Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter
XXXIV.2015
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
How could I be silent at the
present juncture? And if I cannot be silent, how am I to find
utterance adequate to the circumstances, so as to make my voice not
like a mere groan but rather a lamentation intelligibly indicating the
greatness of the misfortune? Ah me! Tarsus is
undone.2016
| 2016 Silvanus,
Metropolitan of Tarsus, one of the best of the Semi-Arians (Ath.,
De synod. 41), died, according to Tillemont, in 373,
according to Maran four years earlier, and was succeeded by an
Arian; but events did not turn out so disastrously as Basil had
anticipated. The majority of the presbyters were true to the
Catholic cause, and Basil maintained friendship and intercourse with
them. cf. Letters lxvii., cxiii.,
cxiv. | This is a
trouble grievous to be borne, but it does not come alone. It is
still harder to think that a city so placed as to be united with
Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Assyria, should be lightly thrown away by the
madness of two or three individuals, while you are all the while
hesitating, settling what to do, and looking at one another’s
faces. It would have been far better to do like the
doctors. (I have been so long an invalid that I have no lack of
illustrations of this kind.) When their patients’ pain
becomes excessive they produce insensibility; so should we pray that
our souls may be made insensible to the pain of our troubles, that we
be not put under unendurable agony. In these hard straits I do
not fail to use one means of consolation. I look to your
kindness; I try to make my troubles milder by my thought and
recollection of you.2017
| 2017 Basil is
supposed to have in the meanwhile carried out his
previously-expressed intention of paying Eusebius a visit. | When the eyes
have looked intently on any brilliant objects it relieves them to turn
again to what is blue and green; the recollection of your kindness and
attention has just the same effect on my soul; it is a mild treatment
that takes away my pain. I feel this the more when I reflect that
you individually have done all that man could do. You have
satisfactorily shewn us, men, if we judge things fairly, that the
catastrophe is in no way due to you personally. The reward which
you have won at God’s hand for your zeal for right is no small
one. May the Lord grant you to me and to His churches to the
improvement of life and the guidance of souls, and may He once more
allow me the privilege of meeting you.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
