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Translated by Ch. Browne and J. Swallow.
Gregory Theologian Bilingual Anthology, Resources Online and in Print
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48 Pages
Page 17
29. What then did our noble friend, the disciple of the Peaceable One? It was not his habit to resist his traducers or partisans, nor was it his part to fight, or rend the body of the Church, which was from other reasons the subject of attack, and hardly bestead, from the great power of the heretics. With my advice and earnest encouragement on the point, he set out from the place with me into Pontus, and presided over the abodes of contemplation there. He himself too founded one [4447] worthy of mention, as he welcomed the desert together with Elijah and John, [4448] those professors of austerity; thinking this to be more profitable for him than to form any design in reference to the present juncture unworthy of his philosophy, and to ruin in a time of storm the straight course which he was making, where the surges of disputation were lulled to a calm. Yet wonderfully philosophic though his retirement was, we shall find his return still more wonderful. For thus it was.
30. While we were thus engaged, there suddenly arose a cloud full of hail, with destructive roar, overwhelming every Church upon which it burst and seized: an Emperor, [4449] most fond of gold and most hostile to Christ, infected with these two most serious diseases, insatiate avarice and blasphemy; a persecutor in succession to the persecutor, and, in succession to the apostate, not indeed an apostate, though no better to Christians, or rather, to the more devout and pure party of Christians, who worship the Trinity, which I call the only true devotion and saving doctrine. For we do not measure out the Godhead into portions, nor banish from Itself by unnatural estrangements the one and unapproachable Nature; nor cure one evil by another, destroying the godless confusion of Sabellius by a more impious severance and division; which was the error of Arius, whose name declares his madness, [4450] the disturber and destroyer of a great part of the Church. For he did not honour the Father, by dishonouring His offspring with his unequal degrees of Godhead. But we recognize one glory [4451] of the Father, the equality of the Only-begotten; and one glory of the Son, that of the Spirit. And we hold that, to subordinate any of the Three, is to destroy the whole. For we worship and acknowledge Them as Three in their properties, [4452] but One in their Godhead. He however had no such idea, being unable to look up, but being debased by those who led him, he dared to debase along with himself even the Nature of the Godhead, and became a wicked creature reducing Majesty to bondage, and aligning with creation the uncreated and timeless Nature.
[4447] One, a monastery. The rule of S. Basil is widely observed to this day in Eastern monasteries. Cf. S: 34.
[4448] John, Saint John Baptist.
[4449] An Emperor, Valens.
[4450] Madness, cf. ii. 37, Note.
[4451] Glory. The word doxa means both "doctrine" and "glory."
[4452] Properties. idiotetes. Petav. de Trin. iv. Proem. S: 2 gives other Greek equivalent terms. The Latin terms are "notiones" (S. Thom. Aq. Summa. I. xxxii. qu. 2), "proprietates" or relationes. They denote those relative "attributes ad intra" which distinguish the Persons, if they do not actually constitute the Personality of each of the Three Divine Persons. They are five in number, Unbegottenness, Paternity, Filiation, active and passive Spiration. Perhaps the nearest English equivalent is "characteristic (or distinctive) relations."—Cf. Orat. xlii. 15.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/gregory-nazianzen/funeral-basil.asp?pg=17
