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

Libanius to Basil.Letter CCCXL.Libanius to Basil.Had you been for a long time considering how best you could reply to my letter aboutyours, you could not in my judgment have acquitted yourself better than by writing as youhave written now. You call me a sophist, and you allege that it is a sophist’s business tomake small things great and great things small. And you maintain that the object of myletter was to prove yours a good one, when it was not a good one, and that it was no betterthan the one which you have sent last, and, in a word that you have no power of expression,the books which you have now in hand producing no such effect, and the eloquence whichyou once possessed having all disappeared. Now, in the endeavour to prove this, you havemade this epistle too, which you are reviling, so admirable, that my visitors could not refrainfrom leaping with admiration as it was being read. I was astonished that after your tryingto run down the former one by this, by saying that the former one was like it, you have reallycomplimented the former by it. To carry out your object, you ought to have made this oneworse, that you might slander the former. But it is not like you, I think, to do despite to thetruth. It would have been done despite to, if you had purposely written badly, and not putout the powers you have. It would be characteristic of you not to find fault with what isworthy of praise, lest in your attempt to make great things insignificant, your proceedingsreduce you to the rank of the sophists. Keep to the books which you say are inferior in style,though better in sense. No one hinders you. But of the principles which are ever mine, andonce were yours, the roots both remain and will remain, as long as you exist. Though youwater them ever so little, no length of time will ever completely destroy them.907