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

To Eustathius the physician.To Eustathius the physician. 2652Letter CLXXXIX. 2651Humanity is the regular business of all you who practise as physicians. And, in myopinion, to put your science at the head and front of life’s pursuits is to decide reasonablyand rightly. This at all events seems to be the case if man’s most precious possession, life,is painful and not worth living, unless it be lived in health, and if for health we are dependenton your skill. In your own case medicine is seen, as it were, with two right hands; you enlargethe accepted limits of philanthropy by not confining the application of your skill to men’sbodies, but by attending also to the cure of the diseases of their souls. It is not only in accordancewith popular report that I thus write. I am moved by the personal experiencewhich I have had on many occasions and to a remarkable degree at the present time, in themidst of the unspeakable wickedness of our enemies, which has flooded our life like a noxioustorrent. You have most skilfully dispersed it and by pouring in your soothing words haveallayed the inflammation of my heart. Having regard to the successive and diversified attacksof my enemies against me, I thought that I ought to keep silence and to bear their successiveassaults without reply, and without attempting to contradict foes armed with a lie, that terribleweapon which too often drives its point through the heart of truth herself. You did well inurging me not to abandon the defence of truth, but rather to convict our calumniators, lesthaply, by the success of lies, many be hurt.2. In adopting an unexpected attitude of hatred against me my opponents seem to berepeating the old story in Æsop. He makes the wolf bring certain charges against the lamb,as being really ashamed to seem to kill a creature who had done him no harm without somereasonable pretext; then when the lamb easily rebuts the slander, the wolf, none the less,continues his attack, and, though defeated in equity, comes off winner in biting. Just sowith those who seem to count hatred to me as a virtue. They will perhaps blush to hate mewithout a cause, and so invent pleas and charges against me, without abiding by any of theirallegations, but urging as the ground of their detestation now this, now that, and nowsomething else. In no single case is their malice consistent; but when they are baulked inone charge they cling to another and, foiled in this, have recourse to a third; and if all theiraccusations are scattered they do not drop their ill-will. They say that I preach three Gods,dinning the charge into the ears of the mob and pressing the calumny plausibly and persistently.Nevertheless, truth is fighting on my side; and both in public to all the world, and inprivate to all whom I meet, I prove that I anathematize every one who maintains three Gods2292651 Placed in 374 or the beginning of 375.2652 cf. Letter cli. This doctrinal statement is also found among the works of Gregory of Nyssa; but is moreprobably to be attributed to Basil. Vide Tillem. Mém. Ecc. ix. 678.660