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

works of the men.” 3071 If you enquire you will learn these things for yourself, and, if they
are hidden from you, they will not assuredly continue hidden from the judges.
8. I will not, however, omit to tell you, my dear friend, in what a state I have been. Last
year I suffered from a very violent fever, and came near to the gates of death. When, by
God’s mercy, I was restored, I was distressed at coming back to life, as I bethought me of
all the troubles before me. I considered with myself for what reason, hidden in the depths
of the wisdom of God, yet further days of life in the flesh had been allowed me. But when
I heard of these matters I concluded that the Lord wished me to see the Churches at rest
after the storm which they had previously suffered from the alienation of the men in whom,
on account of their fictitious gravity of character, every confidence had been placed. Or
peradventure the Lord designed to invigorate my soul, and to render it more vigilant for
the future, to the end that, instead of giving heed to men, it might be made perfect through
those precepts of the Gospel which do not share in the changes and chances of human seasons
and circumstances, but abide for ever the same, as they were uttered by the blessed lips that
cannot lie. 3072
9. Men are like clouds, shifting hither and thither in the sky with the change of the
winds. 3073 And of all men who have ever come within my experience these of whom I am
speaking are the most unstable. As to the other business of life, those who have lived with
them may give evidence; but as to what is within my own knowledge, their inconsistency
as regards the faith, I do not know that I have ever myself observed it or heard from any
one else, of anything like it. Originally they were followers of Arius; then they went over to
Hermogenes, who was diametrically opposed to the errors of Arius, as is evinced by the
Creed originally recited by him at Nicæa. 3074 Hermogenes, fell asleep, and then they went
over to Eusebius, the Coryphæus, as we know on personal evidence, of the Arian ring.
Leaving this, for whatever reasons, they came home again, and once more concealed their
Arian sentiments. After reaching the episcopate, to pass by what occurred in the interval,
how many creeds did they put forth? One at Ancyra; 3075 another at Seleucia; 3076 another
3071 Ps. xvii. 3 and 4, LXX.
3072 Contrast the famous appeal of Antigone in Soph., Ant. 454 to the eternal principles of right and wrong;
οὐ γάρ τι νῦν γε καχθὲς, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεί ποτε ζῆ ταῦτα κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ᾽φάνη. The Christian saint can make
the more personal reference to the ἀψευδὲς στόμα.
3073 cf. Jude 12.
3074 cf. Letter lxxxi. p. 172. Hermogenes was bishop of Cæsarea, in which see he preceded Dianius. He acted
as secretary at Nicæa, when yet a deacon. “The actual creed was written out and read, perhaps in consideration
of Hosius’ ignorance of Greek, by Hermogenes.” (Stanley, Eastern Church, p. 140, ed. 1862.)
3075 In 358, when the ὁμοιούσιον was accepted.
3076 In 359, when the Semiarians supported the Antiochene Dedication Creed of 341.
To Patrophilus, bishop of Ægæ.
792