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

To the Chorepiscopi.Letter LIII. 2192To the Chorepiscopi. 21931. My soul is deeply pained at the enormity of the matter on which I write, if for thisonly, that it has caused general suspicion and talk. But so far it has seemed to me incredible.I hope then that what I am writing about it may be taken by the guilty as medicine, by theinnocent as a warning, by the indifferent, in which class I trust none of you may be found,as a testimony. And what is it of which I speak? There is a report that some of you takemoney from candidates for ordination, 2194 and excuse it on grounds of religion. This isindeed worse. If any one does evil under the guise of good he deserves double punishment;because he not only does what is in itself not good, but, so to say, makes good an accomplicein the commission of sin. If the allegation be true, let it be so no more. Let a better state ofthings begin. To the recipient of the bribe it must be said, as was said by the Apostles tohim who was willing to give money to buy the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, “Thy moneyperish with thee. 2195 It is a lighter sin to wish in ignorance to buy, than it is to sell, the giftof God. A sale it was; and if you sell what you received as a free gift you will be deprived ofthe boon, as though you were yourself sold to Satan. You are obtruding the traffic of thehuckster into spiritual things and into the Church where we are entrusted with the bodyand blood of Christ. These things must not be. And I will mention wherein lies an ingeniouscontrivance. They think that there is no sin because they take the money not before butafter the ordination; but to take is to take at whatever time.2. I exhort you, then, abandon this gain, or, I would rather say, this approach to Hell.Do not, by defiling your hands with such bribes, render yourselves unfit to celebrate holy1572192 Placed in the beginning of the episcopate.2193 “A class of ministers between bishops proper and presbyters, defined in the Arabic version of the Nicenecanons to be ‘loco episcopi super villas et monasteria et sacerdotes villarum;’ called into existence in the latterpart of the third century, and first in Asia Minor, in order to meet the wants of episcopal supervision in thecountry parts of the now enlarged dioceses without subdivision: first mentioned in the Councils of Ancyra andNeo-Cæsarea a.d. 314.” D.C.A. i. 354. Three mss. give the title “to the bishops under him.” The Ben. Ed. remarks:“Liquet Basilium agere de episcopis sibi subditis. Nam qui proprie dicebantur chorepiscopi, manus non ponebant,sed clero inferiores ministros ascribebant, ut videre est in epist. sequenti. Sed tamen ipsi etiam episcopi, qui Ecclesiasmetropoli subjectas regebant, interdum vocabuntur chorepiscopi. Queritur enim Gregorius Naz. in carmineDe vita sua. quod a Basilio, qui quinquaginta chorepiscopos sub se habebat, vilissimi oppiduli constitutus episcopusfuisset. τούτοις μ᾽ ὁ πεντήκοντα χωρεπισκόποις στενούμενος δέδωκεν Hoc exemplo confirmatur vetustissimorumcodicum scriptura quam secuti sumus.2194 cf. note on Theodoret, iv. 20, p. 125.2195 Acts viii. 20.467