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

Enumeration of the illustrious men in the Church who in their writings have used the word“with.”Of these some coupled the word in the doxology by the preposition, others by the conjunction,but were in no case supposed to be acting divergently,—at least so far as the right senseof true religion is concerned.72. There is the famous Irenæus, 1313 and Clement of Rome; 1314 Dionysius of Rome, 1315and, strange to say, Dionysius of Alexandria, in his second Letter to his namesake, on“Conviction and Defence,” so concludes. I will give you his very words. “Following allthese, we, too, since we have received from the presbyters who were before us a form andrule, offering thanksgiving in the same terms with them, thus conclude our Letter to you.To God the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, glory and mightfor ever and ever; amen.” And no one can say that this passage has been altered. He wouldnot have so persistently stated that he had received a form and rule if he had said “in theSpirit.” For of this phrase the use is abundant: it was the use of “with” which required defence.Dionysius moreover in the middle of his treatise thus writes in opposition to theSabellians, “If by the hypostases being three they say that they are divided, there are three,though they like it not. Else let them destroy the divine Trinity altogether.” And again:“most divine on this account after the Unity is the Trinity.” 1316 Clement, in more primitivefashion, writes, “God lives, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.” 1317 And nowlet us hear how Irenæus, who lived near the times of the Apostles, mentions the Spirit inhis work “Against the Heresies.” 1318 “The Apostle rightly calls carnal them that are unbridledand carried away to their own desires, having no desire for the Holy Spirit,” 1319 and in anotherpassage Irenæus says, “The Apostle exclaimed that flesh and blood cannot inherit thekingdom of the heavens lest we, being without share in the divine Spirit, fall short of the1313 † c. 200.1314 † 100.1315 † 269.1316 Dionysius was Patriarch of Alexandria a.d. 247–265. Basil’s “strange to say” is of a piece with the viewof Dionysius’ heretical tendencies expressed in Letter ix. q.v. Athanasius, however, (De Sent. Dionysii) was satisfiedas to the orthodoxy of his predecessor. Bp. Westcott (Dict. C. Biog. i. 851) quotes Lumper (Hist. Pat. xii.86) as supposing that Basil’s charge against Dionysius of sowing the seeds of the Anomœan heresy was due toimperfect acquaintance with his writings. In Letter clxxxviii. Basil calls him “the Great,” which implies generalapproval.1317 Clem. Rom., Ep. ad Cor. lviii. Bp. Lightfoot’s Ap. Fathers, Pt. I. ii. 169.1318 Irenæus is near the Apostles in close connexion, as well as in time, through his personal knowledge ofPolycarp. Videhis Ep. to Florinus quoted in Euseb., Ecc. Hist. v. 20. In his work On the Ogdoad, quoted in thesame chapter, Irenæus says of himself that he τὴν πρωτὴν τῶν ᾽Αποστολῶν κατειληφέναι την διαδοχήν “hadhimself had the nearest succession of the Apostles.”1319 The reference is presumably to 1 Cor. ii. 11 and iii. 1.240