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

To Chilo, his disciple.Letter XLII. 2060To Chilo, his disciple.1. If, my true brother, you gladly suffer yourself to be advised by me as to what courseof action you should pursue, specially in the points in which you have referred to me foradvice, you will owe me your salvation. Many men have had the courage to enter upon thesolitary life; but to live it out to the end is a task which perhaps has been achieved by few.The end is not necessarily involved in the intention; yet in the end is the guerdon of thetoil. No advantage, therefore, accrues to men who fail to press on to the end of what theyhave in view and only adopt the solitary’s life in its inception. Nay, they make their professionridiculous, and are charged by outsiders with unmanliness and instability of purpose. Ofthese, moreover, the Lord says, who wishing to build a house “sitteth not down first andcounteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it? lest haply after he hath laid thefoundation and is not able to finish it,” the passers-by “begin to mock him saying,” this manlaid a foundation “and was not able to finish.” 2061 Let the start, then, mean that you heartilyadvance in virtue. The right noble athlete Paul, wishing us not to rest in easy security onso much of our life as may have been lived well in the past, but, every day to attain furtherprogress, says “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto thosethings which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling.” 2062 Sotruly stands the whole of human life, not contented with what has gone before and fed notso much on the past as on the future. For how is a man the better for having his belly filledyesterday, if his natural hunger fails to find its proper satisfaction in food to-day? In thesame way the soul gains nothing by yesterday’s virtue unless it be followed by the rightconduct of to-day. For it is said “I shall judge thee as I shall find thee.”2. Vain then is the labour of the righteous man, and free from blame is the way of thesinner, if a change befall, and the former turn from the better to the worse, and the latterfrom the worse to the better. So we hear from Ezekiel teaching as it were in the name of theLord, when he says, “if the righteous turneth away and committeth iniquity, I will not rememberthe righteousness which he committed before; in his sin he shall die,” 2063 and sotoo about the sinner; if he turn away from his wickedness, and do that which is right, he1442060 This and the four succeeding letters must be placed before the episcopate. Their genuineness has beencontested, but apparently without much reason. In one of the Parisian Codices the title of xlii. is given with thenote: “Some attribute this work to the holy Nilus.” Ceillier (iv. 435–437) is of opinion that, so far as style goes,they must stand or fall together, and points out that xlvii. is cited entire as Basil’s by Metaphrastes.2061 Luke xiv. 28, 30.2062 Phil. iii. 13, 14.2063 cf. Ezek. xviii. 24.438