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

Dogmatic.work of St. Ambrose, composed in 381, for the Emperor Gratian, is “to a considerable extentan echo.” 470So in East and West a vigorous defence was maintained against the Macedonian assault.The Catholic position is exactly defined in the Synodical Letter sent by Damasus to Paulinusof Tyre in 378. 471 Basil died at the crisis of the campaign, and with no bright Pisgah viewof the ultimate passage into peace. The generalship was to pass into other hands. There issomething of the irony of fate, or of the mystery of Providence, in the fact that the voicecondemned by Basil to struggle against the mean din and rattle of Sasima should be thevehicle for impressing on the empire the truths which Basil held dear. Gregory of Sasimawas no archiepiscopal success at Constantinople. He was not an administrator or a man ofthe world. But he was a great divine and orator, and the imperial basilica of the Athanasiarang with outspoken declarations of the same doctrines, which Basil had more cautiouslysuggested to inevitable inference. The triumph was assured, Gregory was enthroned in St.Sophia, and under Theodosius the Catholic Faith was safe from molestation.470 Swete, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 71, who further notes: “St. Jerome is severe upon St. Ambrose forcopying Didymus, and says that the Archbishop of Milan had produced “ex Græcis bonis Latina non bona.’ Thework of the Latin Father is, however, by no means a mere copy; and other writers besides Didymus are laid undercontribution in the argument; e.g. St. Basil and perhaps St. Athanasius.”471 Theod. v. 11 in this edition, p. 139; Mansi iii. 486.75