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.”74. But where shall I rank the great Gregory, 1328 and the words uttered by him? Shallwe not place among Apostles and Prophets a man who walked by the same Spirit as they; 1329who never through all his days diverged from the footprints of the saints; who maintained,as long as he lived, the exact principles of evangelical citizenship? I am sure that we shalldo the truth a wrong if we refuse to number that soul with the people of God, shining as itdid like a beacon in the Church of God; for by the fellow-working of the Spirit the powerwhich he had over demons was tremendous, and so gifted was he with the grace of the word“for obedience to the faith among…the nations,” 1330 that, although only seventeen Christianswere handed over to him, he brought the whole people alike in town and country throughknowledge to God. He too by Christ’s mighty name commanded even rivers to change theircourse, 1331 and caused a lake, which afforded a ground of quarrel to some covetous brethren,to dry up. 1332 Moreover his predictions of things to come were such as in no wise to fallshort of those of the great prophets. To recount all his wonderful works in detail would betoo long a task. By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the Spirit in all powerand in signs and in marvels, he was styled a second Moses by the very enemies of the Church.Thus in all that he through grace accomplished, alike by word and deed, a light seemed everto be shining, token of the heavenly power from the unseen which followed him. To thisday he is a great object of admiration to the people of his own neighbourhood, and hismemory, established in the churches ever fresh and green, is not dulled by length of time.Thus not a practice, not a word, not a mystic rite has been added to the Church besides whathe bequeathed to it. Hence truly on account of the antiquity of their institution many oftheir ceremonies appear to be defective. 1333 For his successors in the administration of theChurches could not endure to accept any subsequent discovery in addition to what had hadhis sanction. Now one of the institutions of Gregory is the very form of the doxology towhich objection is now made, preserved by the Church on the authority of his tradition; astatement which may be verified without much trouble by any one who likes to make a short471328 i.e. Gregory, bishop of Neocæsarea, known as Gregorius Thaumaturgus, or Gregory the Wonderworker.To the modern reader “Gregory the Great” more naturally suggests Gregory of Nazianzus, but this hehardly was to his friend and contemporary, though the title had accrued to him by the time of the acceptedEphesine Council in 431 (vide Labbe, vol. iv. p. 1192) Gregory the Wonder-worker, † c. 270.1329 2 Cor. xii. 18.1330 Rom. i. 5.1331 e.g.according to the legend, the Lycus. cf. Newman, Essays on Miracles, p. 267.1332 The story is told by Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Greg. Thaum. Migne xlvi. 926–930.1333 The Neocæsareans appear to have entertained a Puritan objection to the antiphonal psalmody becominggeneral in the Church in the time of Basil. cf. Ep. ccvii.243