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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 81
72. There is the famous Irenaeus, [1313] and Clement of Rome; [1314] Dionysius of Rome, [1315] 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." [1316] Clement, in more primitive fashion, writes, "God lives, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost." [1317] And now let us hear how Irenaeus, who lived near the times of the Apostles, mentions the Spirit in his work "Against the Heresies." [1318] "The Apostle rightly calls carnal them that are unbridled and carried away to their own desires, having no desire for the Holy Spirit," [1319] 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 Palestine [1320] 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."
[1313] /- c. 200.
[1314] /- 100.
[1315] /- 269.
[1316] 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.
[1317] Clem. Rom., Ep. ad Cor. lviii. Bp. Lightfoot's Ap. Fathers, Pt. I. ii. 169.
[1318] Irenaeus is near the Apostles in close connexion, as well as in time, through his personal knowledge of Polycarp. Videhis 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 ten proten ton 'Apostolon kateilephenai ten diadochen "had himself had the nearest succession of the Apostles."
[1319] The reference is presumably to 1 Cor. ii. 11 and iii. 1.
[1320] 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 tes ton palaion andron polupaidias.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=81
