NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Homiletical.This was his revenge. Where conduct, as in this case, is so much on a par with Christianconduct, 673 I maintain that it is well worth our while to copy these great men. The behaviourof Socrates on this occasion is akin to the precept that we are by no means to take revenge,but to turn the other cheek to the smiter. So the conduct of Pericles and Euclid matchesthe commands to put up with persecutors, and to bear their wrath with meekness, and toinvoke not cursing but blessing on our enemies. He who has been previously instructed inthese examples will no longer regard the precepts as impracticable. I should like, too, toinstance the conduct of Alexander, when he had captured the daughters of Darius. 674 Theirbeauty is described as extraordinary, and Alexander would not so much as look at them,for he thought it shameful that a conqueror of men should be vanquished by women. Thisis of a piece with the statement that he who looks at a woman impurely, even though he donot actually commit the act of adultery with her, is not free from guilt, because he has allowedlust to enter his heart. Then there is the case of Clinias, the follower of Pythagoras: it isdifficult to believe this is a case of accidental, and not intentional, imitation of our principles.675 What of him? He might have escaped a fine of three talents by taking an oath,but he preferred to pay rather than swear, and this when he would have sworn truly. Heappears to me to have heard of the precept which orders us to swear not at all. 676 To returnto the point with which I began. We must not take everything indiscriminately, but onlywhat is profitable. It would be shameful for us in the case of food to reject the injurious,and at the same time, in the case of lessons, to take no account of what keeps the soul alive,but, like mountain streams, to sweep in everything that happens to be in our way. The sailordoes not trust himself to the mercy of the winds, but steers his boat to the port; the archeraims at his mark; the smith and the carpenter keep the end of the crafts in view. What senseis there in our shewing ourselves inferior to these craftsmen, though we are quite able tounderstand our own affairs? In mere handicrafts is there some object and end in labour,and is there no aim in the life of man, to which any one ought to look who means to live alife better than the brutes? Were no intelligence to be sitting at the tiller of our souls, weshould be dashed up and down in the voyage of life like boats that have no ballast. It is justas with competitions in athletics, or, if you like, in music. In competitions mere crowns areoffered for prizes, there is always training, and no one in training for wrestling or the pan-lxviii673 τοῖς ἡμετέροις.674 cf. Plutarch, Alex. and Arrian. II. xii.675 Clinias was a contemporary of Plato (Diog. Laert. ix. 40).676 St. Basil can hardly imagine that Clinias lived after Christ; yet Old Testament prohibitions are againstfalse swearing only. Possibly the third commandment and such a passage as Lev. xix. 12, may have been in hismind. If Clinias had lived some half a millennium later there seems no reason why he should not have savedhimself three talents by using the words of the Apostle in 2 Cor. xi. 31.118