Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
Letter XXXIV. 2015
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.
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.
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
422
136