fulness of shame? With what kind of body
shall it sustain those endless and unbearable pangs in the place of
fire unquenched, and of the worm that perishes and never dies, and of
depth of Hades, dark and horrible; bitter wailings, loud lamenting,
weeping and gnashing of teeth and anguish without end? From all these
woes there is no release after death; no device, no means of coming
forth from the chastisement of pain.
6. We can escape now. While we can, let us lift ourselves from the
fall: let us never despair of ourselves, if only we depart from
evil. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. "O come, let
us worship and fall down; let us weep before Him." [2149]The Word
Who invited us to repentance calls aloud, "Come unto me all ye that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." [2150]There
is, then, a way of salvation, if we will. "Death in his might has
swallowed up, but again the Lord hath wiped away tears from off all
faces" [2151] of them that repent. The Lord is faithful in all His
words. [2152]He does not lie when He says, "Though your sins be
scarlet they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like
crimson they shall be as wool." [2153]The great Physician of souls,
Who is the ready liberator, not of you alone, but of all who are
enslaved by sin, is ready to heal your sickness. From Him come the
words, it was His sweet and saving lips that said, "They that be whole
need not a physician but they that are sick....I am not come to call
the righteous but sinners to repentance." [2154]What excuse have
you, what excuse has any one, when He speaks thus? The Lord wishes to
cleanse you from the trouble of your sickness and to show you light
after darkness. The good Shepherd, Who left them that had not
wandered away, is seeking after you. If you give yourself to Him He
will not hold back. He, in His love, will not disdain even to carry
you on His own shoulders, rejoicing that He has found His sheep which
was lost. The Father stands and awaits your return from your
wandering. Only come back, and while you are yet afar off, He will
run and fall upon your neck, and, now that you are cleansed by
repentance, will enwrap you in embraces of love. He will clothe with
the chief robe the soul that has put off the old man with all his
works; He will put a ring on hands that have washed off the blood of
death, and will put shoes on feet that have turned from the evil way
to the path of the Gospel of peace. He will announce the day of joy
and gladness to them that are His own, both angels and men, and will
celebrate your salvation far and wide. For "verily I say unto you,"
says He, "there is joy in heaven before God over one sinner that
repenteth." [2155]If any of those who think they stand find fault
because of your quick reception, the good Father will Himself make
answer for you in the words, "It was meet that we should make merry
and be glad for this" my daughter "was dead and is alive again, was
lost and is found." [2156]
Footnotes
[2108] Placed with the preceding.
[2109] Jer. ix. 1.
[2110] Is. xxii. 2.
[2111] Deut. v. 21.
[2112] Matt. v. 28.
[2113] cf. Letter ccxvii. § 60.
[2114] Tagmata, with two mss. The alternative reading is pneumata.
[2115] cf. Heb. xi. 4.
[2116] Matt. xiv. 4.
[2117] 2 Tim. ii. 9.
[2118] cf. 1 Tim. vi. 12.
[2119] These words occur in the mss. after "moderate fare," below,
where they make no sense. The Ben. Ed. conjectures that they may
belong here.
[2120] Vide note above.
[2121] Eph. ii. 2.
[2122] Is. i. 21.
[2123] cf. Jer. xviii. 13.
[2124] cf. Hosea ii. 19.
[2125] The numphagogos was the friend who conducted the bride from her
parents' or her own house to the bridegroom's. cf. Luc., Dial Deor.
20, 16.
[2126] Job iii. 25.
[2127] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[2128] 2 Cor. xi. 3.
[2129] 1 Cor. vii. 34.
[2130] 1 Cor. iii. 17.
[2131] 1 Thess. v. 23.
[2132] 1 Cor. vi. 15.
[2133] Jer. ii. 10, 11.
[2134] cf. Jer. ii. 12, 13, LXX.
[2135] cf. Rom. vi. 19.
[2136] cf. Hosea ii. 13.
[2137] cf. Luke xvii. 2.
[2138] St. Basil has no idea of the image and likeness of God being a
bodily likeness, as in the lines of Xenophanes.
[2139] i.e. by the old Jewish law. Deut. xvii. 6. Adultery was not
capital under the Lex Julia, but was made so by Constantine.
[2140] cf. Heb. x. 29.
[2141] cf. Mark xiv. 21.
[2142] cf. Matt. xviii. 7.
[2143] Jer. viii. 4.
[2144] Jer. iii. 7.
[2145] Jer. viii. 22.
[2146] Ps. l. 3.
[2147] cf. John v. 29.
[2148] Dan. vii. 9, 10.
[2149] Ps. xcv. 6, LXX.
[2150] Matt. xi. 28.
[2151] Is. xxv. 8, LXX.
[2152] Ps. cxlv. 13, LXX.
[2153] Is. i. 18.
[2154] Matt. ix. 12, 13.
[2155] cf. Luke xv. 7.
[2156] Luke xv. 32.
Letter XLVII. [2157]
To Gregory. [2158]
"Who will give me wings like a dove? [2159]Or how can my old age be
so renewed that I can travel to your affection, satisfy my deep
longing to see you, tell you all the troubles of my soul, and get from
you some comfort in my affliction? For when the blessed bishop
Eusebius [2160] fell asleep, we were under no small alarm lest
plotters against the Church of our Metropolis, wishful to fill it with
their heretical tares, should seize the present opportunity, root out
by their wicked teaching the true faith sown by much labour in men's
souls, and destroy its unity. This has been the result of their
action in many churches. [2161]When however I received the letters
of the clergy exhorting me not to let their needs be overlooked at
such a crisis, as I ranged my eyes in all directions I bethought me of
your loving spirit, your right faith, and your unceasing zeal on
behalf of the churches of God. I have therefore sent the well beloved
Eustathius, [2162] the deacon, to invite your reverence, and implore
you to add this one more to all your labours on behalf of the Church.
I entreat you also to refresh my old age by a sight of you; and to
maintain for the true Church its famous orthodoxy, by uniting with me,
if I may be deemed worthy of uniting with you, in the good work, to
give it a shepherd in accordance with the will of the Lord, able to
guide His people aright. I have before my eyes a man not unknown even
to yourself. If only we be found worthy to secure him, I am sure that
we shall acquire a confident access to God and confer a very great
benefit on the people who have invoked our aid. Now once again, aye,
many times I call on you, all hesitation put aside, to come to meet
me, and to set out before the difficulties of winter intervene.
Footnotes
[2157] Placed in 370. The letters numbered 47 to 291, inclusive, are
placed by the Benedictine editors during St. Basil's episcopate.
[2158] On this title Benedictine editors remark that no careful reader
can fail to note that the letter is written not by Basil but about
Basil. "Hodie," they write, "inter eruditos fere convenit eam a
Gregorio patre, filii manu, ad Eusebium Samosatensem scriptam fuisse.
Nam senem se esse declarat auctor Epistolæ et in Cappadocia Episcopum,
ut qui litteris cleri ad electionem Episcopi, et Ecclesiæ Cæsariensis
defesionem invitatus fuerit. Is autem ad quem scribit et eadem
dignitate præditus erat, et laboribus pro Ecclesia susceptis clarus,
et amicus Basilio, nec Cappadociæ vicinus. Omnia in Eusebium
Samosatensem mirifice conveniunt, quem Basilii ordinationi scimus
interfuisse," and they give, moreover, as their descriptive heading:
"Gregorius Theologi pater Eusebium Samosatensem, misso Eustathio
diacono, invitat ad electionem Episcopi Cæsariensis ut eo adjuvante
Basilius eligi possit." Fialon, however, apparently forgetting the
reference to old age, writes (Étude Hist. p. 87, n.): "Cette lettre
est évidemment de Grégoire de Nazianze," meaning the younger. The
election of St. Basil, who probably "voluit episcopari" to the
archiepiscopal throne, was indeed mainly due to the intervention of
the elder Gregory. Basil's unfortunate and indefensible
disingenuousness in summoning the younger Gregory to Cæsarea on the
plea of his own severe illness defeated its object. But for the
prompt and practical intervention of Gregory the elder, and this
appeal to Eusebius of Samosata, the archbishopric might have fallen
into unworthy, or at least inferior, hands. Vide Biog. Notice in
Proleg., .
[2159] cf. Ps. lv. 6, LXX.
[2160] Eusebius, at the time of his election an unbaptized layman, was
elevated to the throne of Cæsarea on the death of Dianius in 362. In
this case too it was due to the counsels of the elder Gregory that the
objections both of Eusebius and of the bishops, forced by the opposing
party to consecrate him, were finally overcome. It was he who
ordained Basil to the presbyterate and chafed against the ascendancy
of his more able and brilliant subordinate.
[2161] In 365 Valens came to Cæsarea with Arian bishops, and
endeavoured to put down the Catholics. Basil returned from his
retreat in order to aid Eusebius in resisting the attack, and seems to
have shown much tact and good feeling as well as vigour and ability.
cf. Greg. Naz., Or. xx. 340.
[2162] cf. Letter cxxxvi., where it appears that Basil kindly nursed a
deacon Eustathius. The fact of an Eustathius being one of Basil's
deacons is so far in favour of Basil's having written the letter. But
Eustathius was a common name, and Eustathius, a monk, is mentioned in
the will of Gregory of Nazianzus.
Letter XLVIII. [2163]
To Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata [2164] .
I have had considerable difficulty in finding a messenger to convey a
letter to your reverence, for our men are so afraid of the winter that
they can hardly bear even to put their heads outside their houses. We
have suffered from such a very heavy fall of snow that we have been
buried, houses and all, beneath it, and now for two months have been
living in dens and caves. You know the Cappadocian character and how
hard it is to get us to move. [2165]Forgive me then for not writing
sooner and bringing to the knowledge of your excellency the latest
news from Antioch. To tell you all this now, when it is probable that
you learnt it long ago, is stale and uninteresting. But as I do not
reckon it any trouble to tell you even what you know, I have sent you
the letters conveyed by the reader. On this point I shall say no
more. Constantinople has now for some time had Demophilus, [2166] as
the bearers of this letter will themselves tell you, and as has
doubtless been reported to your holiness. From all who come to us
from that city there is unanimously reported about him a certain
counterfeit of orthodoxy and sound religion, to such an extent that
even the divided portions of the city have been brought to agreement,
and some of the neighbouring bishops have accepted the
reconciliation. Our men here have not turned out better than I
expected. They came directly you were gone, [2167] said and did many
painful things, and at last went home again, after making their
separation from me wider. [2168]Whether anything better will happen
in the future, and whether they will give up their evil ways, is
unknown to all but God. So much for our present condition. The rest
of the Church, by God's grace, stands sound, and prays that in the
spring we may have you with us again, and be renewed by your good
counsel. My health is no better than it ever is.
Footnotes
[2163] Placed at the beginning of the episcopate.
[2164] cf. Letters xxxi., xxxiv.
[2165] The Cappadocians were of notoriously bad character, and shared
with the Cretans and Cilicians the discredit of illustrating tria
kappa kakista. cf. note on Theodoret, Ecc. Hist. II. xi. p. 75. It
was Phrygians, however, who were specially notorious for cowardice.
cf. the proverb: "More cowardly than a Phrygian hare." cf.
Lightfoot, Coloss., etc., p 378 n. But Cappadocia may claim the
counter credit of having given birth to three of the most famous
divines, Basil and the two Gregorys.
[2166] On the death of Eudoxius, in 370, Demophilus was elected by the
Arians to fill the vacant see. Eustathius, the deposed bishop of
Antioch, ordained Evagrius. Eustathius and Evagrius were both
banished by Valens, and their adherents cruelly treated. Soc., Ecc.
Hist. iv. 14, 16; Soz., Ecc. Hist. vi. 13, 14, and Philost., Ecc.
Hist. ix. 10.
[2167] After the departure of Eusebius at the close of the visit which
he had undertaken, in accordance with the request of the previous
letter, in order to secure Basil's consecration to the vacant see.
[2168] On the difficulties thrown in Basil's way by the bishops who
had opposed his election, cf. Letters xcviii., cxli., and cclxxxii.
Letter XLIX. [2169]
To Arcadius the Bishop.
I thanked the Holy God when I read your letter, most pious brother. I
pray that I may not be unworthy of the expectations you have formed of
me, and that you will enjoy a full reward for the honour which you pay
me in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I was exceedingly pleased to
hear that you have been occupied in a matter eminently becoming a
Christian, have raised a house to the glory of God, and have in
practical earnest loved, as it is written, "the beauty of the house of
the Lord," [2170] and have so provided for yourself that heavenly
mansion which is prepared in His rest for them that love the Lord. If
I am able to find any relics of martyrs, I pray that I may take part
in your earnest endeavour. If "the righteous shall be had in
everlasting remembrance," [2171] I shall without doubt have a share in
the good fame which the Holy One will give you.
Footnotes
[2169] Of about the same date as the preceding.
[2170] Ps. xxvi. 8, LXX.
[2171] Ps. cxii. 6.
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