6. I have felt compelled to write to you in these terms, that you may be on your guard against the mischief arising from bad teaching. If we may indeed liken pernicious teachings to poisonous drugs, as your dream-tellers have it, these doctrines are hemlock and monkshood, or any other deadly to man. It is these that destroy souls; not my words, as this shrieking drunken scum, full of the fancies of their condition, make out. If they had any sense they ought to know that in souls, pure and cleansed from all defilement, the prophetic gift shines clear. In a foul mirror you cannot see what the reflexion is, neither can a soul preoccupied with cares of this life, and darkened with the passions of the lust of the flesh, receive the rays of the Holy Ghost. Every dream is not a prophecy, as says Zechariah, "The Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain,...for the idols have spoken vanity and the diviners have told false dreams." [2793] Those who, as Isaiah says, dream and love to sleep in their bed [2794] forget that an operation of error is sent to "the children of disobedience." [2795] And there is a lying spirit, which arose in false prophecies, and deceived Ahab. [2796] Knowing this they ought not to have been so lifted up as to ascribe the gift of prophecy to themselves. They are shewn to fall far short even of the case of the seer Balaam; for Balaam when invited by the king of Moab with mighty bribes brooked not to utter a word beyond the will of God, nor to curse Israel whom the Lord cursed not. [2797] If then their sleep-fancies do not tally with the commandments of the Lord, let them be content with the Gospels. The Gospels need no dreams to add to their credit. The Lord has sent His peace to us, and left us a new commandment, to love one another, but dreams bring strife and division and destruction of love. Let them therefore not give occasion to the devil to attack their souls in sleep; nor make their imaginations of more authority than the instruction of salvation.
[2768] Placed in 375, the year after the composition of the De Spiritu Sancto. It apparently synchronizes with Letter ccxxiii., in which Basil more directly repels those calumnies of the versatile Eustathius of Sebaste which he had borne in silence for three years. On Annesi, from which he writes, and the occasion of the visit, see Prolegomena.
[2769] Macrina, at her residence at Annesi.
[2770] cf. Ep. ccxvi., where he speaks of going to the house of his brother Peter near Neocæsarea. One of the five brothers apparently died young, as the property of the elder Basil was at his death, before 340, divided into nine portions, i.e. among the five daughters and four surviving sons, the youngest, Peter, being then an infant. (Greg. Nyss. Vita Mac. 186.) Naucratius, the second son, was killed by an accident while hunting, c. 357. Gregory of Nyssa must, therefore, be referred to in the text, if by "brothers" is meant brothers in blood. Was it to Peter's "cottage" or some neighbouring dwelling that Gregory fled when he escaped from the police of the Vicar Demosthenes, in order not to obey the summons of Valens to his synod at Ancrya? Is the cottage of Peter "some quiet spot" of Ep. ccxxv.? The plural adelphon might be used conventionally, or understood to include Peter and a sister or sisters.
[2771] i.e. when he was resident at Cæsarea in his earlier manhood. If Letter ccclviii. (from Libanius to Basil refers to this period, it would seem that for a time Basil did undertake school work.
[2772] i.e.Gregory Thaumaturgus. cf. note on p. 247.
[2773] Musonius, bp. of Neocæsarea, who died in 368. cf. Ep. xxviii.
[2774] cf. De Sp. S. § 77, p. 49and Ep. clxxxix. p. 229.
[2775] hen pragma poluprosopon . Another ms. reading is poluonumon, "of many names."
[2776] cf. note on p. 195.
[2777] oikonomiken.
[2778] John v. 43. Slightly varied.
[2779] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[2780] The allusion is supposed to be to Atarbius. cf. Letter lxv.
[2781] Acts iv. 12.
[2782] cf. De Sp. S. § 44, p. 27.
[2783] Meletius of Antioch.
[2784] Tyana, at the north of Mount Taurus, is the city which gave a distinctive name to Apollonius the Thaumaturge. That Basil should speak in kindly and complimentary terms of Anthimus is remarkable, for from few contemporaries did he suffer more. It was the quarrel in which Anthimus attacked and plundered a train of Basil's sumpter mules, and Gregory of Nazianzus fought stoutly for his friend, that led to Basil's erecting Sasima into a bishopric, as a kind of buffer see against his rival metropolitan. (Greg. Naz., Or. xliii. 356, Ep. xxxi. and Carm. i. 8.) See Prolegomena.
[2785] The ekthesis tes pisteos of Gregory Thaumaturgus. cf. Ep. cciv. and the De Sp. Scto. § 74. On the genuineness of the ekthesis, vide D. C. Biog. i. 733. cf. Dorner's Christologie i. 737. It is given at length in the Life of Greg. Thaumat. by Gregory of Nyssa, and is found in the Latin Psalter, written in gold, which Charlemagne gave to Adrian I. Bp. Bull's translation is as follows: "There is one God, Father of Him who is the living Word, subsisting Wisdom and Power and Eternal Impress, Perfect begotten of the Perfect, Father of the only begotten Son. There is one Lord, Alone of the Alone, God of God, Impress and Image of the Godhead, the operative Word; Wisdom comprehensive of the system of the universe, and Power productive of the whole creation; true Son of true Father, Invisible of Invisible and Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal, and Eternal of Eternal. And there is one Holy Ghost, who hath His being of God, who hath appeared through the Son, Image of the Son, Perfect of the Perfect; Life, the cause of all them that live; Holy Fountain, Holiness, the Bestower of Sanctification, in whom is manifested God the Father, who is over all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all. A Perfect Trinity, not divided nor alien in glory and eternity and dominion."
[2786] The Ben. note refused to believe that so Sabellian an expression can have been used by Gregory. Basil's explanation is that it was used in controversy with a heathen on another subject, loosely and not dogmatically. The words are said not to be found in any extant document attributed to Gregory, whether genuine or doubtful. But they may be matched in some of the expressions of Athanasius. cf. p. 195. Ath., Tom. ad Af. § 4 and Hom. in Terem. viii. 96.
[2787] ktisma.
[2788] poiema.
[2789] prosopon.
[2790] prosopon.
[2791] to hupokeimeno.
[2792] Ps. lxxv. 5, LXX.
[2793] Zech. x. 1, 2.
[2794] cf. Is. lvi. 10.
[2795] Eph. ii. 2.
[2796] 1 Kings xxii. 22.
[2797] Num. xxii. 11.