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

Against Eustathius of Sebasteia.and refrain myself? I have been patient like a travailing woman.” 2883 God grant that I mayboth receive the reward of silence, and gain some strength to confute my opponents, andthat thus, by confuting them, I may dry up the bitter torrent of falsehood that has gushedout against me. So might I say, “My soul has passed over the torrent;” 2884 and, “If it hadnot been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up against us,…then they hadswallowed us up quick, the water had drowned us.” 28852. Much time had I spent in vanity, and had wasted nearly all my youth in the vain labourwhich I underwent in acquiring the wisdom made foolish by God. Then once upon a time,like a man roused from deep sleep, I turned my eyes to the marvellous light of the truth ofthe Gospel, and I perceived the uselessness of “the wisdom of the princes of this world, thatcome to naught.” 2886 I wept many tears over my miserable life and I prayed that guidancemight be vouchsafed me to admit me to the doctrines of true religion. First of all was Iminded to make some mending of my ways, long perverted as they were by my intimacywith wicked men. Then I read the Gospel, and I saw there that a great means of reachingperfection was the selling of one’s goods, the sharing them with the poor, the giving up ofall care for this life, and the refusal to allow the soul to be turned by any sympathy to thingsof earth. And I prayed that I might find some one of the brethren who had chosen this wayof life, that with him I might cross life’s short 2887 and troubled strait. And many did I findin Alexandria, and many in the rest of Egypt, and others in Palestine, and in Cœle Syria,and in Mesopotamia. I admired their continence in living, and their endurance in toil; Iwas amazed at their persistency in prayer, and at their triumphing over sleep; subdued byno natural necessity, ever keeping their souls’ purpose high and free, in hunger, in thirst, incold, in nakedness, 2888 they never yielded to the body; they were never willing to waste attentionon it; always, as though living in a flesh that was not theirs, they shewed in very deedwhat it is to sojourn for a while in this life, 2889 and what to have one’s citizenship and homein heaven. 2890 All this moved my admiration. I called these men’s lives blessed, in that theydid in deed shew that they “bear about in their body the dying of Jesus.” 2891 And I prayedthat I, too, as far as in me lay, might imitate them.2632883 Isa. xlii. 14, LXX.2884 Ps. cxxiv. 5, LXX.2885 Ps. cxxiv. 3, 4, LXX.2886 1 Cor. ii. 6.2887 Al. deep.2888 2 Cor. xi. 27.2889 cf. Heb. xi. 13.2890 cf. Phil. iii. 20.2891 2 Cor. iv. 10.738