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

To the clergy of Neocæsarea.
Letter CCVII. 2754
You all concur in hating me. To a man you have followed the leader of the war against
me. 2755 I was therefore minded to say not a word to any one. I determined that I would
write no friendly letter; that I would start no communication, but keep my sorrow in silence
to myself. Yet it is wrong to keep silence in the face of calumny; not that by contradiction
we may vindicate ourselves, but that we may not allow a lie to travel further and its victims
to be harmed. I have therefore thought it necessary to put this matter also before you all,
and to write a letter to you, although, when I recently wrote to all the presbyterate in common,
you did not do me the honour to send me a reply. Do not, my brethren, gratify the vanity
of those who are filling your minds with pernicious opinions. Do not consent to look lightly
on, when, to your knowledge, God’s people are being subverted by impious teaching. None
but Sabellius the Libyan 2756 and Marcellus the Galatian 2757 have dared to teach and write
what the leaders of your people are attempting to bring forward among you as their own
private discovery. They are making a great talk about it, but they are perfectly powerless to
give their sophisms and fallacies even any colour of truth. In their harangues against me
they shrink from no wickedness, and persistently refuse to meet me. Why? Is it not because
they are afraid of being convicted for their own wicked opinions? Yes; and in their attacks
upon me they have become so lost to all sense of shame as to invent certain dreams to my
discredit while they falsely accuse my teaching of being pernicious. Let them take upon
their own heads all the visions of the autumn months; they can fix no blasphemy on me,
for in every Church there are many to testify to the truth.
2. When they are asked the reason for this furious and truceless war, they allege psalms
and a kind of music varying from the custom which has obtained among you, and similar
pretexts of which they ought to be ashamed. We are, moreover, accused because we maintain
men in the practice of true religion who have renounced the world and all those cares of
this life, which the Lord likens to thorns that do not allow the word to bring forth fruit.
Men of this kind carry about in the body the deadness of Jesus; they have taken up their
own cross, and are followers of God. I would gladly give my life if these really were my
faults, and if I had men with me owning me as teacher who had chosen this ascetic life. I
hear that virtue of this kind is to be found now in Egypt, and there are, peradventure, some
2754 Placed in 375.
2755 i.e. Atarbius of Neocæsarea.
2756 Basil is described as the earliest authority for making Sabellius an African by birth. (D.C.B. iv. 569)
There is no contemporary authority for the statement.
2757 i.e. of Ancyra.
To the clergy of Neocæsarea.
700
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