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

To the Italians and Gauls.prayers in the open air, putting up with all the inconvenience of the weather with great patience,and waiting for help from the Lord.3. What lamentation can match these woes? What springs of tears are sufficient forthem? While, then, some men do seem to stand, while yet a trace of the old state of thingsis left, before utter shipwreck comes upon the Churches, hasten to us, hasten to us now,true brothers, we implore you; on our knees we implore you, hold out a helping hand. Mayyour brotherly bowels be moved toward us; may tears of sympathy flow; do not see, unmoved,half the empire swallowed up by error; do not let the light of the faith be put out in the placewhere it shone first.By what action you can then help matters, and how you are to show sympathy for theafflicted, you do not want to be told by us; the Holy Ghost will suggest to you. But unquestionably,if the survivors are to be saved, there is need of prompt action, and of the arrivalof a considerable number of brethren, that those who visit us may complete the number ofthe synod, in order that they may have weight in effecting a reform, not merely from thedignity of those whose emissaries they are, but also from their own number: thus they willrestore the creed drawn up by our fathers at Nicæa, proscribe the heresy, and, by bringinginto agreement all who are of one mind, speak peace to the Churches. For the saddest thingabout it all is that the sound part is divided against itself, and the troubles we are sufferingare like those which once befel Jerusalem when Vespasian was besieging it. The Jews of thattime were at once beset by foes without and consumed by the internal sedition of their ownpeople. In our case, too, in addition to the open attack of the heretics, the Churches are reducedto utter helplessness by the war raging among those who are supposed to be orthodox.For all these reasons we do indeed desire your help, that, for the future all who confess theapostolic faith may put an end to the schisms which they have unhappily devised, and bereduced for the future to the authority of the Church; that so, once more, the body of Christmay be complete, restored to integrity with all its members. Thus we shall not only praisethe blessings of others, which is all we can do now, but see our own Churches once morerestored to their pristine boast of orthodoxy. For, truly, the boon given you by the Lord isfit subject for the highest congratulation, your power of discernment between the spuriousand the genuine and pure, and your preaching the faith of the Fathers without any dissimulation.That faith we have received; that faith we know is stamped with the marks of theApostles; to that faith we assent, as well as to all that was canonically and lawfully promulgatedin the Synodical Letter. 23271792327 After noting that the Synodical Letter is to be found in Theodoret and in Sozomen (i.e. is in TheodoretI. viii. and in Socrates I. ix.) the Ben. Ed. express surprise that Basil should indicate concurrence with the SynodicalLetter, which defines the Son to be τῆς αὐτῆςὑποστασεως καὶ οὐσίας, while he is known to have taught thedistinction between ὑπόστασις and οὐσία. As a matter of fact, it is not in the Synodical Letter, but in the anathemasoriginally appended to the creed, that it is, not asserted that the Son is of the same, but, denied that He525