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| To Atarbius.
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Letter LXV.2232
| 2232 Placed about
371, or, at all events, according to Maran, before the year 373,
when the ill will of Atarbius towards Basil was violently
manifested. |
To Atarbius.2233
| 2233 Atarbius
is recognised as bishop of Neocæsarea, partly on the evidence
of the Codices Coislinanus and Medicæus, which describe him as
of Neocæsarea, partly on a comparison of Letters lxv.
and cxxvi., addressed to him, with the circumstances of the unnamed
bishop of Neocæsarea referred to in Letter ccx.
Moreover (cf. Bp. Lightfoot, D.C.B. i. 179) at the Council of
Constantinople he represented the province of Pontus Polemoniacus,
of which Neocæsarea was metropolis. On the authority of
an allusion in Letter ccx. sec. 4, Atarbius is supposed to be
a kinsman of Basil. |
If I continue to insist on the
privileges to which my superior age entitles me, and wait for you to
take the initiative in communication , and if you, my friend, wish to
adhere more persistently to your evil counsel of inaction, what end
will there be to our silence? However, where friendship is
involved, to be defeated is in my opinion to win, and so I am quite
ready to gave you precedence, and retire from the contest as to which
should maintain his own opinion. I have been the first to betake
myself to writing, because I know that “charity beareth all
things…endureth all things…seeketh not her own” and
so “never faileth.”2234
He
who subjects himself to his neighbour in love can never be
humiliated. I do beg you, then, at all events for the future,
show the first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, Love;2235
away with the angry man’s
sullenness which you are showing me by your silence, and recover joy
in your heart, peace with the brothers who are of one mind with you,
and zeal and anxiety for the continued safety of the Churches of the
Lord. If I were not to make as strenuous efforts on behalf of
the Churches as the opponents of sound doctrine make to subvert and
utterly destroy them, you may be quite sure that there is nothing to
prevent the truth from being swept away and destroyed by its
enemies, and my being involved in the condemnation, for not shewing
all possible anxiety for the unity of the Churches, with all zeal
and eagerness in mutual unanimity and godly agreement. I
exhort you then, drive out of your mind the idea that you need
communion with no one else. To cut one’s self off from
connexion with the brethren is not the mark of one who is walking by
love, nor yet the fulfilling of the commandment of Christ. At
the same time I do wish you, with all your good intentions, to take
into account that the calamities of the war which are now all round
about us2236
| 2236 i.e.
the attacks of Valens on the Church. | may one day be
at our own doors, and if we too, like all the rest, have our share
of outrage, we shall not find any even to sympathise with us,
because in the hour of our prosperity we refused to give our share
of sympathy to the wronged.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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