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

To the Westerns.Letter CCXLII. 3030To the Westerns. 30311. The Holy God has promised a happy of issue out of all their infirmities to those thattrust in Him. We, therefore, though we have been cut off in a mid-ocean of troubles, thoughwe are tossed by the great waves raised up against us by the spirits of wickedness, neverthelesshold out in Christ Who strengthens us. We have not slackened the strength of our zeal forthe Churches, nor, as though despairing of our salvation, while the billows in the tempestrise above our heads, do we look to be destroyed. On the contrary, we are still holding outwith all possible earnestness, remembering how even he who was swallowed by the seamonster, because he did not despair of his life, but cried to the Lord, was saved. Thus toowe, though we have reached the last pitch of peril, do not give up our hope in God. Onevery side we see His succour round about us. For these reasons now we turn our eyes toyou, right honourable brethren. In many an hour of our affliction we have expected thatyou would be at our side; and disappointed in that hope we have said to ourselves, “I lookedfor some to take pity and there was none; and for comforters but I found none.” 3032 Oursufferings are such as to have reached the confines of the empire; and since, when onemember suffers, all the members suffer, 3033 it is doubtless right that your pity should beshown to us who have been so long in trouble. For that sympathy, which we have hopedyou of your charity feel for us, is caused less by nearness of place than by union of spirit.2. How comes it to pass then that we have received nothing of what is due to us by thelaw of love; no letter of consolation, no visit from brethren? This is now the thirteenth yearsince the war of heresy began against us. 3034 In this the Churches have suffered moretribulations than all those which are on record since Christ’s gospel was first preached. 30353030 Placed in 376.3031 This and the following letter refer to the earlier of two missions of Dorotheus to the West. In the latterhe carried Letter cclxiii. The earlier was successful at least to the extent of winning sympathy. Maran (Vit. Bas.cap. xxxv.) places it not earlier than the Easter of 376, and objects to the earlier date assigned by Tillemont.3032 Ps. lxix. 20.3033 1 Cor. xii. 26.3034 Valens began the thirteenth year of his reign in the March of 376, and this fact is one of Maran’s reasonsfor placing this letter where he does. Tillemont reckons the thirteen years from 361 to 374, but Maran pointsout that if the Easterns had wanted to include the persecution of Constantius they might have gone farther back,while even then the lull under Julian would have broken the continuity of the attack. Vit. Bas. xxxv. cf. note onp. 48.3035 A rhetorical expression not to be taken literally. Some of the enormities committed under Valens, e.g.the alleged massacre of the Orthodox delegates off Bithynia in 370 (Soz. vi. 14, Theod. iv. 21), would stand out781