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

Exposition of the present state of the Churches.spirit and individual suspicion. 1342 But what storm at sea was ever so fierce and wild as thistempest of the Churches? In it every landmark of the Fathers has been moved; everyfoundation, every bulwark of opinion has been shaken: everything buoyed up on the unsoundis dashed about and shaken down. We attack one another. We are overthrown by one another.If our enemy is not the first to strike us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side.If a foeman is stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down. There is at least thisbond of union between us that we hate our common foes, but no sooner have the enemygone by than we find enemies in one another. And who could make a complete list of allthe wrecks? Some have gone to the bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through theunsuspected treachery of their allies, some from the blundering of their own officers. Wesee, as it were, whole churches, crews and all, dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefsof disingenuous heresy, while others of the enemies of the Spirit 1343 of Salvation have seized491342 In Ep. ccxlii. written in 376, St. Basil says: “This is the thirteenth year since the outbreak of the war ofheretics against us.” 363 is the date of the Acacian Council of Antioch; 364 of the accession of Valens andValentian, of the Semi-Arian Synod of Lampsacus, and of St. Basil’s ordination to the priesthood and bookagainst Eunomius. On the propagation by scission and innumerable subdivisions of Arianism Cannon Brightwrites: The extraordinary versatility, the argumentative subtlety, and the too frequent profanity of Arianism arematters of which a few lines can give no idea. But it is necessary, in even the briefest notice of this long-livedheresy, to remark on the contrast between its changeable inventiveness and the simple steadfastness of Catholicdoctrine. On the one side, some twenty different creeds (of which several, however, were rather negatively thanpositively heterodox) and three main sects, the Semi-Arians, with their formula of Homoiousion, i.e. the Son islike in essence to the Father; the Acacians, vaguely calling Him like (Homoion); the Aetians, boldly calling Himunlike, as much as to say He is in no sense Divine. On the other side, the Church with the Nicene Creed, confessingHim as Homoousion, ‘of one essence with the Father,’ meaning thereby, as her great champion repeatedlybore witness, to secure belief in the reality of the Divine Sonship, and therefore in the real Deity, as distinguishedfrom the titular deity which was so freely conceded to Him by the Arians.” Cannon Bright, St. Leo on the Incarnation,p. 140 Socrates (ii. 41), pausing at 360, enumerates, after Nicæa: 1. 1st of Antioch (omitted the ὁμοούσιον,a.d. 341). 2. 2d of Antioch (omitted the ὁμοούσιον, a.d. 341). 3. The Creed brought to Constans in Gaul byNarcissus and other Arians in 342. 4. The Creed “sent by Eudoxius of Germanicia into Italy,” i.e. the “Macrostich,”or “Lengthy Creed,” rejected at Milan in 346. 5. The 1st Creed of Sirmium; i.e. the Macrostich with 26 additionalclauses, 351. 6. The 2d Sirmian Creed. The “manifesto;” called by Athanasius (De Synod. 28) “the blasphemy,”357. 7. The 3d Sirmian, or “dated Creed,” in the consulship of Flavius Eusebius and Hypatius, May 22d, 359.8. The Acacian Creed of Seleucia, 359. 9. The Creed of Ariminum adopted at Constantinople, as revised atNike.1343 On the authority of the ms. of the tenth century at Paris, called by the Ben. Editors Regius Secundus,they read for πνεύματος πάθους, denying πνευματος to be consistent with the style and practice of Basil, whothey say, never uses the epithet σωτήοιος of the Spirit. Mr. C.F.H. Johnston notes that St. Basil “always attributes247