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

To the Church of Neocæsarea. Consolatory.Letter XXVIII. 1994To the Church of Neocæsarea. Consolatory. 19951. What has befallen you strongly moved me to visit you, with the double object ofjoining with you, who are near and dear to me, in paying all respect to the blessed dead, andof being more closely associated with you in your trouble by seeing your sorrow with myown eyes, and so being able to take counsel with you as to what is to be done. But manycauses hinder my being able to approach you in person, and it remains for me to communicatewith you in writing. The admirable qualities of the departed, on account of whichwe chiefly estimate the greatness of our loss, are indeed too many to be enumerated in aletter; and it is, besides, no time to be discussing the multitude of his good deeds, when ourspirits are thus prostrated with grief. For of all that he did, what can we ever forget? Whatcould we deem deserving of silence? To tell all at once were impossible; to tell a part would,I fear, involve disloyalty to the truth. A man has passed away who surpassed all his contemporariesin all the good things that are within man’s reach; a prop of his country; an ornamentof the churches; a pillar and support of the truth; a stay of the faith of Christ; a protector ofhis friends; a stout foe of his opponents; a guardian of the principles of his fathers; an enemyof innovation; exhibiting in himself the ancient fashion of the Church, and making the stateof the Church put under him conform to the ancient constitution, as to a sacred model, sothat all who lived with him seemed to live in the society of them that used to shine like lightsin the world two hundred years ago and more. So your bishop put forth nothing of his own,no novel invention; but, as the blessing of Moses has it, he knew how to bring out of thesecret and good stores of his heart, “old store, and the old because of the new.” 1996 Thus itcame about that in meetings of his fellow bishops he was not ranked according to his age,but, by reason of the old age of his wisdom, he was unanimously conceded precedence overall the rest. And no one who looks at your condition need go far to seek the advantages ofsuch a course of training. For, so far as I know, you alone, or, at all events, you and but veryfew others, in the midst of such a storm and whirlwind of affairs, were able under his goodguidance to live your lives unshaken by the waves. You were never reached by heretics’buffering blasts, which bring shipwreck and drowning on unstable souls; and that you may1994 Placed in 368.1995 i.e. on the death of Musonius, bp. of Neocæsarea. Musonius is not named, but he is inferred to be thebishop referred to in Ep. ccx., in which Basil asserts that sound doctrine prevailed in Neocæsarea up to the timeof “the blessed Musonius, whose teaching still rings in your ears.”1996 Lev. xxvi. 10.413