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

To the Neocæsareans.Letter CCIV. 2733To the Neocæsareans. 27342431. [There has been a long silence on both sides, revered and well-beloved brethren, justas if there were angry feelings between us. Yet who is there so sullen and implacable towardsthe party which has injured him, as to lengthen out the resentment which has begun indisgust through almost a whole life of man?] This [is happening in our case, no just occasionof estrangement existing, as far as I myself know, but on the contrary, there being, from thefirst, many strong reasons for the closest friendship and unity. The greatest and first is this,our Lord’s command, pointedly saying, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciplesif ye have love one to another.” 2735 ] Again, the apostle clearly sets before us the good ofcharity where he tells us that love is the fulfilling of the law; 2736 and again where he saysthat charity is a good thing to be preferred to all great and good things, in the words, “ThoughI speak with tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as soundingbrass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand allmysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor andthough I give my body to be burnt and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” 2737 Notthat each of the points enumerated could be performed without love, but that the Holy Onewishes, as He Himself has said, to attribute to the commandment super-eminent excellencyby the figure of hyperbole. 27382. [Next, if it tend much towards intimacy to have the same teachers, there are to youand to me the same teachers of God’s mysteries, and spiritual Fathers, who from the beginningwere the founders of your Church. I mean the great Gregory, and all who succeeding2733 Placed in 375.2734 Newman introduces his extracts from the following letter with the prefatory remark: “If Basil’s Semi-Arian connexions brought suspicion upon himself in the eyes of Catholic believers, much more would they beobnoxious to persons attached, as certain Neocæsareans were, to the Sabellian party, who were in the oppositeextreme to the Semi-Arians and their especial enemies in those times. It is not wonderful, then, that he had towrite to the church in question in a strain like the following.” (Ch. of the Fathers. p. 98.) The passages inbrackets are Newman’s version. The prime agent in the slandering of Basil was presumably Atarbius, bishopof Neocæsarea.2735 John xiii. 35.2736 Rom. xiii. 10.2737 1 Cor. xiii. 1–3.2738 The allusion may be to Mark xi. 23, but St. Paul would probably reply to Basil that each of the pointsenumerated might proceed not from love, but from vanity, ambition, or fanaticism.692