Ep. CLII.
(On his retirement from Constantinople Gregory had at
the request of the Bishops of the Province, and especially of Theodore
of Tyana the Metropolitan, and Bosporius Bishop of Colonia (see letters
above) and at the earnest solicitation of the people, undertaken the
charge of the Diocese of Nazianzus; but he very soon found that his
health was not equal to so great a task, and that he could not fulfil
its calls upon him. He struggled on for some time, but at length,
finding himself quite unequal to it, he wrote as follows to the
Metropolitan:)
It is time for me to use these words of Scripture,
To whom shall I cry when I am wronged?4769
Who will stretch out a
hand to me when
I am
oppressed? To whom shall the burden of this
Church pass, in
its present
evil and paralysed condition? I
protest before
God
and the
Elect Angels that the
Flock of
God is being unrighteously dealt
with in being left without a
Shepherd or a
Bishop, through my being
laid on the shelf. For I am a
prisoner to my
ill health and have
been very quickly removed thereby from the
Church, and made quite
useless to everybody, every day breathing my last, and getting more and
more
crushed by my
duties. If the
Province had any other head, it
would have been my
duty to
cry out and
protest to it continually.
But since Your
Reverence is the Superior, it is to you I must
look. For, to leave out everything else, you shall
learn from my
fellow-
priests, Eulalius the Chorepiscopus
4770
| 4770 Chorepiscopi;—a
grade of clergy called into existence in the latter part of the Third
Century, first in Asia Minor, to meet the difficulty of providing
Episcopal supervision in the country districts of large Dioceses.
They seemed to have been allowed to confer the Minor, but not the Holy
Orders, unless by special commission from the Diocesan, on the ground
of their lack of original Jurisdiction. That they were originally
possessed of full Episcopal Orders there can be no doubt, but
eventually the position was allowed to be held by Priests, and in the
West the office became practically merged in that of the
Archdeacon. |
and Celeusius, whom I have specially sent to Your
Reverence, what these
robbers
4771
who have now got
the upper
hand, are both doing and threatening. To repress them
is not in the
power of my
weakness, but
belongs to your skill and
strength; since to you, with His other
gifts God has given that of
strength also for the protection of His
Church. If in saying and
writing this I cannot get a hearing, I shall take the only course
remaining to me, that of publicly proclaiming and making known that
this
Church needs a Bishop, in order that it may not be injured by my
feeble health. What is to follow is matter for your
consideration.
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