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

The Presbyterate.various provinces in which the metropolitan of Cæsarea exercised exarchic authority. 117In the meantime the Semiarians were beginning to share with the Catholics the hardshipsinflicted by the imperial power. At Lampsacus in 364 they had condemned the results ofAriminum and Constantinople, and had reasserted the Antiochene Dedication Creed of341. In 366 they sent deputies to Liberius at Rome, who proved their orthodoxy by subscribingthe Nicene Creed. Basil had not been present at Lampsacus, 118 but he had met Eustathiusand other bishops on their way thither, and had no doubt influenced the decisions ofthe synod. Now the deputation to the West consisted of three of those bishops with whomhe was in communication, Eustathius of Sebasteia, Silvanus of Tarsus, and Theophilus ofCastabala. To the first it was an opportunity for regaining a position among the orthodoxprelates. It can hardly have been without the persuasion of Basil that the deputation wentso far as they did in accepting the homoousion, but it is a little singular, and indicative ofthe comparatively slow awakening of the Church in general to the perils of the degradationof the Holy Ghost, that no profession of faith was demanded from the Lampsacene delegateson this subject. 119 In 367 the council of Tyana accepted the restitution of the Semiarianbishops, and so far peace had been promoted. 120 To this period may very probably be referredthe compilation of the Liturgy which formed the basis of that which bears Basil’sname. 121 The claims of theology and of ecclesiastical administration in Basil’s time did not,however, prevent him from devoting much of his vast energy to works of charity. Probablythe great hospital for the housing and relief of travellers and the poor, which he establishedin the suburbs of Cæsarea, was planned, if not begun, in the latter years of his presbyterate,for its size and importance were made pretexts for denouncing him to Elias, the governorof Cappadocia, in 372, 122 and at the same period Valens contributed to its endowment. Itwas so extensive as to go by the name of Newtown, 123 and was in later years known as the“Basileiad.” 124 It was the mother of other similar institutions in the country-districts of thexxi117 cf. Maran, Vit. Bas. xiv. and D.C.A. s.v. exarch. The archbishop of Cæsarea was exarch of the provinces(ἐπαρχίαι) comprised in the Pontic Diocese. Maran refers to Letters xxviii., xxx., and xxxiv., as all shewing theimportant functions discharged by Basil while yet a presbyter.118 Ep. ccxxiii.119 Hefele, § 88. Schröckh, Kirch, xii. 31. Swete, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 54.120 Epp. ccxliv. and cclxiii.121 Greg. Naz., Or. xliii.122 Ep. xciv.123 ἡκαινὴ πόλις. Greg. Naz., Or. xliii. cf. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Bk. II. Chap. V.124 Soz. vi. 34.26