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

To a lapsed Monk.Letter XLIV. 2092To a lapsed Monk. 20931. I do not wish you joy, for there is no joy for the wicked. Even now I cannot believeit; my heart cannot conceive iniquity so great as the crime which you have committed; if,that is, the truth really is what is generally understood. I am at a loss to think how wisdomso deep can have been made to disappear; how such exact discipline can have been undone;whence blindness so profound can have been shed round you; how with utter inconsideratenessyou have wrought such destruction of souls. If this be true, you have given overyour own soul to the pit, and have slackened the earnestness of all who have heard of yourimpiety. You have set at nought the faith; you have missed the glorious fight. I grieve overyou. What cleric 2094 does not lament as he hears? What ecclesiastic does not beat thebreast? What layman is not downcast? What ascetic is not sad? Haply, even the sun hasgrown dark at your fall, and the powers of heaven have been shaken at your destruction.Even senseless stones have shed tears at your madness; even your enemies have wept at thegreatness of your iniquity. Oh hardness of heart! Oh cruelty! You did not fear God; youdid not reverence men; you cared nothing for your friends; you made shipwreck of all atonce; at once you were stripped of all. Once more I grieve over you, unhappy man. Youwere proclaiming to all the power of the kingdom, and you fell from it. You were makingall stand in fear of your teaching, and there was no fear of God before your eyes. You werepreaching purity, and you are found polluted. You were priding yourself on your poverty,and you are convicted of covetousness; you were demonstrating and explaining the chastisementof God, and you yourself brought chastisement on your own head. How am I tolament you, how grieve for you? How is Lucifer that was rising in the morning fallen anddashed on the ground? Both the ears of every hearer will tingle. How is the Nazarite,brighter than gold, become dark above pitch? How has the glorious son of Sion become anunprofitable vessel! Of him, whose memory of the sacred Scriptures was in all men’s mouths,the memory to-day has perished with the sound. The man of quick intelligence has quicklyperished. The man of manifold wit has wrought manifold iniquity. All who profited byyour teaching have been injured by your fall. All who came to listen to your conversationhave stopped their ears at your fall. I, sorrowful and downcast, weakened in every way,eating ashes for bread and with sackcloth on my wound, am thus recounting your praises;1472092 To be ranked with the former letter.2093 One ms. adds, in a later hand, Alexius.2094 ἱερεύς. When first this word and its correlatives came to be used of the Christian ministry it was appliedgenerally to the clergy. cf. Letter of the Council of Illyricum in Theod., Ecc. Hist. iv. 8, and note on Letter liv. p.157.445