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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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88 Pages
Page 86
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 Spirit [1343] of Salvation have seized the helm and made shipwreck of the faith. [1344] And then the disturbances wrought by the princes of the world [1345] 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. [1346] 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; [1347] on the other hand are they that, through the opposition of the natures, pass into heathenism. [1348] 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-hunters [1349] reject the government [1350] 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; [1351] 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.
[1343] On the authority of the ms. of the tenth century at Paris, called by the Ben. Editors Regius Secundus, they read for pneumatos pathous, denying pneumatos to be consistent with the style and practice of Basil, who they say, never uses the epithet soteoios 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 S: 35, we have to soterion baptisua.
[1344] 1 Tim. i. 19.
[1345] 1 Cor. ii. 6.
[1346] 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, Hist. Ecc. iv. 12 sq. cf. Ep. 195.
[1347] The identification of an unsound Monarchianism with Judaism is illustrated in the 1st Apology of Justin Martyr, e.g. in S: 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."
[1348] 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.
[1349] The word spoudarchides is a comic patronymic of spoudarches, a place-hunter, occurring in the Acharnians of Aristophanes, 595.
[1350] oikonomia.
[1351] anarchia apo philarchias.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/holy-spirit.asp?pg=86
