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

To Epiphanius the bishop.Letter CCLVIII. 3131To Epiphanius the bishop. 31321. It has long been expected that, in accordance with the prediction of our Lord, becauseof iniquity abounding, the love of the majority would wax cold. 3133 Now experience hasconfirmed this expectation. But though this condition of things has already obtained amongus here, it seems to be contradicted by the letter brought from your holiness. For verily itis no mere ordinary proof of love, first that you should remember an unworthy and insignificantperson like myself; and secondly, that you should send to visit me brethren who arefit and proper ministers of a correspondence of peace. For now, when every man is viewingevery one else with suspicion, no spectacle is rarer than that which you are presenting.Nowhere is pity to be seen; nowhere sympathy; nowhere a brotherly tear for a brother indistress. Not persecutions for the truth’s sake, not Churches with all their people in tears;not this great tale of troubles closing round us, are enough to stir us to anxiety for the welfareof one another. We jump on them that are fallen; we scratch and tear at wounded places;we who are supposed to agree with one another launch the curses that are uttered by theheretics; men who are in agreement on the most important matters are wholly severed fromone another on some one single point. How, then, can I do otherwise than admire him whoin such circumstances shews that his love to his neighbour is pure and guileless, and, thoughseparated from me by so great a distance of sea and land, gives my soul all the care he can?2. I have been specially struck with admiration at your having been distressed even bythe dispute of the monks on the Mount of Olives, and at your expressing a wish that somemeans might be found of reconciling them to one another. I have further been glad to hearthat you have not been unaware of the unfortunate steps, taken by certain persons, whichhave caused disturbance among the brethren, and that you have keenly interested yourselfeven in these matters. But I have deemed it hardly worthy of your wisdom that you shouldentrust the rectification of matters of such importance to me: for I am not guided by thegrace of God, because of my living in sin; I have no power of eloquence, because I havecheerfully withdrawn from vain studies; and I am not yet sufficiently versed in the doctrinesof the truth. I have therefore already written to my beloved brethren at the Mount of Olives,2953131 Placed in 377.3132 The learned and saintly bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. About this time he published his great work againstheresy, the Πανάριον, and also travelled to Antioch to reconcile the Apollinarian Vitalis to Paulinus. On thefailure of his efforts, and the complicated state of parties at Antioch at this time, cf. Epiphan., lxxvii. 20–23;Jerome, Epp. 57, 58, and Soz., H.E. vi. 25.3133 cf. Matt. xxiv. 12.809