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TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 08 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 28.01.08 St. Basil On the Spirit Pt 8
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Chapter XXIX
Enumeration of the illustrious men in the Church who in their writings have used the word "with."
71. Is answer to the objection that the doxology in the form "with the Spirit" has no written authority, we maintain that if there is no other instance of that which is unwritten, then this must not be received. But if the greater number of our mysteries are admitted into our constitution without written authority, then, in company with the many others, let us receive this one. For I hold it apostolic to abide also by the unwritten traditions. "I praise you," it is said, "that ye remember me in all things, andkeep the ordinances as I delivered them to you;"hyperlink and "Hold fast the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word, or our Epistle."hyperlink One of these traditions is the practice which is now before us, which they who ordained from the beginning, rooted firmly in the churches, delivering it to their successors, and its use through long custom advances pace by pace with time. If, as in a Court of Law, we were at a loss for documentary evidence, but were able to bring before you a large number of witnesses, would you not give your vote for our acquittal? I think so; for "at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be established."hyperlink And if we could prove clearly to you that a long period of time was in our favour, should we not have seemed to you to urge with reason that this suit ought not to be brought into court against us? For ancient dogmas inspire a certain sense of awe, venerable as they are with a hoary antiquity. I will therefore give you a list of the supporters of the word (and the time too must be taken into account in relation towhat passes unquestioned). For it did not originate with us. How could it? We, in comparison with the time during which this word has been in vogue, are, to use the words of Job, "but of yesterday."hyperlink I myself, if I must speak of what concerns me individually, cherish this phrase as a legacy left me by my fathers. It was delivered to me by onehyperlink who spent a long life in the service of God, and by him I was both baptized, and admitted to the ministry of the church. While examining, so far as I could, if any of the blessed men of old used the words to which objection is now made, I found many worthy of credit both on account of their early date, and also a characteristic in which they are unlike the men of to-day-because of the exactness of their knowledge. Of these some coupled the word in the doxology by the preposition, others by the conjunction, but were in no case supposed to be acting divergently,-at least so far as the right sense of true religion is concerned.
72. There is the famous Irenaeus,hyperlink and Clement of Rome;hyperlink Dionysius of Rome,hyperlink and, strange to say, Dionysius of Alexandria, in his second Letter to his namesake, on "Conviction and Defence," so concludes. I will give you his very words. "Following all these, we, too, since we have received from the presbyters who were before us a form and rule, offering thanksgiving in the same terms with them, thus conclude our Letter to you. To God the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, glory and might for ever and ever; amen." And no one can say that this passage has been altered. He would not have so persistently stated that he had received a form and rule if he had said "in the Spirit." For of this phrase the use is abundant: it was the use of "with" which required defence. Dionysius moreover in the middle of his treatise thus writes in opposition to the Sabellians, "If by the hypostases being three they say that they are divided, there are three, though they like it not. Else let them destroy the divine Trinity altogether." And again: "most divine on this account after the Unity is the Trinity."hyperlink Clement, in more primitive fashion, writes, "God lives, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost."hyperlink And now let us bear how Irenaeus, who lived near the times of the Apostles, mentions the Spirit in his work "Against the Heresies."hyperlink "The Apostle rightly calls carnal them that are unbridled and carried away to their own desires, having no desire for the Holy Spirit,"hyperlink and in another passage Irenaeus says, "The Apostle exclaimed that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of the heavens lest we, being without share in the divine Spirit, fall short of the kingdom of the heavens." If any one thinks Eusebius of Palestinehyperlink worthy of credit on account of his wide experience, I point further to the very words he uses in discussing questions concerning the polygamy of the ancients. Stirring up himself to his work, he writes "invoking the holy God of the Prophets, the Author of light, through our Saviour Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit."73. Origen, too, in many of his expositions of the Psalms, we find using the form of doxology "with the Holy Ghost. The opinions which he held concerning the Spirit were not always and everywhere sound; nevertheless in many passages even he himself reverently recognises the force of established usage, and expresses himself concerning the Spirit in terms consistent with true religion. It is, if I am not mistaken, in the Sixthhyperlink Book of his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John that he distinctly makes the Spirit an object of worship. His words are:-"The washing or water is a symbol of the cleaning of the soul which is washed clean of all filth that comes of wickedness;hyperlink but none the less is it also by itself, to him who yields himself to the God-head of the adorable Trinity, through the power of the invocations, the origin and source of blessings." And again, in his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans "the holy powers," he says"are able to receive the Only-begotten, and the Godhead of the Holy Spirit." Thus I apprehend, the powerful influence of traditionfrequently impels men to express themselves in terms contradictory to their own opinions.hyperlink Moreover this form of the doxology was not unknowneven to Africanus the historian. In the Fifth Book of his Epitome of the Times he says "we who know the weight of those terms, and are not ignorant of the grace of faith, render thanks to the Father, who bestowed on us His own creatures, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world and our Lord, to whom be glory and majesty with the Holy Ghost, for ever."hyperlink The rest of the passages may peradventure be viewed with suspicion; or may really have been altered, and the fact of their having been tampered with will be difficult to detect because the difference consists in a single syllable. Those however which I have quoted at length are out of the reach of any dishonest manipulation, and can easily be verified from the actual works.
I will now adduce another piece of evidence which might perhaps seem insignificant, but because of its antiquity must in nowise be omitted by a defendant who is indicted on a charge of innovation. It seemed fitting to our fathers not to receive the gift of the light at eventide in silence, but, on its appearing, immediately to give thanks. Who was the author of these words of thanksgiving at the lighting of the lamps, we are not able to say. The people, however, utter the ancient form, and no one has ever reckoned guilty of impiety those who say "We praise Father, Son, and God's Holy Spirit."hyperlink And if any one knows the Hymn of Athenogenes,hyperlink which, as he was hurrying on to his perfecting by fire, he left as a kind of farewell gifthyperlink to his friends, he knows the mind of the martyrs as to the Spirit. On this head I shall say no more.
74. But where shall I rank the great Gregory,hyperlink and the words uttered by him? Shall we not place among Apostles and Prophets a man who walked by the same Spirit as they;hyperlink who never through all his days diverged from the footprints of the saints; who maintained, as long as he lived, the exact principles of evangelical citizenship? I am sure that we shall do the truth a wrong if we refuse to number that soul with the people of God, shining as it did like a beacon in the Church of God; for by the fellow-working of the Spirit the power which he had over demons was tremendous, and so gifted was he with the grace of the word "for obedience to the faith among ...the nations,"hyperlink that, although only seventeen Christians were handed over to him, hebrought the whole people alike in town and country through knowledge to God. He too by Christ's mighty name commanded even rivers to change their course,hyperlink and caused a lake, which afforded a ground of quarrel to some covetous brethren, to dry up.hyperlink Moreover his predictions of things to come were such as in no wise to fall short of those of the great prophets. To recount all his wonderful works in detail would be too long a task. By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the Spirit in all power and in signs and in marvels, he was styled a second Moses by the very enemies of the Church. Thus in all that he through grace accomplished, alike byword and deed, a light seemed ever to be shining, token of the heavenly power from the unseen which followed him. To this day he is a great object of admiration to the people of his own neighbourhood, and his memory, established in the churches ever fresh and green, is not dulled by length of time. Thus not a practice, not a word, not a mystic rite has been added to the Church besides what he bequeathed to it. Hence truly on account of the antiquity of their institution many of their ceremonies appear to be defective.hyperlink For his successors in the administration of the Churches could not endure to accept any subsequent discovery in addition to what had had his sanction. Now one of the institutions of Gregory is the very form of the doxology to which objection is now made, preserved by the Church on the authority of his tradition; a statement which may be verified without much trouble by any one who likes to make a short journey. That our Firmilian held this belief is testified by the writings which he has left.hyperlink The contemporaries also of the illustrious Meletius say that he was of this opinion. But why quote ancient authorities? Now in the East are not the maintainers of true religion known chiefly by this one term, and separated from their adversaries as by a watchword? I have heard from a certain Mesopotamian, a man at once well skilled in the language and of unperverted opinions, that by the usage of his country it is impossible for any one, even though he may wish to do so, to express himself in any other way, and that they are compelled by the idiom of their mother tongue to offer the doxology by the syllable "and," or, I should more accurately say, by their equivalent expressions. We Cappadocians, too, so speak in the dialect of our country, the Spirit having so early. as the division of tongues foreseen the utility of the phrase. And what of the whole West, almost from Illyricum to the boundaries of our world? Does it not support this word?
75. How then can I be an innovator and creator of new terms, when I adduce as originators and champions of the word whole nations, cities, custom going back beyond the memory of man, men who were pillars of the church and conspicuous for all knowledge and spiritual power? For this cause this banded array of foes is set in motion against me, and town and village and remotest regions are full of my calumniators. Sad and painful are these things to them that seek for peace, but great is the reward of patience for sufferings endured for the Faith's sake. So besides these let sword flash, let axe be whetted, let fire burn fiercer than that of Babylon, let every instrument of torture be set in motion against me. To me nothing is more fearful than failure to fear the threats which the Lord has directed against them that blaspheme the Spirit.hyperlink Kindly readers will find a satisfactory defence in what I have said, that I accept a phrase so dear and so familiar to the saints, and confirmed by usage so long, inasmuch as, from the day when the Gospel was first preached up to our own time, it is shewn to have been admitted to all full rights within the churches, and, what is of greatest moment, to have been accepted as bearing a sense in accordance with holiness and true religion. But before the great tribunal what have I prepared to say in my defence? This; that I was in the first place led to the glory of the Spirit by the honour conferred by the Lord in associating Him with Himself and with His Father at baptism;hyperlink and secondly by the introduction of each of us to the knowledge of God by such an initiation; and above all by the fear of the threatened punishment shutting out the thought of all indignity and unworthy conception. But our opponents, what will they say? After shewing neither reverence for the Lord's honourhyperlink nor fear of His threats, what kind of defence will they have for their blasphemy? It is for them to make up their mind about their own action or even now to change it. For my own part I would pray most earnestly that the good God will make His peace rule in the hearts of all,hyperlink so that these men who are swollen with pride and set in battle array against us may be calmed by the Spirit of meekness and of love; and that if they have become utterly savage, and are in an untamable state, He will grant to us at least to bear with long suffering all that we have to bear at their hands. In short "to them that have in themselves the sentence of death,"hyperlink it is not suffering for the sake of the Faith which is painful; what is hard to bear is to fail to fight its battle. The athlete does not so much complain of being wounded in the struggle as of not being able even to secure admission into the stadium. Or perhaps this was the time for silence spoken of by Solomon the wise.hyperlink For, when life is buffeted by so fierce a storm that all the intelligence of those who are instructed in the word is filled with the deceit of false reasoning and confounded, like an eye filled with dust, when men are stunned by strange and awful noises, when all the world is shaken and everything tottering to its fall, what profits it to cry, as I am really crying, to the wind?
Chapter XXX
Exposition of the present state of the Churches.
76. To what then shall I liken our present condition? It may be compared, I think, to some naval battle which has arisen out of time old quarrels, and is fought by men who cherish a deadly hate against one another, of long experience in naval warfare, and eager for the fight. Look, I beg you, at the picture thus raised before your eyes. See the rival fleets rushing in dread array to the attack. With a burst of uncontrollable fury they engage and fight it out. Fancy, if you like, the ships driven to and fro by a raging tempest, while thick darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes so that watchwords are indistinguishable in the confusion, and all distinction between friend and foe is lost. To fill up the details of the imaginary picture, suppose the sea swollen with billows and whirled up from the deep, while a vehement torrent of rain pours down from the clouds and the terrible waves rise high. From every quarter of heaven the winds beat upon one point, where boththe fleets are dashed one against the other. Of the combatants some are turning traitors; some are deserting in the very thick of the fight; some have at one and the same moment to urge on their boats, all beaten by the gale, and to advance against their assailants. Jealousy of authority and the lust of individual mastery splits the sailors into parties which deal mutual death to one another. Think, besides all this, of the confused and unmeaning roar sounding over all the sea, from howling winds, from crashing vessels, from boiling surf, from the yells of the combatants as they express their varying emotions in every kind of noise, so that not a word from admiral or pilot can be heard. The disorder and confusion is tremendous, for the extremity of misfortune, when life is despaired of, gives men license for every kind of wickedness. Suppose, too, that the men are all smitten with the incurable plague of mad love of glory, so that they do not cease from their struggle each to get the better of the other, while their ship is actually settling down into the deep.
77. Turn now I beg you from this figurative description to the unhappy reality. Did it not at one timehyperlink appear that the Arian schism, after its separation into a sect opposed to the Church of God, stood itself alone in hostile array? But when the attitude of our foes against us was changed from one of long standing and bitter strife to one of open warfare, then, as is well known, the war was split up in more ways than I can tell into many subdivisions, so that all men were stirred to a state of inveterate hatred alike by common party spirit and individual suspicion.hyperlink But what storm at sea was ever so fierce and wild as this tempest of the Churches? In it every landmark of the Fathers has been moved; every foundation. every bulwark of opinion has been shaken: everything buoyed up on the unsound is dashed about and shaken down. We attack one another. We are overthrown by one another. If our enemy is not the first to strike us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side. If a foeman is stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down. There is at least this bond of union between us that we hate our common foes, but no sooner have the enemy gone by than we find enemies in one another. And who could make a complete list of all the wrecks? Some have gone to the bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through the unsuspected treachery, of their allies, some from the blundering of their own officers. We see, as it were, whole churches, crews and all, dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefs of disingenuous heresy, while others of the enemies of the Spirithyperlink of Salvation have seized the helm and made shipwreck of the faith.hyperlink And then the disturbances wrought by the princes of the worldhyperlink have caused the downfall of the people with a violence unmatched by that of hurricane or whirlwind. The luminaries of the world, which God set to give light to the souls of the people, have been driven from their homes, and a darkness verily gloomy and disheartening has settled on the Churches.hyperlink The terror of universal ruin is already imminent, and yet their mutual rivalry is so unbounded as to blunt all sense of danger. Individual hatred is of more importance than the general and common warfare, for men by whom the immediate gratification of ambition is esteemed more highly than the rewards that await us in a time to come, prefer the glory of getting the better of their opponents to securing the common welfare of mankind. So all men alike, each as best he can, lift the hand of murder against one another. Harsh rises the cry of the combatants encountering one another in dispute; already all the Church is almost full of the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible noises, rising from the ceaseless agitations that divert the right rule of the doctrine of true religion, now in the direction of excess, now in that of defect. On the one hand are they who confound the Persons and are carried away into Judaism;hyperlink on the other hand are they that, through the opposition of the natures, pass into heathenism.hyperlink Between these opposite parties inspired Scripture is powerless to mediate; the traditions of the apostles cannot suggest terms of arbitration. Plain speaking is fatal to friendship, and disagreement in opinion all the ground that is wanted for a quarrel. No oaths of confederacy are so efficacious in keeping men true to sedition as their likeness in error. Every one is a theologue though he have his soul branded with more spots than can be counted. The result is that innovators find a plentiful supply of men ripe for faction, while self-appointed scions of the house of place-huntershyperlink reject the governmenthyperlink of the Holy Spirit and divide the chief dignities of the Churches. The institutions of the Gospel have now everywhere been thrown into confusion by want of discipline; there is an indescribable pushing for the chief places while every self-advertiser tries to force himself into high office. The result of this lust for ordering is that our people are in a state of wild confusion for lack of being ordered;hyperlink the exhortations of those in authority are rendered wholly purposeless and void, because there is not a man but, out of his ignorant impudence, thinks that it is just as much his duty to give orders to other people, as it is to obey any one else.
73. So, since no human voice is strong enough to be heard in such a disturbance, I reckon silence more profitable than speech, for if there is any truth in the words of the Preacher, "The words of wise men are heard in quiet,"hyperlink in the present condition of things any discussion of them must be anything but becoming. I am moreover restrained by the Prophet's saying, "Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time,"hyperlink a time when some trip up their neighbours' heels, some stamp on a man when he is down, and others clap their hands with joy, but there is not one to feel for the fallen and hold out a helping hand, although according to the ancient law he is not uncondemned, who passes by even his enemy's beast of burden fallen under his load.hyperlink This is not the state of things now. Why not? The love of many has waxed cold;hyperlink brotherly concord is destroyed, the very name of unity is ignored, brotherly admonitions are heard no more, nowhere is there Christian pity, nowhere falls the tear of sympathy. Now there is no one to receive "the weak in faith,"hyperlink but mutual hatred has blazed so high among fellow clansmen that they are more delighted at a neighbour's fall than at their own success. Just as in a plague, men of the most regular lives suffer from the same sickness as the rest, because they catch the disease by communication with the infected, so nowadays by the evil rivalry which possesses our souls we are carried away to an emulation in wickedness, and are all of us each as bad as the others. Hence merciless and sour sit the judges of the erring; unfeeling and hostile are the critics of the well disposed. And to such a depth is this evil rooted among us that we have become more brutish than the brutes; they do at least herd with their fellows, but our most savage warfare is with our own people.
79. For all these reasons I ought to have kept silence, but I was drawn in the other direction by love, which "seeketh not her own,"hyperlink and desires to overcome every difficulty put in her way by time and circumstance. I was taught too by the children at Babylon,hyperlink that, when there is no one to sopport the cause of true religion, we ought alone and all unaided to do our duty. They from out of the midst of the flame lifted up their voices in hymns and praise to God, reeking not of the host that set the truth at naught, but sufficient, three only that they were, with one another. Wherefore we too are undismayed at the cloud of our enemies, and, resting our hope on the aid of the Spirit, have, with all boldness, proclaimed the truth. Had I not so done, it would truly have been terrible that the blasphemers of the Spirit should so easily be emboldened in their attack upon true religion, and that we, with so mighty an ally and supporter at our side, should shrink from the service of that doctrine, which by the tradition of the Fathers has been preserved by an unbroken sequence of memory to our own day. A further powerful incentive to my undertaking was the warm fervour of your "love unfeigned,"hyperlink a and the seriousness and taciturnity of your disposition; a guarantee that you would not publish what I was about to say to all the world,-not because it would not be worth making known, but to avoid casting pearls before swine,hyperlink My task is now done. If you find what I have said satisfactory, let this make an end to our discussion of these matters. If you think any point requires further elucidation, pray do not hesitate to pursue the investigation with all diligence, and to add to your information by putting any uncontroversial question. Either through me or through others the Lord will grant full explanation on matters which have yet to be made clear, according to the knowledge supplied to the worthy by the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
601 i.e. of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclus. xliii. 30.
602 Luke xii. 10.
603 1 Cor. xi. 2.
604 2 Thess. ii. 15.
605 Deut. xix. 15.
606 Job viii. 9.
607 i.e. Dianius, bp. of the Cappadocian Caesarea, who baptized St. Basil c. 357 on his return from Athens, and ordained him Reader. He was a waverer, and signed the creed of Ariminum in 359; Basil consequently left him, but speaks reverentially of him in Ep. 51.
608 _ c. 200.
609 _ 100.
610 _ 260.
611 Dionysius was Patriarch of Alexandria a.d. 247-265. Basil's "strange to say" is of a piece with the view of Dionysius' heretical tendencies expressed in Letter ix. q.v. Athanasius, however, (De Sent. Dionysii) was satisfied as to the orthodoxy of his predecessor. Bp. Westcott (Dict. C. Biog. I. 851) quotes Lumper (Hist. Pat. xii. 86) as supposing that Basil's charge against Dionysius of sowing the seeds of the Anomoean heresy was due to imperfect acquaintance with his writings. In Letter clxxxviii. Basil calls him "the Great." which implies general approval.
612 Clem. Rom., Ep. ad Cor. lviii. Bp. Lightfoot's . Fathers, Pt. I. ii. 169.
613 Irenaeus is near he Apostles in close connexion, as well as in time, through his personal knowledge of Polycarp. Vide his Ep. to Florinus quoted in Euseb., Ecc. Hist. v. 20. In his work On the Ogdoad, quoted in the same chapter, Irenaeus says of himself that he th/n pswth\n tw=n 0 Apostolw=n kateilhfe/nai thn diadoxh/n "had himself had the nearest succession of the Apostles."
614 The reference is presumably to 1 Cor. ii. 11 and iii. 1.
615 i.e. Eusebius of Caesarea, the historian, so called to distinguish him from his namesake of Nicomedia. cf. Theodoret, Ecc. Hist. I. 1. The work is not extant. It may be that mentioned by Eusebius in his Praep. Evang. vii. 8, 20 under the title of peri\ th=j tw=n palaiw=n a'ndrw=n polupaidi/aj.
616 The quotation is from the Eighth Book.
617 cf. 1 Pet. iii. 21.
618 AS to Origen's unorthodoxy concerning the Holy Spirit St. Basil may have had in his mind such a passage as the following from the First Book of the De Principiis, extant in the original in Justinian, Ep. ad Mennam. Minge, Pat. Gr. xi. p. 150. o!ti o 9 me\n qeo\j kai\path=r sune/xwn ta\ pa/nta fqa/nei eij ekaston tw=n o!ntwn metadidou\j e 9ka/stw a'po\ ton= i'di/on to\ ei\nai : w$n ga\r e!stin : e'la/ttwn de\ para to\n pate/ra o 9 Ui 9o\j fqa/nei e'pi\ mo/na ta\ logika/. den/teroj la/r e'sti tou= patro/j: e!ti de= h 9neu=ma to\ a!lio/ e'pi\ mo/nouj ton= a 9gi/ouj di iknou=menon. w!ste kata\ tou=to meizwn h\ du/namij tou= Patro\j para\ to\n Uio\n kai\ to\ pneu=ma to\ a!gion plei/wn de\ h 9 tou= Ui 9ou= papa= to\ pneu=ma to\ a!gion. The work does not even exist as a whole in the translation of Rufinus, who omitted portions, and St. Jerome thought that Rufinus had misrepresented it. Photius (Biblioth. cod. viii.) says that Origen, in asserting in this work that the Son was made by the Father and the Spirit by the Son, is most blashemous. Bp. Harold Browne, however (position of the xxxix. Art. p. 113, n. 1), is of opinion that if Rufinus fairly translated the following passage, Origen cannot have been fairly charged with heresy concerning the Holy Ghost: "Ne quis sane existimet nos ex co quod diximus Spiritum sanctum solis sanctis praestari. Patris vero et Filii beneficia vel inoperationes pervenire ad bonos et malos, justos et injustos, proetulisse per hoc Patri et Filio Spiritum Sanctum, vel majorem ejus per hoc asserere dignitatem; quod utique valde inconsequens est. Proprietatem namque gratiae ejus operisque descipsimus. Porro autem nihil in Trinitate majus minusve dicendum est, quum unius Divinitatis Fons verbo ac ratione sua teneat universa, spiritu vero oris sui quae digna sunt, sanctificatione sanctificet, sicut in Psalmo scriptum est verbo domini coeli firmati sunt et spiritu oris ejus omnis virtus eorum." De Princ. I. iii. 7.
On the obligations of both Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus to Origen, cf. Socrates iv. 26.
619 Of the chief writings of Julius Africanus (called Sextus Africanus by Suidas), who wrote at Emmaus and Alexandria c. 220, only fragments remain. A Letter to Origen is complete. His principal work was a Chronicon from the Creation to a.d. 221, in Five Books. Of this Dr. Salmon (D.C.B. I 56) thinks the doxology quoted by Basil was the conclusion.
620 Ps. cxli. was called o 9 e\pilu/xnioj yalmo/j (Ap. Const. viii. 35). In the Vespers of the Eastern Church an evening hymn is sung, translated in D.C.A. I. 634, "Joyful Light of the holy glory of the immortal Father, the heavenly the holy, the blessed Jesus Christ, we having come to the setting of the sun and beholding the evening light, praise God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is meet at all times that thou shouldest be hymned with auspicious voices, Son of God, Giver of Life: wherefore the world glorifieth thee."
621 Identified by some with two early hymns, Do/ca e'n u 9yi/stoij, and fwj i 9laro/n.
622 The mss. vary between e'cith/rion and a'lecith/rion, farewell gift and amulet or charm. In Ep. cciii. 229 Basil says that our Lord gave His disciples peace as an e'cith/rion dw=ron, using the word, but in conjunction with dw=ron. Greg. Naz., Orat. xiv. 223 speaks of our Lord leaving peace "w!sper a!llo ti e''cith/pion."
623 i.e. Gregory, bishop of Neocaesarea, known as Gregorius Thaumaturgus, or Gregory the Wonder-worker. To the modern reader "Gregory the Great" more naturally suggest Gregory of Nazianzus, but this he hardly was to his friend and contemporary, though the title had accrued to him by the time of the accepted Ephesine Council in 431 (videLabbe, vol. iv. p. 1192) Gregory the Wonder-worker, _ c. 270.
624 2 Cor. xii. 18.
625 Rom. i. 5.
626 e.g. according to the legend, the Lycus. cf. Newman, Essays o Miracles, p. 267.
627 The story is told by Gregory of Nyssa, Life ofGreg. Thaum. Migne xliv. 926-930.
628 The Neocaesareans appear to have entertained a Puritan objection to the antiphonal psalmody becoming general in the Church in the time of Basil. cf. Ep. ccvii.
629 Firmilian, like Gregory the Wonder-worker, a pupil of Origen, was bishop of Caesarea from before a.d. 232 (Euseb. vi. 26) to 272 (Euseb. vii. 30). By some his death at Tarsus is placed in 265 or 5.
630 cf. Matt. xii. 31.
631 Matt. xxviii. 19.
632 The Benedictine version for ta\j tima=j tou= kuri/on is honorem quem Dominus tribuit Spiritui. The reading of one ms. is ta=j fwna/j. There is authority for either sense of the genitive with timh/, i.e. the houours due to the Lord or paid by the Lord.
633 cf. Col. iii. 15.
634 2 Cor. I. 9.
635 Eccl. iii. 7.
636 i.e. after the condemnation of Arius at Nicaea/
637 In Ep. ccxlii. written in 376, St. Basil says: "This is the thirteenth year since the outbreak of the war of heretics against us." 363 is the date of the Acacian Council of Antioch; 364 of the accession of Valens and Valentian, of the Semi-Arian Synod of Lampsacus, and of St. Basil's ordination to the priesthood and book against Eunomius. On the propagation by scission and innumerable subdivisions of Arianism Cannon Bright writes:
The extraordinary versatility, the argumentative subtlety, and the too frequent profanity of Arianism are matters of which a few lines can give no idea. But it is necessary , in even the briefest notice of this long-lived heresy, to remark on the contrast between its changeable inventiveness and the simple steadfastness of Catholic doctrine. On the one side, some twenty different creeds (of which several, however, were rather negatively than positively heterodox) and three main sects, the Semi-Arians, with their formula of Homoiousion, i.e. the Son is like in essence to the Father; the Acacians, vaguely calling Him like (Homoion); the Aetians, boldly calling Him unlike, as much as to say He is in no sense Divine. On the other side, the Church with the Nicene Creed, confessing Him as Homoousion, 'of one essence with the Father,' meaning thereby, as her great champion repeatedly bore witness, to secure belief in the reality of the Divine Sonship, and therefore in the real Deity, as distinguished from the titular deity which was so freely conceded to Him by the Arians." Cannon Bright, St. Leo on the Incarnation, p. 140
Socrates (ii. 41), pausing at 360, enumerates, after Nicaea:
1. 1st of Antioch
omitted the o 9mooou\sion, a.d. 341)
2. 2d of Antioch
3. The Creed brought to Constans in Gaul by Narcissus and other Arians in 342.
4. The Creed "sent by Eudoxius of Germanicia into Italy," i.e. the "Macrostich," or "Lengthy Creed," rejected at Milan in 346.
5. The 1st Creed of Sirmium; i.e. the Macrostich with 26 additional clauses, 351.
6. The 2d Sirmian Creed. The "manifesto;" called by Athanasius (De Synod. 28) "the blasphemy," 357.
7. The 3d Sirmian, or "dated Creed," in the consulship of Flavius Eusebius and Hypatius, May 22d, 359.
8. The Acacian Creed of Seleucia, 359.
9. The Creed of Ariminum adopted at Constantinople, as revised at Nike.
638 On the authority of the ms. of the tenth century at Paris, called by the Ben. Editors Regius Secundus, they read for pneu/matoj pa/qonj, denying pneumatoj to be consistent with the style and practice of Basil, who they say, never uses the epithet swth/oioj of the Spirit. Mr. C. F. H. Johnston notes that St. Basil "always attributes the saving efficacy of Baptism to the presence of the Spirit, and here applies the word to Him." In § 35, we have to\ awth/rion ba/ppisua.
639 1 Tim. I. 19.
640 1 Cor. ii. 6.
641 Among the bishops exiled during the persecution of Valens were Meletius of Antioch. Eusebius of Samosata, Pelagius of Laodicea, and Barses of Edessa. cf. Theodoret, st. Ecc. iv. 12 sq. cf. Ep. 195.
642 The identification of an unsound Monarchianism with Judaism is illustrated in the 1st Apology of Justin Martyr e.g. in § lxxxiii. (Reeves' Trans.). "The Jews, therefore, for maintaining that it was the Father of the Universe who had the conference with Moses, when it was the very Son of God who had it, and who is styled both Angel and Apostle, are justly accused by the prophetic spirit and Christ Himself, for knowing neither the Father nor the Son; for they who affirm the Son to be the Father are guilty of not knowing the Father, and likewise of being ignorant that the Father of the Universe has a Son, who, being the Logos and First-begotten of God, is God."
643 i.e. the Arians, whose various ramifications all originated in a probably well-meant attempt to reconcile the principles of Christianity with what was best in the old philosophy, and a failure to see that the ditheism of Arianism was of a piece with polytheism.
644 The word spoudarxi/dhj is a comic patronymic of spouda/rxhj, a place-hunter, occurring in the Archarnians of Aristophanes, 595.
645 oi'konomi/a.
646 a'narxi/a a'po\ filarxi/aj.
647 Eccl. ix. 17.
648 Amos v. 13.
649 Ezek. xxiii. 5.
650 Matt. xxiv. 12.
651 Rom. xiv. 1.
652 1 Cor. xiii. 5.
653 Dan. iii. 12 seqq.