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

Against Eustathius of Sebasteia. 2877
Letter CCXXIII. 2876
1. There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak, 2878 is the saying of the Preacher.
Time enough has been given to silence, and now the time has come to open my mouth for
the publication of the truth concerning matters that are, up to now, unknown. The illustrious
Job bore his calamities for a long time in silence, and ever showed his courage by holding
out under the most intolerable sufferings, but when he had struggled long enough in silence,
and had persisted in covering his anguish in the bottom of his heart, at last he opened his
mouth and uttered his well-known words. 2879 In my own case this is now the third year of
my silence, and my boast has become like that of the Psalmist, “I was as a man that heareth
not and in whose mouth are no reproofs.” 2880 Thus I shut up in the bottom of my heart
the pangs which I suffered on account of the calumnies directed against me, for calumny
humbles a man, and calumny makes a poor man giddy. 2881 If, therefore, the mischief of
calumny is so great as to cast down even the perfect man from his height, for this is what
Scripture indicates by the word man, and by the poor man is meant he who lacks the great
doctrines, as is the view also of the prophet when he says, “These are poor, therefore they
shall not hear;…I will get me unto the great men,” 2882 he means by poor those who are
lacking in understanding; and here, too, he plainly means those who are not yet furnished
in the inner man, and have not even come to the full measure of their age; it is these who
are said by the proverb to be made giddy and tossed about. Nevertheless I thought that I
ought to bear my troubles in silence, waiting for some indication to come out of them. I
did not even think that what was said against me proceeded from ill will; I thought it was
the result of ignorance of the truth. But now I see that hostility increases with time, and
that my slanderers are not sorry for what they said at the beginning, and do not take any
trouble to make amends for the past, but go on and on and rally themselves together to attain
their original object. This was to make my life miserable and to devise means for sullying
my reputation among the brethren. I, therefore, no longer see safety in silence. I have bethought
me of the words of Isaiah: “I have long time holden my peace, shall I always be still
2876 Placed in 375.
2877 On the mutual relations of Basil and Eustathius up to this time, cf. Prolegomena.
2878 Eccles. iii. 7.
2879 Job iii. 1, seqq.
2880 Ps. xxxviii. 14.
2881 cf. ἡ συκοφαντία περιφέρει σοφόν. Eccles. vii. 8, LXX. Calumnia conturbat sapientem et perdet robur
cordis illius. Vulg.
2882 Jer. iv. 5, LXX.
Against Eustathius of Sebasteia.
737