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

To the notables of Neocæsarea.your city to take charge of the education of the young, and a deputation of the first menamong you came to see me. 2771 Afterwards, when you all crowded round me, what wereyou not ready to give? what not to promise? Nevertheless you were not able to keep me.How then could I, who at that time would not listen when you invited me, now attempt tothrust myself on you uninvited? How could I, who when you complimented and admiredme, avoided you, have been intending to court you now that you calumniate me? Nothingof the kind, sirs; I am not quite so cheap. No man in his senses would go on board a boatwithout a steersman, or get alongside a Church where the men sitting at the helm arethemselves stirring up tempest and storm. Whose fault was it that the town was all full oftumult, when some were running away with no one after them, and others stealing off whenno invader was near, and all the wizards and dream-tellers were flourishing their bogeys?Whose fault was it else? Does not every child know that it was the mob-leaders’? Thereasons of their hatred to me it would be bad taste on my part to recount; but they are quiteeasy for you to apprehend. When bitterness and division have come to the last pitch ofsavagery, and the explanation of the cause is altogether groundless and ridiculous, then themental disease is plain, dangerous indeed to other people’s comfort, but greatly and personallycalamitous to the patient. And there is one charming point about them. Torn and rackedwith inward agony as they are, they cannot yet for very shame speak out about it. The statethey are in may be known not only from their behaviour to me, but from the rest of theirconduct. If it were unknown, it would not much matter. But the veritable cause of theirshunning communication with me may be unperceived by the majority among you. Listen;and I will tell you.3. There is going on among you a movement ruinous to the faith, disloyal to theapostolical and evangelical dogmas, disloyal too to the tradition of Gregory the truly great, 2772and of his successors up to the blessed Musonius, whose teaching is still ringing in yourears. 2773 For those men, who, from fear of confutation, are forging figments against me,are endeavouring to renew the old mischief of Sabellius, started long ago, and extinguishedby the tradition of the great Gregory. But do you bid goodbye to those wine-laden heads,bemuddled by the swelling fumes that mount from their debauch, and from me who amwide awake and from fear of God cannot keep silence, hear what plague is rife among you.Sabellianism is Judaism 2774 imported into the preaching of the Gospel under the guise ofChristianity. For if a man calls Father Son and Holy Ghost one thing of many faces, 27752771 i.e. when he was resident at Cæsarea in his earlier manhood. If Letter ccclviii. (from Libanius to Basilrefers to this period, it would seem that for a time Basil did undertake school work.2772 i.e.Gregory Thaumaturgus. cf. note on p. 247.2773 Musonius, bp. of Neocæsarea, who died in 368. cf. Ep. xxviii.2774 cf. De Sp. S. § 77, p. 49and Ep. clxxxix. p. 229.2775 ἓν πρᾶγμα πολύπροσωπον . Another ms. reading is πολυώνυμον, “of many names.”707