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

work of St. Ambrose, composed in 381, for the Emperor Gratian, is “to a considerable extent
an echo.” 470
So in East and West a vigorous defence was maintained against the Macedonian assault.
The Catholic position is exactly defined in the Synodical Letter sent by Damasus to Paulinus
of Tyre in 378. 471 Basil died at the crisis of the campaign, and with no bright Pisgah view
of the ultimate passage into peace. The generalship was to pass into other hands. There is
something of the irony of fate, or of the mystery of Providence, in the fact that the voice
condemned by Basil to struggle against the mean din and rattle of Sasima should be the
vehicle for impressing on the empire the truths which Basil held dear. Gregory of Sasima
was no archiepiscopal success at Constantinople. He was not an administrator or a man of
the world. But he was a great divine and orator, and the imperial basilica of the Athanasia
rang with outspoken declarations of the same doctrines, which Basil had more cautiously
suggested to inevitable inference. The triumph was assured, Gregory was enthroned in St.
Sophia, and under Theodosius the Catholic Faith was safe from molestation.
470 Swete, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 71, who further notes: “St. Jerome is severe upon St. Ambrose for
copying Didymus, and says that the Archbishop of Milan had produced “ex Græcis bonis Latina non bona.’ The
work of the Latin Father is, however, by no means a mere copy; and other writers besides Didymus are laid under
contribution in the argument; e.g. St. Basil and perhaps St. Athanasius.”
471 Theod. v. 11 in this edition, p. 139; Mansi iii. 486.
Dogmatic.
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