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| To the clergy of Neocæsarea.
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Letter
CCVII.2754
To the clergy of Neocæsarea.
You all concur in hating
me. To a man you have followed the leader of the war against
me.2755
| 2755 i.e.
Atarbius of Neocæsarea. | I was
therefore minded to say not a word to any one. I determined
that I would write no friendly letter; that I would start no
communication, but keep my sorrow in silence to myself. Yet
it is wrong to keep silence in the face of calumny; not that by
contradiction we may vindicate ourselves, but that we may not
allow a lie to travel further and its victims to be harmed.
I have therefore thought it necessary to put this matter also
before you all, and to write a letter to you, although, when I
recently wrote to all the presbyterate in common, you did not do
me the honour to send me a reply. Do not, my brethren,
gratify the vanity of those who are filling your minds with
pernicious opinions. Do not consent to look lightly on,
when, to your knowledge, God’s people are being subverted by
impious teaching. None but Sabellius the Libyan2756
| 2756 Basil is
described as the earliest authority for making Sabellius an African
by birth. (D.C.B. iv. 569) There is no
contemporary authority for the statement. | and Marcellus the Galatian2757
have dared to teach and write what the
leaders of your people are attempting to bring forward among
you as their own
private discovery. They are making a great talk about it,
but they are perfectly powerless to give their sophisms and
fallacies even any colour of truth. In their harangues
against me they shrink from no wickedness, and persistently refuse
to meet me. Why? Is it not because they are afraid of
being convicted for their own wicked opinions? Yes; and in
their attacks upon me they have become so lost to all sense of
shame as to invent certain dreams to my discredit while they
falsely accuse my teaching of being pernicious. Let them
take upon their own heads all the visions of the autumn months;
they can fix no blasphemy on me, for in every Church there are
many to testify to the truth.
2. When they are asked the reason for this furious
and truceless war, they allege psalms and a kind of music varying from
the custom which has obtained among you, and similar pretexts of which
they ought to be ashamed. We are, moreover, accused because we
maintain men in the practice of true religion who have renounced the
world and all those cares of this life, which the Lord likens to thorns
that do not allow the word to bring forth fruit. Men of this kind
carry about in the body the deadness of Jesus; they have taken up their
own cross, and are followers of God. I would gladly give my life
if these really were my faults, and if I had men with me owning me as
teacher who had chosen this ascetic life. I hear that virtue of
this kind is to be found now in Egypt, and there are, peradventure,
some men in Palestine whose conversation follows the precepts of the
Gospel. I am told too that some perfect and blessed men are to be
found in Mesopotamia. We, in comparison with the perfect, are
children. But if women also have chosen to live the Gospel life,
preferring virginity to wedlock, leading captive the lust of the flesh,
and living in the mourning which is called blessed, they are blessed in
their profession wherever they are to be found. We, however, have
few instances of this to show, for with us people are still in an
elementary stage and are being gradually brought. to piety. If
any charges of disorder are brought against the life of our women I do
not undertake to defend them. One thing, however, I do say and
that is, that these bold hearts, these unbridled mouths are ever
fearlessly uttering what Satan, the father of lies, has hitherto been
unable to say. I wish you to know that we rejoice to have
assemblies of both men and women, whose conversation is in heaven and
who have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof;
they take no thought for food and raiment, but remain undisturbed
beside their Lord, continuing night and day in prayer. Their lips
speak not of the deeds of men: they sing hymns to God
continually, working with their own hands that they may have to
distribute to them that need.
3. Now as to the charge relating to the
singing of psalms, whereby my calumniators specially scare the simpler
folk, my reply is this. The customs which now obtain are
agreeable to those of all the Churches of God. Among us the
people go at night to the house of prayer, and, in distress,
affliction, and continual tears, making confession to God, at last rise
from their prayers and begin to sing psalms. And now, divided
into two parts, they sing antiphonally with one another, thus at once
confirming their study of the Gospels,2758
| 2758 τῶν
λογίων. cf.
note on Theodoret, p. 155. |
and at the same time producing for themselves a heedful temper and a
heart free from distraction. Afterwards they again commit the
prelude of the strain to one, and the rest take it up; and so after
passing the night in various psalmody, praying at intervals as the day
begins to dawn, all together, as with one voice and one heart, raise
the psalm of confession to the Lord, each forming for himself his own
expressions of penitence. If it is for these reasons that you
renounce me, you will renounce the Egyptians; you will renounce both
Libyans, Thebans, Palestinians, Arabians, Phœnicians, Syrians, the
dwellers by the Euphrates; in a word all those among whom vigils,
prayers, and common psalmody have been held in honour.
4. But, it is alleged, these practices were
not observed in the time of the great Gregory. My rejoinder is
that even the Litanies2759
| 2759 The Ben. note
observes that in this passage Litanies do not mean processions or
supplications, but penitential prayers. The intercessory
prayers which occur in the liturgy of St. Basil, as in the
introductory part of other Greek liturgies, are not confined to
quotations from Scripture. | which you now use
were not used in his time. I do not say this to find fault with
you; for my prayer would be that every one of you should live in tears
and continual penitence. We, for our part, are always offering
supplication for our sins, but we propitiate our God not as you do, in
the words of mere man, but in the oracles of the Spirit. And what
evidence have you that this custom was not followed in the time of the
great Gregory? You have kept none of his customs up to the
present time.2760
| 2760 This reproach
appears to be in contradiction with the statement in De Spiritu
Sancto, § 74 (page 47), that the Church of Neocæsarea
had rigidly preserved the traditions of Gregory. The Ben. note
would remove the discrepancy by confining the rigid conservatism to
matters of importance. In these the Neocæsareans would
tolerate no change, and allowed no monasteries and no enrichment of
their liturgies with new rites. “Litanies,”
however, are regarded as comparatively unimportant
innovations. The note concludes: Neque enim secum
ipse pugnat Basilius, cum Neocæsarienses laudat in libro De
Spiritu Sancto, quod Gregorii instituta arctissime teneant. hic
autem vituperat quod ea omnino reliquerint. Illic enim
respicit ad exteriora instituta, hic autem ad virtutum exemplar,
convicii et iracundiæ fugam, odium juris jurandi et
mendacii. | Gregory did
not cover his head at prayer. How could he? He was a true disciple of the
Apostle who says, “Every man praying or prophesying, having his
head covered, dishonoureth his head.”2761
And “a man indeed ought not to
cover his head forasmuch as he is the image of God.”2762
Oaths were shunned by Gregory, that
pure soul, worthy of the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, content with yea
and nay, in accordance with the commandment of the Lord Who said,
“I say unto you swear not at all.”2763
Gregory could not bear to call his
brother a fool,2764
for he stood in
awe of the threat of the Lord. Passion, wrath, and bitterness
never proceeded out of his mouth. Railing he hated, because it
leads not to the kingdom of heaven. Envy and arrogance had
been shut out of that guiltless soul. He would never have
stood at the altar before being reconciled to his brother. A
lie, or any word designed to slander any one, he abominated, as one
who knew that lies come from the devil, and that the Lord will
destroy all that utter a lie.2765
If
you have none of these things, and are clear of all, then are you
verily disciples of the disciple of the Lord; if not, beware lest,
in your disputes about the mode of singing psalms, you are straining
at the gnat and setting at naught the greatest of the
commandments.
I have been driven to use these expressions by the
urgency of my defence, that you may be taught to cast the beam out of
your own eyes before you try to remove other men’s motes.
Nevertheless, I am conceding all, although there is nothing that is not
searched into before God. Only let great matters prevail, and do
not allow innovations in the faith to make themselves heard. Do
not disregard the hypostases. Do not deny the name of
Christ. Do not put a wrong meaning on the words of Gregory.
If you do so, as long as I breathe and have the power of utterance, I
cannot keep silence, when I see souls being thus
destroyed. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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