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

To Atarbius.Letter LXV. 2232To Atarbius. 2233If I continue to insist on the privileges to which my superior age entitles me, and waitfor you to take the initiative in communication , and if you, my friend, wish to adhere morepersistently to your evil counsel of inaction, what end will there be to our silence? However,where friendship is involved, to be defeated is in my opinion to win, and so I am quite readyto gave you precedence, and retire from the contest as to which should maintain his ownopinion. I have been the first to betake myself to writing, because I know that “charitybeareth all things…endureth all things…seeketh not her own” and so “never faileth.” 2234He who subjects himself to his neighbour in love can never be humiliated. I do beg you,then, at all events for the future, show the first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, Love; 2235 awaywith the angry man’s sullenness which you are showing me by your silence, and recover joyin your heart, peace with the brothers who are of one mind with you, and zeal and anxietyfor the continued safety of the Churches of the Lord. If I were not to make as strenuousefforts on behalf of the Churches as the opponents of sound doctrine make to subvert andutterly destroy them, you may be quite sure that there is nothing to prevent the truth frombeing swept away and destroyed by its enemies, and my being involved in the condemnation,for not shewing all possible anxiety for the unity of the Churches, with all zeal and eagernessin mutual unanimity and godly agreement. I exhort you then, drive out of your mind theidea that you need communion with no one else. To cut one’s self off from connexion withthe brethren is not the mark of one who is walking by love, nor yet the fulfilling of thecommandment of Christ. At the same time I do wish you, with all your good intentions,to take into account that the calamities of the war which are now all round about us 2236may one day be at our own doors, and if we too, like all the rest, have our share of outrage,1632232 Placed about 371, or, at all events, according to Maran, before the year 373, when the ill will of Atarbiustowards Basil was violently manifested.2233 Atarbius is recognised as bishop of Neocæsarea, partly on the evidence of the Codices Coislinanus andMedicæus, which describe him as of Neocæsarea, partly on a comparison of Letters lxv. and cxxvi., addressedto him, with the circumstances of the unnamed bishop of Neocæsarea referred to in Letter ccx. Moreover (cf.Bp. Lightfoot, D.C.B. i. 179) at the Council of Constantinople he represented the province of Pontus Polemoniacus,of which Neocæsarea was metropolis. On the authority of an allusion in Letter ccx. sec. 4, Atarbius is supposedto be a kinsman of Basil.2234 1 Cor. xiii. 7 and 8.2235 cf. Gal. v. 22.2236 i.e. the attacks of Valens on the Church.483