Letters 262–269

To the Sozopolitans

I have received the letter which you, right honourable brethren, have sent me concerning the circumstances in which you are placed.  I thank the Lord that you have let me share in the anxiety you feel as to your attention to things needful and deserving of serious heed.  But I was distressed to hear that over and above the disturbance brought on the Churches by the Arians, and the confusion caused by them in the definition of the faith, there has appeared among you yet another innovation, throwing the brotherhood into great dejection, because, as you have informed me, certain persons are uttering, in the hearing of the faithful, novel and unfamiliar doctrines which they allege to be deduced from the teaching of Scripture.  You write that there are men among you who are trying to destroy the saving incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, so far as they can, are overthrowing the grace of the great mystery unrevealed from everlasting, but manifested in His own times, when the Lord, when He had gone through all things pertaining to the cure of the human race, bestowed on all of us the boon of His own sojourn among us.  For He helped His own creation, first through the patriarchs, whose lives were set forth as examples and rules to all willing to follow the footsteps of the saints, and with zeal like theirs to reach the perfection of good works.  Next for succour He gave the Law, ordaining it by angels in the hand of Moses; then the prophets, foretelling the salvation to come; judges, kings, and righteous men, doing great works, with a mighty hand.  After all these in the last days He was Himself manifested ill the flesh, “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

2.  If, then, the sojourn of the Lord in flesh has never taken place, the Redeemer paid not the fine to death on our behalf, nor through Himself destroyed death’s reign.  For if what was reigned over by death was not that which was assumed by the Lord, death would not have ceased working his own ends, nor would the sufferings of the God-bearing flesh have been made our gain; He would not have killed sin in the flesh:  we who had died in Adam should not have been made alive in Christ; the fallen to pieces would not have been framed again; the shattered would not have been set up again; that which by the serpent’s trick had been estranged from God would never have been made once more His own.  All these boons are undone by those that assert that it was with a heavenly body that the Lord came among us.  And if the God-bearing flesh was not ordained to be assumed of the lump of Adam, what need was there of the Holy Virgin?  But who has the hardihood now once again to renew by the help of sophistical arguments and, of course, by scriptural evidence, that old dogma of Valentinus, now long ago silenced?  For this impious doctrine of the seeming is no novelty.  It was started long ago by the feeble-minded Valentinus, who, after tearing off a few of the Apostle’s statements, constructed for himself this impious fabrication, asserting that the Lord assumed the “form of a servant,” and not the servant himself, and that He was made in the “likeness,” but that actual manhood was not assumed by Him.  Similar sentiments are expressed by these men who can only be pitied for bringing new troubles upon you.

3.  As to the statement that human feelings are transmitted to the actual Godhead, it is one made by men who preserve no order in their thoughts, and are ignorant that there is a distinction between the feelings of flesh, of flesh endowed with soul, and of soul using a body.  It is the property of flesh to undergo division, diminution, dissolution; of flesh endowed with soul to feel weariness, pain, hunger, thirst, and to be overcome by sleep; of soul using body to feel grief, heaviness, anxiety, and such like.  Of these some are natural and necessary to every living creature; others come of evil will, and are superinduced because of life’s lacking proper discipline and training for virtue.  Hence it is evident that our Lord assumed the natural affections to establish His real incarnation, and not by way of semblance of incantation, and that all the affections derived from evil that besmirch the purity of our life, He rejected as unworthy of His unsullied Godhead.  It is on this account that He is said to have been “made in the likeness of flesh of sin;” not, as these men hold, in likeness of flesh, but of flesh of sin.  It follows that He took our flesh with its natural afflictions, but “did no sin.”  Just as the death which is in the flesh, transmitted to us through Adam, was swallowed up by the Godhead, so was the sin taken away by the righteousness which is in Christ Jesus, so that in the resurrection we receive back the flesh neither liable to death nor subject to sin.

These, brethren, are the mysteries of the Church; these are the traditions of the Fathers.  Every man who fears the Lord, and is awaiting God’s judgment, I charge not to be carried away by various doctrines.  If any one teaches a different doctrine, and refuses to accede to the sound words of the faith, rejecting the oracles of the Spirit, and making his own teaching of more authority than the lessons of the Gospels, of such an one beware.  May the Lord grant that one day we may meet, so that all that my argument has let slip I may supply when we stand face to face!  I have written little when there was much to say, for I did not like to go beyond my letter’s bounds.  At the same time I do not doubt that to all that fear the Lord a brief reminder is enough.

To the Monk Urbicius

Letter CCLXII.

To the Monk Urbicius.

1.  You have done well to write to me.  You have shewn how great is the fruit of charity.  Continue so to do.  Do not think that, when you write to me, you need offer excuses.  I recognise my own position, and I know that by nature every man is of equal honour with the rest.  Whatever excellence there is in me is not of family, nor of superfluous wealth, nor of physical condition; it comes only of superiority in the fear of God.  What, then, hinders you from fearing the Lord yet more, and so, in this respect, being greater than I am?  Write often to me, and acquaint me with the condition of the brotherhood with you.  Tell me what members of the Church in your parts are sound, that I may know to whom I ought to write, and in whom I may confide.  I am told that there are some who are endeavouring to deprave the right doctrine of the Lord’s incarnation by perverse opinions, and I therefore call upon them through you to hold off from those unreasonable views, which some are reported to me to hold.  I mean that God Himself was turned into flesh; that He did not assume, through the Holy Mary, the nature of Adam, but, in His own proper Godhead, was changed into a material nature.

2.  This absurd position can be easily confuted.  The blasphemy is its own conviction, and I therefore think that, for one who fears the Lord, the mere reminder is enough.  If He was turned, then He was changed.  But far be it from me to say or think such a thing, when God has declared, “I am the Lord, I change not.”  Moreover, how could the benefit of the incarnation be conveyed to us, unless our body, joined to the Godhead, was made superior to the dominion of death?  If He was changed, He no longer constituted a proper body, such as subsisted after the combination with it of the divine body.  But how, if all the nature of the Only-begotten was changed, could the incomprehensible Godhead be circumscribed within the limit of the mass of a little body?  I am sure that no one who is in his senses, and has the fear of God, is suffering from this unsoundness.  But the report has reached me that some of your company are afflicted with this mental infirmity, and I have therefore thought it necessary, not to send you a mere formal greeting, but to include in my letter something which may even build up the souls of them that fear the Lord.  I therefore urge that these errors receive ecclesiastical correction, and that you abstain from communion with the heretics.  I know that we are deprived of our liberty in Christ by indifference on these points.

To the Westerns

Letter CCLXIII.

To the Westerns.

1.  May the Lord God, in Whom we have put our trust, give to each of you grace sufficient to enable you to realize your hope, in proportion to the joy wherewith you have filled my heart, both by the letter which you have sent me by the hands of the well-beloved fellow-presbyters, and by the sympathy which you have felt for me in my distress, like men who have put on bowels of mercy, as you have been described to me by the presbyters afore-mentioned.  Although my wounds remain the same, nevertheless it does bring alleviation to me that I should have leeches at hand, able, should they find an opportunity, to apply rapid remedies to my hurts.  Wherefore in return I salute you by our beloved friends, and exhort you, if the Lord puts it into your power to come to me, not to hesitate to visit me.  For part of the greatest commandment is the visitation of the sick.  But if the good God and wise Dispenser of our lives reserves this boon for another season, at all events write to me whatever it is proper for you to write for the consolation of the oppressed and the lifting up of those that are crushed down.  Already the Church has suffered many severe blows, and great has been my affliction at them.  Nowhere is there expectation of succour unless the Lord sends us a remedy by you who are his true servants.

2.  The bold and shameless heresy of the Arians, after being publicly cut off from the body of the Church, still abides in its own error, and does not do us much harm because its impiety is notorious to all.  Nevertheless men clad in sheep’s clothing, and presenting a mild and amiable appearance, but within unsparingly ravaging Christ’s flocks, find it easy to do hurt to the simpler ones, because they came out from us.  It is these who are grievous and hard to guard against.  It is these that we implore your diligence to denounce publicly to all the Churches of the East; to the end that they may either turn to the right way and join with us in genuine alliance, or, if they abide in their perversity, may keep their mischief to themselves alone, and be unable to communicate their own plague to their neighbours by unguarded communion.  I am constrained to mention them by name, in order that you may yourselves recognise those who are stirring up disturbance here, and may make them known to our Churches.  My own words are suspected by most men, as though I had an ill will towards them on account of some private quarrel.  You, however, have all the more credit with the people, in proportion to the distance that separates your home from theirs, besides the fact that you are gifted with God’s grace to help those who are distressed.  If more of you concur in uttering the same opinions, it is clear that the number of those who have expressed them will make it impossible to oppose their acceptance.

3.  One of those who have caused me great sorrow is Eustathius of Sebasteia in Lesser Armenia; formerly a disciple of Arius, and a follower of him at the time when he flourished in Alexandria, and concocted his infamous blasphemies against the Only-begotten, he was numbered among his most faithful disciples.  On his return to his own country he submitted a confession of the sound faith to Hermogenes, the very blessed Bishop of Cæsarea, who was on the point of condemning him for false doctrine.  Under these circumstances he was ordained by Hermogenes, and, on the death of that bishop, hastened to Eusebius of Constantinople, who himself yielded to none in the energy of his support of the impious doctrine of Arius.  From Constantinople he was expelled for some reason or another, returned to his own country and a second time made his defence, attempting to conceal his impious sentiments and cloking them under a certain verbal orthodoxy.  He no sooner obtained the rank of bishop than he straightway appeared writing an anathema on the Homoousion in the Arians’ synod at Ancyra.  From thence he went to Seleucia and took part in the notorious measures of his fellow heretics.  At Constantinople he assented a second time to the propositions of the heretics.  On being ejected from his episcopate, on the ground of his former deposition at Melitine, he hit upon a journey to you as a means of restitution for himself.  What propositions were made to him by the blessed bishop Liberius, and to what he agreed, I am ignorant.  I only know that he brought a letter restoring him, which he shewed to the synod at Tyana, and was restored to his see.  He is now defaming the very creed for which he was received; he is consorting with those who are anathematizing the Homoousion, and is prime leader of the heresy of the pneumatomachi.  As it is from the west that he derives his power to injure the Churches, and uses the authority given him by you to the overthrow of the many, it is necessary that his correction should come from the same quarter, and that a letter be sent to the Churches stating on what terms he was received, and in what manner he has changed his conduct and nullifies the favour given him by the Fathers at that time.

4.  Next comes Apollinarius, who is no less a cause of sorrow to the Churches.  With his facility of writing, and a tongue ready to argue on any subject, he has filled the world with his works, in disregard of the advice of him who said, “Beware of making many books.”  In their multitude there are certainly many errors.  How is it possible to avoid sin in a multitude of words?  And the theological works of Apollinarius are founded on Scriptural proof, but are based on a human origin.  He has written about the resurrection, from a mythical, or rather Jewish, point of view; urging that we shall return again to the worship of the Law, be circumcised, keep the Sabbath, abstain from meats, offer sacrifices to God, worship in the Temple at Jerusalem, and be altogether turned from Christians into Jews.  What could be more ridiculous?  Or, rather, what could be more contrary to the doctrines of the Gospel?  Then, further, he has made such confusion among the brethren about the incarnation, that few of his readers preserve the old mark of true religion; but the more part, in their eagerness for novelty, have been diverted into investigations and quarrelsome discussions of his unprofitable treatises.

5.  As to whether there is anything objectionable about the conversation of Paulinus, you can say yourselves.  What distresses me is that he should shew an inclination for the doctrine of Marcellus, and unreservedly admit his followers to communion.  You know, most honourable brethren, that the reversal of all our hope is involved in the doctrine of Marcellus, for it does not confess the Son in His proper hypostasis, but represents Him as having been sent forth, and as having again returned to Him from Whom He came; neither does it admit that the Paraclete has His own subsistence.  It follows that no one could be wrong in declaring this heresy to be all at variance with Christianity, and in styling it a corrupt Judaism.  Of these things I implore you to take due heed.  This will be the case if you will consent to write to all the Churches of the East that those who have perverted these doctrines are in communion with you, if they amend; but that if they contentiously determine to abide by their innovations, you are separated from them.  I am myself well aware, that it had been fitting for me to treat of these matters, sitting in synod with you in common deliberation.  But this the time does not allow.  Delay is dangerous, for the mischief they have caused has taken root.  I have therefore been constrained to dispatch these brethren, that you may learn from them all that has been omitted in my letter, and that they may rouse you to afford the succour which we pray for to the Churches of the East.

To Barses, bishop of Edessa, in exile

Letter CCLXIV.

To Barses, bishop of Edessa, in exile.

To Barses the bishop, truly God-beloved and worthy of all reverence and honour, Basil sends greeting in the Lord.  As my dear brother Domninus is setting out to you, I gladly seize the opportunity of writing, and I greet you by him, praying the holy God that we may be so long preserved in this life as to be permitted to see you, and to enjoy the good gifts which you possess.  Only pray, I beseech you, that the Lord may not deliver us for aye to the enemies of the Cross of Christ, but that He will keep His Churches, until the time of that peace which the just Judge Himself knows when He will bestow.  For He will bestow it.  He will not always abandon us.  As He limited seventy years for the period of captivity for the Israelites in punishment for their sins, so peradventure the Mighty One, after giving us up for some appointed time, will recall us once again, and will restore us to the peace of the beginning—unless indeed the apostasy is now nigh at hand, and the events that have lately happened are the beginnings of the approach of Antichrist.  If this be so, pray that the good Lord will either take away our afflictions, or preserve us through our afflictions unvanquished.  Through you I greet all those who have been thought worthy to be associated with you.  All who are with me salute your reverence.  May you, by the grace of the Holy One, be preserved to the Church of God in good health, trusting in the Lord, and praying for me.

To Eulogius, Alexander, and Harpocration, bishops of Egypt, in exile

Letter CCLXV.

To Eulogius, Alexander, and Harpocration, bishops of Egypt, in exile.

1.  In all things we find that the providence exercised by our good God over His Churches is mighty, and that thus the very things which seem to be gloomy, and do not turn out as we should like, are ordained for the advantage of most, in the hidden wisdom of God, and in the unsearchable judgments of His righteousness.  Now the Lord has removed you from the regions of Egypt, and has brought you and established you in the midst of Palestine, after the manner of Israel of old, whom He carried away by captivity into the land of the Assyrians, and there extinguished idolatry through the sojourn of His saints.  Now too we find the same thing, when we observe that the Lord is making known your struggle for the sake of true religion, opening to you through your exile the arena of your blessed contests, and to all who see before them your noble constancy, giving the boon of your good example to lead them to salvation.  By God’s grace, I have heard of the correctness of your faith, and of your zeal for the brethren and that it is in no careless or perfunctory spirit that you provide what is profitable and necessary for salvation, and that you support all that conduces to the edification of the Churches.  I have therefore thought it right that I should be brought into communion with your goodness, and be united to your reverences by letter.  For these reasons I have sent my very dear brother the deacon Elpidius, who not only conveys my letter, but is moreover fully qualified to announce to you whatever may have been omitted in my letter.

2.  I have been specially moved to desire union with you by the report of the zeal of your reverences in the cause of orthodoxy.  The constancy of your hearts has been stirred neither by multiplicity of books nor by variety of ingenious arguments.  You have on the contrary, recognised those who endeavoured to introduce innovations in opposition to the apostolic doctrines, and you have refused to keep silence concerning the mischief which they are causing.  I have in truth found great distress among all who cleave to the peace of the Lord at the divers innovations of Apollinarius of Laodicea.  He has all the more distressed me from the fact that he seemed at the beginning on our side.  A sufferer can in a certain sense endure what comes to him from an open enemy, even though it be exceedingly painful, as it is written, “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it.”  But it is intolerable, and beyond the power of comfort, to be wronged by a close and sympathetic friend.  Now that very man whom I have expected to have at my right hand in defence of the truth, I have found in many ways hindering those who are being saved, by seducing their minds and drawing them away from direct doctrine.  What rash and hasty deed has he not done?  What ill considered and dangerous argument has he not risked?  Is not all the Church divided against herself, specially since the day when men have been sent by him to the Churches governed by orthodox bishops, to rend them asunder and to set up some peculiar and illegal service?  Is not ridicule brought upon the great mystery of true religion when bishops go about without people and clergy, having nothing but the mere name and title, and effecting nothing for the advancement of the Gospel of peace and salvation?  Are not his discourses about God full of impious doctrines, the old impiety of the insane Sabellius being now renewed by him in his writings?  For if the works which are current among the Sebastenes are not the forgery of foes, and are really his composition, he has reached a height of impiety which cannot be surpassed, in saying that Father, Son, and Spirit are the same, and other dark pieces of irreverence which I have declined even to hear, praying that I may have nothing to do with those who have uttered them.  Does he not confuse the doctrine of the incarnation?  Has not the œconomy of salvation been made doubtful to the many on account of his dark and cloudy speculations about it?  To collect them all, and refute them, requires long time and much discussion.  But where have the promises of the Gospel been blunted and destroyed as by his figments?  So meanly and poorly has he dared to explain the blessed hope laid up for all who live according to the Gospel of Christ, as to reduce it to mere old wives’ fables and doctrines of Jews.  He proclaims the renewal of the Temple, the observance of the worship of the Law, a typical high priest over again after the real High Priest, and a sacrifice for sins after the Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world.  He preaches partial baptisms after the one baptism, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the Church which, through its faith in Christ, has not spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; cleansing of leprosy after the painless state of the resurrection; an offering of jealousy when they neither marry nor are given in marriage; shew-bread after the Bread from heaven; burning lamps after the true Light.  In a word, if the law of the Commandments has been done away with by dogmas, it is plain that under these circumstances the dogmas of Christ will be nullified by the injunctions of the law.  At these things shame and disgrace have covered my face, and heavy grief hath filled my heart.  Wherefore, I beseech you, as skilful physicians, and instructed how to discipline antagonists with gentleness, to try and bring him back to the right order of the Church, and to persuade him to despise the wordiness of his own works; for he has proved the truth of the proverb “in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.”  Put boldly before him the doctrines of orthodoxy, in order that his amendment may be published abroad, and his repentance made known to his brethren.

3.  It is also desirable that I should remind your reverence about the followers of Marcellus, in order that you may decide nothing in their case rashly or inconsiderately.  On account of his impious doctrines he has gone out from the Church.  It is therefore necessary that his followers should only be received into communion on condition that they anathematize that heresy, in order that those who are united to me through you may be accepted by all the brethren.  And now most men are moved to no small grief on hearing that you have both received them and admitted them to ecclesiastical communion on their coming to your excellency.  Nevertheless you ought to have known that by God’s grace you do not stand alone in the East, but have many in communion with you, who vindicate the orthodoxy of the Fathers, and who put forth the pious doctrine of the Faith at Nicæa.  The Westerns also all agree with you and with me, whose exposition of the Faith I have received and keep with me, assenting to their sound doctrine.  You ought, then, to have satisfied all who are in agreement with you, that the action which is being taken may be ratified by the general consent, and that peace may not be broken by the acceptance of some while others are kept apart.  Thus you ought to have at the same time seriously and gently taken counsel about matters which are of importance to all the Churches throughout the world.  Praise is not due to him who hastily determines any point, but rather to him who rules every detail firmly and unalterably, so that when his judgment is enquired into, even at a later time, it may be the more esteemed.  This is the man who is acceptable both to God and man as one who guides his words with discretion.  Thus I have addressed your reverence in such terms as are possible in a letter.  May the Lord grant that one day we may meet, that so, after arranging everything together with you for the government of the Churches, I may with you receive the reward prepared by the righteous Judge for faithful and wise stewards.  In the mean time be so good as to let me know with what intention you have received the followers of Marcellus, knowing this, that even if you secure everything, so far as you yourselves are concerned, you ought not to deal with a matter of such importance on your own sole responsibility.  It is further necessary that the Westerns, and those who are in communion with them in the East, should concur in the restoration of these men.

To Petrus, bishop of Alexandria

Letter CCLXVI.

To Petrus, bishop of Alexandria.

1.  You have very properly rebuked me, and in a manner becoming a spiritual brother who has been taught genuine love by the Lord, because I am not giving you exact and detailed information of all that is going on here, for it is both your part to be interested in what concerns me, and mine to tell you all that concerns myself.  But I must tell you, right honourable and well-beloved brother, that our continuous afflictions, and this mighty agitation which is now shaking the Churches, result in my taking all that is happening as a matter of course.  Just as in smithies where men whose ears are deafened get accustomed to the sound, so by the frequency of the strange tidings that reach me I have now grown accustomed to be undisturbed and undismayed at extraordinary events.  So the policy which has been for a long time pursued by the Arians to the detriment of the Church, although their achievements have been many and great and noised abroad through all the world, has nevertheless been endurable to me, because of their being the work of open foes and enemies of the word of truth.  It is when these men do something unusual that I am astonished, not when they attempt something great and audacious against true religion.  But I am grieved and troubled at what is being done by men who feel and think with me.  Yet their doings are so frequent and so constantly reported to me, that even they do not appear surprising.  So it comes about that I was not agitated at the recent disorderly proceedings, partly because I knew perfectly well that common report would carry them to you without my help, and partly because I preferred to wait for somebody else to give you disagreeable news.  And yet, further, I did not think it reasonable that I should show indignation at such proceedings, as though I were annoyed at suffering a slight.  To the actual agents in the matter I have written in becoming terms, exhorting them, because of the dissension arising among some of the brethren there, not to fall away from charity, but to wait for the matter to be set right by those who have authority to remedy disorders in due ecclesiastical form.  That you should have so acted, stirred by honourable and becoming motives, calls for my commendation, and moves my gratitude to the Lord that there remains preserved in you a relic of the ancient discipline, and that the Church has not lost her own might in my persecution.  The canons have not suffered persecution as well as I.  Though importuned again by the Galatians, I was never able to give them an answer, because I waited for your decision.  Now, if the Lord so will and they will consent to listen to me, I hope that I shall be able to bring the people to the Church.  It cannot then be cast in my teeth that I have gone over to the Marcellians, and they on the contrary will become limbs of the body of the Church of Christ.  Thus the disgrace caused by heresy will be made to disappear by the method I adopt, and I shall escape the opprobrium of having gone over to them.

2.  I have also been grieved by our brother Dorotheus, because, as he has himself written, he has not gently and mildly reported everything to your excellency.  I set this down to the difficulty of the times.  I seem to be deprived by my sins of all success in my undertakings, if indeed the best of my brethren are proved ill-disposed and incompetent, by their failure to perform their duties in accordance with my wishes.  On his return Dorotheus reported to me the conversation which he had had with your excellency in the presence of the very venerable bishop Damasus, and he caused me distress by saying that our God-beloved brethren and fellow-ministers, Meletius and Eusebius, had been reckoned among the Ariomaniacs.  If their orthodoxy were established by nothing else, the attacks made upon them by the Arians are, to the minds of all right thinking people, no small proof of their rectitude.  Even your participation with them in sufferings endured for Christ’s sake ought to unite your reverence to them in love.  Be assured of this, right honourable sir, that there is no word of orthodoxy which has not been proclaimed by these men with all boldness.  God is my witness.  I have heard them myself.  I should not certainly have now admitted them to communion, if I had caught them tripping in the faith.  But, if it seem good to you, let us leave the past alone.  Let us make a peaceful start for the future.  For we have need one of another in the fellowship of the members, and specially now, when the Churches of the East are looking to us, and will take your agreement as a pledge of strength and consolidation.  If, on the other hand, they perceive that you are in a state of mutual suspicion, they will drop their hands, and slacken in their resistance to the enemies of the faith.

To Barses, bishop of Edessa, in exile

Letter CCLXVII.

To Barses, bishop of Edessa, in exile.

For the sake of the affection which I entertain for you, I long to be with you, to embrace you, my dear friend, in person, and to glorify the Lord Who is magnified in you, and has made your honourable old age renowned among all them that fear Him throughout the world.  But severe sickness afflicts me, and to a greater degree than I can express in words, I am weighed down by the care of the Churches.  I am not my own master, to go whither I will, and to visit whom I will.  Therefore I am trying to satisfy the longing I have for the good gifts in you by writing to you, and I beseech your reverence to pray for me and for the Church, that the Lord may grant to me to pass the remaining days or hours of my sojourn here without offence.  May He permit me to see the peace of His Churches.  Of your fellow-ministers and fellow-athletes may I hear all that I pray for, and of yourself that you are granted such a lot as the people under you seek for by day and by night from the Lord of righteousness.  I have not written often, not even so often as I ought, but I have written to your reverence.  Possibly the brethren to whom I committed my greetings were not able to preserve them.  But now that I have found some of my brethren travelling to your excellency, I have readily entrusted my letter to them, and I have sent some messages which I beg you to receive from my humility without disdain, and to bless me after the manner of the patriarch Isaac.  I have been much occupied, and have had my mind drowned in a multiplicity of cares.  So it may well be that I have omitted something which I ought to have said.  If so, do not reckon it against me; and do not be grieved.  Act in all things up to your own high character, that I, like every one else, may enjoy the fruit of your virtue.  May you be granted to me and to the Church, in good health, rejoicing in the Lord, praying for me.

To Eusebius, in exile

Letter CCLXVIII.

To Eusebius, in exile.

Even in our time the Lord has taught us, by protecting with His great and powerful hand the life of your holiness, that He does not abandon His holy ones.  I reckon your case to be almost like that of the saint remaining unhurt in the belly of the monster of the deep, or that of the men who feared the Lord, living unscathed in the fierce fire.  For though the war is round about you on every side, He, as I hear, has kept you unharmed.  May the mighty God keep you, if I live longer, to fulfil my earnest prayer that I may see you!  If not for me, may He keep you for the rest, who wait for your return as they might for their own salvation.  I am persuaded that the Lord in His loving-kindness will give heed to the tears of the Churches, and to the sighs which all are heaving over you, and will preserve you in life until He grant the prayer of all who night and day are praying to Him.  Of all the measures taken against you, up to the arrival of our beloved brother Libanius the deacon, I have been sufficiently informed by him while on his way.  I am anxious to learn what happened afterwards.  I hear that in the meanwhile still greater troubles have occurred where you are; about all this, sooner if possible, but, if not, at least by our reverend brother Paul the presbyter, on his return, may I learn, as I pray that I may, that your life is preserved safe and sound.  But on account of the report that all the roads are infested with thieves and deserters, I have been afraid to entrust anything to the brother’s keeping, for fear of causing his death.  If the Lord grant a little quiet, (as I am told of the coming of the army), I will try to send you one of my own men, to visit you, to bring me back news of everything about you.