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

To Count Magnenianus.Letter CLXXV. 2576To Count Magnenianus. 2577Your excellency lately wrote to me, plainly charging me, besides other matters, to writeconcerning the Faith. I admire your zeal in the matter, and I pray God that your choice ofgood things may be persistent, and that, advancing in knowledge and good works, you maybe made perfect. But I have no wish to leave behind me a treatise on the Faith, or to writevarious creeds, and so I have declined to send what you asked. 2578 You seem to me to besurrounded by the din of your men there, idle fellows, who say certain things to calumniateme, with the idea that they will improve their own position by lying disgracefully againstme. 2579 The past shews what they are, and future experience will shew them in still plainercolours. I, however, call on all who trust in Christ not to busy themselves in opposition tothe ancient faith, but, as we believe, so to be baptized, and, as we are baptized, so to offerthe doxology. 2580 It is enough for us to confess those names which we have received fromHoly Scripture, and to shun all innovation about them. Our salvation does not lie in theinvention of modes of address, but in the sound confession of the Godhead in which wehave professed our faith.2576 Written probably early in 374.2577 One ms. reads Magninianus. On the identification of this officer with the recipient of cccxxv., see thatletter.2578 But what Basil declined to do at the prompting of Magnenianus, he shortly afterwards did for Amphilochius,and wrote the De Spiritu Sancto.2579 Maran (V. Basilxxx.) thinks that the allusion is to Atarbuis of Neocæsarea and to some of his presbyters.cf. Letter ccx.2580 cf. De Sp. Scto. p. 17.636