Letter CLXXV. [2576]
To Count Magnenianus. [2577]
Your excellency lately wrote to me, plainly charging me, besides other matters, to write concerning the Faith. I admire your zeal in the matter, and I pray God that your choice of good things may be persistent, and that, advancing in knowledge and good works, you may be made perfect. But I have no wish to leave behind me a treatise on the Faith, or to write various creeds, and so I have declined to send what you asked. [2578] You seem to me to be surrounded by the din of your men there, idle fellows, who say certain things to calumniate me, with the idea that they will improve their own position by lying disgracefully against me. [2579] The past shews what they are, and future experience will shew them in still plainer colours. I, however, call on all who trust in Christ not to busy themselves in opposition to the ancient faith, but, as we believe, so to be baptized, and, as we are baptized, so to offer the doxology. [2580] It is enough for us to confess those names which we have received from Holy Scripture, and to shun all innovation about them. Our salvation does not lie in the invention of modes of address, but in the sound confession of the Godhead in which we have professed our faith.
[2576] Written probably early in 374.
[2577] One ms. reads Magninianus. On the identification of this officer with the recipient of cccxxv., see that letter.
[2578] But what Basil declined to do at the prompting of Magnenianus, he shortly afterwards did for Amphilochius, and wrote the De Spiritu Sancto.
[2579] Maran (V. Basilxxx.) thinks that the allusion is to Atarbuis of Neocæsarea and to some of his presbyters. cf. Letter ccx.
[2580] cf. De Sp. Scto. p. 17.
Letter CLXXVI. [2581]
To Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium. [2582]
God grant that when this letter is put into your hands, it may find you in good health, quite at leisure, and as you would wish to be. For then it will not be in vain that I send you this invitation to be present at our city, to add greater dignity to the annual festival which it is the custom of our Church to hold in honour of the martyrs. [2583] For be sure my most honoured and dear friend, that our people here, though they have had experience of many, desire no one's presence so eagerly as they do yours; so affectionate an impression has your short intercourse with them left behind. So, then, that the Lord may be glorified, the people delighted, the martyrs honoured, and that I in my old age may receive the attention due to me from my true son, do not refuse to travel to me with all speed. I will beg you too to anticipate the day of assembly, that so we may converse at leisure and may comfort one another by the interchange of spiritual gifts. The day is the fifth of September. [2584] Come then three days beforehand in order that you may also honour with your presence the Church [2585] of the Hospital. May you by the grace of the Lord be kept in good health and spirits in the Lord, praying for me and for the Church of God.
[2581] Placed in 374.
[2582] An invitation to feast of St. Eupsychius, with a request to arrive three days before the actual day of the festival, which was observed on the 7th of September. (cf. Letter c. and note, and the invitation to the Pontic bishops in cclii.)
[2583] i.e. Damas and Eupsychius.
[2584] So the date stands in eight mss. However it arose, 5th is a mistake for 7th, the day of St. Eupsychius in the Greek Kalendar.
[2585] Mneme. The Ben. Ed. understand by this word the church erected by Basil in his hospital (cf. Letter xciv.) at Cæsarea. In illustration of the use of mneme in this sense Du Cange cites Act. Conc. Chalced. i. 144, and explains it as being equivalent to "memoria," i.e. "ædes sacra in qua extat sancti alicujus sepulcrum." cf. Nomocan. Photii v. § 1. For the similar use of "memoria," in Latin, cf. Aug., De Civ. Dei. xxii. 10: "Nos autem martyribus nostris non templa sicut diis sedmemoriassicut hominibus mortuis fabricamus."