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

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Basil to Gregory. 2255<br />

Letter LXXI. 2254<br />

1. I have received the letter of your holiness, by the most reverend brother Helenius,<br />

<strong>and</strong> what you have intimated he has told me in plain terms. How I felt on hearing it, you<br />

cannot doubt at all. However, since I have determined that my affection for you shall outweigh<br />

my pain, whatever it is, I have accepted it as I ought to do, <strong>and</strong> I pray the holy God,<br />

that my remaining days or hours may be as carefully conducted in their disposition towards<br />

you as they have been in past time, during which, my conscience tells me, I have been<br />

wanting to you in nothing small or great. [But that the man who boasts that he is now just<br />

beginning to take a look at the life of Christians, <strong>and</strong> thinks he will get some credit by having<br />

something to do with me, should invent what he has not heard, <strong>and</strong> narrate what he has<br />

never experienced, is not at all surprising. What is surprising <strong>and</strong> extraordinary is that he<br />

has got my best friends among the brethren at Nazianzus to listen to him; <strong>and</strong> not only to<br />

listen to him, but as it seems, to take in what he says. On most grounds it might be surprising<br />

that the sl<strong>and</strong>erer is of such a character, <strong>and</strong> that I am the victim, but these troublous times<br />

have taught us to bear everything with patience. Slights greater than this have, for my sins,<br />

long been things of common occurrence with me. I have never yet given this man’s brethren<br />

any evidence of my sentiments 2256 about God, <strong>and</strong> I have no answer to make now. Men<br />

who are not convinced by long experience are not likely to be convinced by a short letter.<br />

If the former is enough let the charges of the sl<strong>and</strong>erers be counted as idle tales. But if I give<br />

license to unbridled mouths, <strong>and</strong> uninstructed hearts, to talk about whom they will, all the<br />

while keeping my ears ready to listen, I shall not be alone in hearing what is said by other<br />

people; they will have to hear what I have to say.]<br />

2. I know what has led to all this, <strong>and</strong> have urged every topic to hinder it; but now I am<br />

sick of the subject, <strong>and</strong> will say no more about it, I mean our little intercourse. For had we<br />

kept our old promise to each other, <strong>and</strong> had due regard to the claims which the <strong>Church</strong>es<br />

have on us, we should have been the greater part of the year together; <strong>and</strong> then there would<br />

have been no opening for these calumniators. Pray have nothing to say to them; let me<br />

2254 Placed in the same period.<br />

2255 When Gregory, on the elevation of Basil to the Episcopate, was at last induced to visit his old friend, he<br />

declined the dignities which Basil pressed upon him (τήνδε τῆς καθέδρας τιμήν, i.e. the position of chief pres-<br />

byter or coadjutor bishop, Orat. xliii. 39), <strong>and</strong> made no long stay. Some Nazianzene sc<strong>and</strong>al-mongers had<br />

charged Basil with heterodoxy. Gregory asked him for explanations, <strong>and</strong> Basil, somewhat wounded, rejoins<br />

that no explanations are needed. <strong>The</strong> translation in the text with the exception of the passages in brackets, is<br />

that of Newman. cf. Proleg. <strong>and</strong> reff. to Greg. Naz.<br />

2256 προαιρέσεως , as in three mss.<br />

Basil to Gregory.<br />

494

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