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

To Gregory my brother. 2212
Letter LVIII. 2211
How am I to dispute with you in writing? How can I lay hold of you satisfactorily, with
all your simplicity? Tell me; who ever falls a third time into the same nets? Who ever gets
a third time into the same snare? Even a brute beast would find it difficult to do so. You
forged one letter, and brought it me as though it came from our right reverend uncle the
bishop, trying to deceive me, I have no idea why. I received it as a letter written by the
bishop and delivered by you. Why should I not? I was delighted; I shewed it to many of
my friends; I thanked God. The forgery was found out, on the bishop’s repudiating it in
person. I was thoroughly ashamed; covered as I was with the disgrace of cunning trickery
and lies, I prayed that the earth might open for me. Then they gave me a second letter, as
sent by the bishop himself by the hands of your servant Asterius. Even this second had not
really been sent by the bishop, as my very reverend brother Anthimus 2213 has told me. Now
Adamantius has come bringing me a third. How ought I to receive a letter carried by you
or yours? I might have prayed to have a heart of stone, so as neither to remember the past,
nor to feel the present; so as to bear every blow, like cattle, with bowed head. But what am
I to think, now that, after my first and second experience, I can admit nothing without
positive proof? Thus I write attacking your simplicity, which I see plainly to be neither what
generally becomes a Christian man, nor is appropriate to the present emergency; I write
that, at least for the future, you may take care of yourself and spare me. I must speak to you
with all freedom, and I tell you that you are an unworthy minister of things so great. However,
whoever be the writer of the letter, I have answered as is fit . Whether, then, you
yourself are experimenting on me, or whether really the letter which you have sent is one
which you have received from the bishops, you have my answer. At such a time as this you
ought to have borne in mind that you are my brother, and have not yet forgotten the ties of
nature, and do not regard me in the light of an enemy, for I have entered on a life which is
wearing out my strength, and is so far beyond my powers that it is injuring even my soul.
Yet for all this, as you have determined to declare war against me, you ought to have come
2211 Placed in 371.
2212 Three mss. give the title Γρηγορίω ἐπισκόπῳ καὶ ἀδελφῷ, but, as is pointed out by the Ben. Ed., the
letter itself is hardly one which would be written to one with the responsibilities of a bishop. Basil seems to regard
his brother as at liberty to come and help him at Cæsarea. Gregory’s consecration to the see of Nyssa is placed
in 372, when his reluctance had to be overcome by force. cf. Letter ccxxv. On the extraordinary circumstance
of his well meant but futile forgery of the name of his namesake and uncle, bishop of an unknown see, vide
Prolegom.
2213 Bishop of Tyana, estranged from Basil, cf. Letters cxx., cxxi., cxxii., and ccx.
To Gregory my brother.
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