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| To the Westerns.
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Letter CCXLII.3030
To the Westerns.3031
| 3031 This and
the following letter refer to the earlier of two missions of
Dorotheus to the West. In the latter he carried Letter
cclxiii. The earlier was successful at least to the extent of
winning sympathy. Maran (Vit. Bas. cap. xxxv.)
places it not earlier than the Easter of 376, and objects to the
earlier date assigned by Tillemont. |
1. The Holy God has
promised a happy of issue out of all their infirmities to those that
trust in Him. We, therefore, though we have been cut off in a
mid-ocean of troubles, though we are tossed by the great waves raised
up against us by the spirits of wickedness, nevertheless hold out in
Christ Who strengthens us. We have not slackened the strength of
our zeal for the Churches, nor, as though despairing of our salvation,
while the billows in the tempest rise above our heads, do we look to be
destroyed. On the contrary, we are still holding out with all
possible earnestness, remembering how even he who was swallowed by the
sea monster, because he did not despair of his life, but cried to the
Lord, was saved. Thus too we, though we have reached the last
pitch of peril, do not give up our hope in God. On every side we
see His succour round about us. For these reasons now we turn our
eyes to you, right honourable brethren. In many an hour of our
affliction we have expected that you would be at our side; and
disappointed in that hope we have said to ourselves, “I looked
for some to take pity and there was none; and for comforters but I
found none.”3032
Our
sufferings are such as to have reached the confines of the empire; and
since, when one member suffers, all the members suffer,3033
it is doubtless right that your pity should
be shown to us who have been so long in trouble. For that
sympathy, which we have hoped you of your charity feel for us, is
caused less by nearness of place than by union of spirit.
2. How comes it to pass then that we have
received nothing of what is due to us by the law of love; no letter of
consolation, no visit from brethren? This is now the thirteenth
year since the war of heresy began against us.3034
| 3034 Valens began
the thirteenth year of his reign in the March of 376, and this fact
is one of Maran’s reasons for placing this letter where he
does. Tillemont reckons the thirteen years from 361 to 374,
but Maran points out that if the Easterns had wanted to include the
persecution of Constantius they might have gone farther back, while
even then the lull under Julian would have broken the continuity of
the attack. Vit. Bas. xxxv. cf. note
on p. 48. | In this the Churches have suffered
more tribulations than all those which are on record since
Christ’s gospel was first preached.3035
| 3035 A
rhetorical expression not to be taken literally. Some of the
enormities committed under Valens, e.g. the alleged massacre
of the Orthodox delegates off Bithynia in 370 (Soz. vi. 14, Theod.
iv. 21), would stand out even when matched with the cruelties
perpetrated under Nero and Diocletian, if the evidence for them were
satisfactory. cf. Milman, Hist. Christ. iii.
45. The main difference between the earlier persecutions,
conventionally reckoned as ten, and the persecution of the Catholics
by Valens, seems to be this, that while the former were a putting in
force of the law against a religio non licita, the
latter was but the occasional result of the personal spite and
partizanship of the imperial heretic and his courtiers. Valens
would feel bitterly towards a Catholic who thwarted him. Basil
could under Diocletian hardly have died in his bed as archbishop of
Cæsarea. | I am unwilling to
describe these one by
one, lest the feebleness of my narrative should make the evidence of
the calamities less convincing. It is moreover the less
necessary for me to tell you of them, because you have long known
what has happened from the reports which will have reached
you. The sum and substance of our troubles is this: the
people have left the houses of prayer and are holding congregations
in the wildernesses. It is a sad sight. Women, boys, old
men, and those who are in other ways infirm, remain in the open air,
in heavy rain, in the snow, the gales and the frost of winter as
well as in summer under the blazing heat of the sun. All this
they are suffering because they refuse to have anything to do with
the wicked leaven of Arius.
3. How could mere words give you any clear idea of
all this without your being stirred to sympathy by personal experience
and the evidence of eyewitnesses? We implore you, therefore, to
stretch out a helping hand to those that have already been stricken to
the ground, and to send messengers to remind us of the prizes in store
for the reward of all who patiently suffer for Christ. A voice
that we are used to is naturally less able to comfort us than one which
sounds from afar, and that one coming from men who over all the world
are known by God’s grace to be among the noblest; for common
report everywhere represents you as having remained steadfast, without
suffering a wound in your faith, and as having kept the deposit of the
apostles inviolate. This is not our case. There are among
us some who, through lust of glory and that puffing up which is
especially wont to destroy the souls of Christian men, have audaciously
uttered certain novelties of expression with the result that the
Churches have become like cracked pots and pans and have let in the
inrush of heretical impurity. But do you, whom we love and long
for, be to us as surgeons for the wounded, as trainers for the whole,
healing the limb that is diseased, and anointing the limb that is sound
for the service of the true religion. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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