Letter II.
To his most pious brother Gregory. Peter greeting in the Lord.
Having met with the writings of your holiness and having perceived in your tract against this heresy your zeal both for the truth and for our sainted father in God, I judge that this work was not due simply to your own ability, but was that of one who studied that the Truth should speak, even in the publication of his own views. To the Holy Spirit of truth I would refer this plea for the truth; just as to the father of lies, and not to Eunomius, should be referred this animosity against sound faith. Indeed, that murderer from the beginning who speaks in Eunomius has carefully whetted the sword against himself; for if he had not been so bold against the truth, no one would have roused you to undertake the cause of our religion. But to the end that the rottenness and flimsiness of their doctrines may be exposed, He who "taketh the wise in their own craftiness" hath allowed them both to be headstrong against the truth, and to have laboured vainly on this vain speech.
But since he that hath begun a good work will finish it, faint not in furthering the Spirit's power, nor leave half-won the victory over the assailants of Christ's glory; but imitate thy true father who, like the zealot Phineas, pierced with one stroke of his Answer both master and pupil. Plunge with thy intellectual arm the sword of the Spirit through both these heretical pamphlets, lest, though broken on the head, the serpent affright the simpler sort by still quivering in the tail. When the first arguments have been answered, should the last remain unnoticed, the many will suspect that they still retain some strength against the truth.
The feeling shewn in your treatise will be grateful, as salt, to the palate of the soul. As bread cannot be eaten, according to Job, without salt, so the discourse which is not savoured with the inmost sentiments of God's word will never wake, and never move, desire.
Be strong, then, in the thought that thou art a beautiful example to succeeding times of the way in which good-hearted children should act towards their virtuous fathers.
Book I. [57]
§1. Preface.--It is useless to attempt to benefit those who will not accept help.
It seems that the wish to benefit all, and to lavish indiscriminately upon the first comer one's own gifts, was not a thing altogether commendable, or even free from reproach in the eyes of the many; seeing that the gratuitous waste of many prepared drugs on the incurably-diseased produces no result worth caring about, either in the way of gain to the recipient, or reputation to the would-be benefactor. Rather such an attempt becomes in many cases the occasion of a change for the worse. The hopelessly-diseased and now dying patient receives only a speedier end from the more active medicines; the fierce unreasonable temper is only made worse by the kindness of the lavished pearls, as the Gospel tells us. I think it best, therefore, in accordance with the Divine command, for any one to separate the valuable from the worthless when either have to be given away, and to avoid the pain which a generous giver must receive from one who treads upon his pearl,' and insults him by his utter want of feeling for its beauty.
This thought suggests itself when I think of one who freely communicated to others the beauties of his own soul, I mean that man of God, that mouth of piety, Basil; one who from the abundance of his spiritual treasures poured his grace of wisdom into evil souls whom he had never tested, and into one among them, Eunomius, who was perfectly insensible to all the efforts made for his good. Pitiable indeed seemed the condition of this poor man, from the extreme weakness of his soul in the matter of the Faith, to all true members of the Church; for who is so wanting in feeling as not to pity, at least, a perishing soul? But Basil alone, from the abiding [58] ardour of his love, was moved to undertake his cure, and therein to attempt impossibilities; he alone took so much to heart the man's desperate condition, as to compose, as an antidote of deadly poisons, his refutation of this heresy [59] , which aimed at saving its author, and restoring him to the Church.
He, on the contrary, like one beside himself with fury, resists his doctor; he fights and struggles; he regards as a bitter foe one who only put forth his strength to drag him from the abyss of misbelief; and he does not indulge in this foolish anger only before chance hearers now and then; he has raised against himself a literary monument to record this blackness of his bile; and when in long years he got the requisite amount of leisure, he was travailling over his work during all that interval with mightier pangs than those of the largest and the bulkiest beasts; his threats of what was coming were dreadful, whilst he was still secretly moulding his conception: but when at last and with great difficulty he brought it to the light, it was a poor little abortion, quite prematurely born. However, those who share his ruin nurse it and coddle it; while we, seeking the blessing in the prophet ("Blessed shall he be who shall take thy children, and shall dash them against the stones [60] ") are only eager, now that it has got into our hands, to take this puling manifesto and dash it on the rock, as if it was one of the children of Babylon; and the rock must be Christ; in other words, the enunciation of the truth. Only may that power come upon us which strengthens weakness, through the prayers of him who made his own strength perfect in bodily weakness [61] .
[57] This first Book against Eunomius was not in the 1^st Paris Edition of Gregory's works, 1615; but it was published three years later from the Bavarian Codex,' i.e. that of Munich, by J. Gretser, in an Appendix, along with the Summaries (i.e. the headings of the sections, which appear to be not Gregory's) and the two Introductory Letters. These Summaries and the Letters, and nearly three quarters of the 1^st Book were found in J. Livineius' transcript from the Codex Vaticanus made 1579, at Rome. This Appendix was added to the 2^nd Paris Edit. 1638. F. Oehler, whose text has been followed throughout, has used for the 1^st Book the Munich Codex (on paper, xvi^th Cent.); the Venetian (on cotton, xiii^th Cent.); the Turin (on cotton, xiv^th Cent.), and the oldest of all, the Florentine (on parchment, xi^th Cent.).
[58] Reading,-- to monimon...epitolmonta. This is the correction of Oehler for ton monon...epitolmon which the text presents. The Venetian ms. has epitolmonti
[59] his refutation of this heresy. This is Basil's 'Anatreptikos tou apologetikou tou duosebous Eunomiou. Basil,' says Photius, with difficulty got hold of Eunomius' book,' perhaps because it was written originally for a small circle of readers, and was in a highly scientific form. What happened next may be told in the words of Claudius Morellius (Prolegomena to Paris Edition of 1615): When Basil's first essay against the foetus of Eunomius had been published, he raised his bruised head like a trodden worm, seized his pen, and began to rave more poisonously still as well against Basil as the orthodox faith.' This was Eunomius' Apologia Apologiæ:' of it Photius says, His reply to Basil was composed for many Olympiads while shut up in his cell. This, like another Saturn, he concealed from the eyes of Basil till it had grown up, i.e. he concealed it, by devouring it, as long as Basil lived.' He then goes on to say that after Basil's death, Theodore (of Mopsuestia), Gregory of Nyssa, and Sophronius found it and dealt with it, though even then Eunomius had only ventured to show it to some of his friends. Philostorgius, the ardent admirer of Eunomius, makes the amazing statement that Basil died of despair after reading it.
[60] Psalm cxxxvii. 9.
[61] He asks for the intercession of Saint Paul' (Paris Edit. in marg.).
§2. We have been justly provoked to make this Answer, being stung by Eunomius' accusations of our brother.
If indeed that godlike and saintly soul were still in the flesh looking out upon human affairs, if those lofty tones were still heard with all their peculiar [62] grace and all their resistless utterance, who could arrive at such a pitch of audacity, as to attempt to speak one word upon this subject? that divine trumpet-voice would drown any word that could be uttered. But all of him has now flown back to God; at first indeed in the slight shadowy phantom of his body, he still rested on the earth; but now he has quite shed even that unsubstantial form, and bequeathed it to this world. Meantime the drones are buzzing round the cells of the Word, and are plundering the honey; so let no one accuse me of mere audacity for rising up to speak instead of those silent lips. I have not accepted this laborious task from any consciousness in myself of powers of argument superior to the others who might be named; I, if any, have the means of knowing that there are thousands in the Church who are strong in the gift of philosophic skill. Nevertheless I affirm that, both by the written and the natural law, to me more especially belongs this heritage of the departed, and therefore I myself, in preference to others, appropriate the legacy of the controversy. I may be counted amongst the least of those who are enlisted in the Church of God, but still I am not too weak to stand out as her champion against one who has broken with that Church. The very smallest member of a vigorous body would, by virtue of the unity of its life with the whole, be found stronger than one that had been cut away and was dying, however large the latter and small the former.
[62] apoklerotheisan. This is probably the meaning, after the analogy of apoklerosis, in the sense (most frequent in Origen), of favour,' partiality,' passing into that of caprice,' arbitrariness,' cf. below, cap. 9, tis he apoklerosis, k.t.l. How arbitrarily he praises himself.'
§3. We see nothing remarkable in logical force in the treatise of Eunomius, and so embark on our Answer with a just confidence.
Let no one think, that in saying this I exaggerate and make an idle boast of doing something which is beyond my strength. I shall not be led by any boyish ambition to descend to his vulgar level in a contest of mere arguments and phrases. Where victory is a useless and profitless thing, we yield it readily to those who wish to win; besides, we have only to look at this man's long practice in controversy, to conclude that he is quite a word-practitioner, and, in addition, at the fact that he has spent no small portion of his life on the composition of this treatise, and at the supreme joy of his intimates over these labours, to conclude that he has taken particular trouble with this work. It was not improbable that one who had laboured at it for so many Olympiads would produce something better than the work of extempore scribblers. Even the vulgar profusion of the figures he uses in concocting his work is a further indication of this laborious care in writing [63] . He has got a great mass of newly assorted terms, for which he has put certain other books under contribution, and he piles this immense congeries of words on a very slender nucleus of thought; and so he has elaborated this highly-wrought production, which his pupils in error are lost in the admiration of;--no doubt, because their deadness on the vital points deprives them of the power of feeling the distinction between beauty and the reverse:--but which is ridiculous, and of no value at all in the judgment of those, whose hearts' insight is not dimmed with any soil of unbelief. How in the world can it contribute to the proof (as he hopes) of what he says and the establishment of the truth of his speculations, to adopt these absurd devices in his forms of speech, this new-fangled and peculiar arrangement, this fussy conceit, and this conceited fussiness, which works with no enthusiasm for any previous model? For it would be indeed difficult to discover who amongst all those who have been celebrated for their eloquence he has had his eye on, in bringing himself to this pitch; for he is like those who produce effects upon the stage, adapting his argument to the tune of his rhythmical phrases, as they their song to their castenets, by means of parallel sentences of equal length, of similar sound and similar ending. Such, amongst many other faults, are the nerveless quaverings and the meretricious tricks of his Introduction; and one might fancy him bringing them all out, not with an unimpassioned action, but with stamping of the feet and sharp snapping of the fingers declaiming to the time thus beaten, and then remarking that there was no need of other arguments and a second performance after that.