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| To Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople.
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To Nectarius, Bishop of
Constantinople. (Ep. CCII.)
The Care of God, which throughout the time before
us guarded the Churches, seems to have utterly forsaken this present
life. And my soul is immersed to such a degree by calamities that
the private sufferings of my own life hardly seem to be worth reckoning
among evils (though they are so numerous and great, that if they befel
anyone else I should think them unbearable); but I can only look at the
common sufferings of the Churches; for if at the present crisis some
pains be not taken to find a remedy for them, things will gradually get
into an altogether desperate condition. Those who follow the
heresy of Arius or Eudoxius (I cannot say who stirred them up to this
folly) are making a display of their disease, as if they had attained
some degree of confidence by collecting congregations as if by
permission. And they of the Macedonian party have reached such a
pitch of folly that they are arrogating to themselves the name of
Bishops, and are wandering about our districts babbling of
Eleusius4694
| 4694 Eleusius was Bishop of
Cyzicus, a prominent leader of the Semi-Arian party. He bore a
very high character for personal holiness, and approached more nearly
to orthodoxy than most of his associates, men like Basil of Ancyra,
Eustathius of Sebaste, etc. He obstinately maintained, however,
Macedonian views on the Deity of the Holy Ghost, even after their
condemnation by the Council of Constantinople. | as to their
ordinations. Our bosom evil, Eunomius, is no longer content with
merely existing; but unless he can draw away everyone with him to his
ruinous heresy, he thinks himself an injured man. All this,
however, is endurable. The most grievous item of all in the woes
of the Church is the boldness of the Apollinarians, whom your Holiness
has overlooked, I know not how, when providing themselves with
authority to hold meetings on an equality with myself. However,
you being, as you are, thoroughly instructed by the grace of God in the
Divine Mysteries on all points, are well informed, not only as to the
advocacy of the true faith, but also as to all those arguments which
have been devised by the heretics against the sound faith; and yet
perhaps it will not be unseasonable that your Excellency should hear
from my littleness that a pamphlet by Apollinarius has come into my
hands, the contents of which surpass all heretical pravity. For
he asserts that the Flesh which the Only-begotten Son assumed in the
Incarnation for the remodelling of our nature was no new acquisition,
but that that carnal nature was in the Son from the beginning.
And he puts forward as a witness to this monstrous assertion a garbled
quotation from the Gospels, namely, No man hath Ascended up into Heaven
save He which came down from Heaven, even the Son of Man which is in
Heaven.4695
As though
even before He came down He was the Son of Man, and when He came down
He brought with Him that Flesh, which it appears He had in Heaven, as
though it had existed before the ages, and been joined with His
Essence. For he alleges another saying of an Apostle, which he
cuts off from the whole body of its context, that The Second Man is the
Lord from Heaven.4696
Then he
assumes that that Man who came down from above is without a mind, but
that the Godhead of the Only-begotten fulfils the function of mind, and
is the third part of this human composite, inasmuch as soul and body
are in it on its human side, but not mind, the place of which is taken
by God the Word. This is not yet the most serious part of it;
that which is most terrible of all is that he declares that the
Only-begotten God, the Judge of all, the Prince of Life, the Destroyer
of Death, is mortal, and underwent the Passion in His proper Godhead;
and that in the three days’ death of His body, His Godhead also
was put to death with His body, and thus was raised again from the dead
by the Father. It would be tedious to go through all the other
propositions which he adds to these monstrous absurdities. Now,
if they who hold such views have authority to meet, your Wisdom
approved in Christ must see that, inasmuch as we do not approve their
views, any permission of assembly granted to them is nothing less than
a declaration that their view is thought more true than ours. For
if they are permitted to teach their view as godly men, and with all
confidence to preach their doctrine, it is manifest that the doctrine
of the Church has been condemned, as though the truth were on their
side. For nature does not admit of two contrary doctrines on the
same subject being both true. How then could your noble and lofty
mind submit to suspend your usual courage in regard to the correction
of so great an evil? But even though there is no precedent for
such a course, let your inimitable perfection in virtue stand up at a
crisis like the present, and teach our most pious Emperor, that no gain will come from his zeal
for the Church on other points if he allows such an evil to gain
strength from freedom of speech for the subversion of sound
faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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