Letters 238–243

To the presbyters of Nicopolis. I received the letter of your reverence, and could learn from it nothing newer than what was already known. For the report had already reached the whole surrounding region, announcing the shame of the man who fell among you, who through desire for empty glory brought on himself the most shameful dishonor, and was found to have fallen, through love of self, from the rewards of faith; while that wretched scrap of glory for which he longed and sold himself to impiety he does not have, because of the just hatred of those who fear the Lord. But by his present choice he has given the clearest proof of his whole life: that he never lived in the hope of the promises stored up for us by the Lord; but whatever human advantage he was trafficking for himself, he practiced everything, both words of faith and a pretense of reverence, to deceive those he met. But why does what has happened weigh you down? How are you worse than you were because of it? One is missing from your full number; and if one or two others have gone off with him somewhere, they are to be pitied for their fall, but your body is whole by the grace of God. For what had become useless has dropped off, and what remains has not been mutilated. And if it grieves you that you have been driven out of the walls, yet you will lodge under the shelter of the God of heaven, and the angel who oversees the Church has gone out with you. So they lie down every day in empty buildings, preparing a heavy judgment for themselves from the scattering of the people. And if there is some toil in the matter, I am persuaded in the Lord that this will not turn out in vain for you. So the more trials you are in, the more costly the reward you may expect from the just Judge. Do not then take the present hard, nor grow weary in hope. For yet a very little while, and he who helps you will come to you, and will not delay. [Letter 239] [To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.] … our fellow presbyter, to address your holiness; and to urge you to do as you are accustomed, to pray for us; and to find for ourselves some consolation for our long separation in conversing with you by letter. In praying, we urge you to ask the Lord first and foremost that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, who have so prevailed over the peoples that we now see in ourselves nothing other than the image of the Jewish captivity. For the weaker the Churches sink, the more the ambitions of men flourish. And the name of the episcopate has now come round to wretched men, home-bred slaves, since none of the servants of God chooses to set himself against them, except those who are desperate, such as the men now sent in by Anysius, the creature of Euippius, and by Ecdicius of Parnassus, whom the one who appointed him left to the Churches as an evil provision for his own life to come. These have now driven my brother out of Nyssa, and brought in instead a man, or rather a slave worth a few obols, but equal in corrupting the faith to those who appointed him. And to the village of Doara they sent a ruined man, a servant of orphans, who ran away from his masters, through the flattery of a godless woman, who formerly used George for her own will and now has got this man as his successor, insulting the pitiable name of the episcopate. And the affairs of the Nicopolitans, who could lament them as they deserve? The wretched Fronto, who at first made a show of pleading for the truth, at last basely betrayed both the faith and himself, and received as the reward of his betrayal a name of dishonor. For he received from them the dignity of the episcopate, as he thinks; but by the grace of God he has become the common abomination of all Armenia. Only, nothing is too daring for them, nor do they lack fellow workers worthy of them. As for the rest of Syria, brother Antiochus both knows it better than we do and will relate it. 2. Those from the West you yourself have already met, brother Dorotheus having related everything. What sort of letters should be given him again when he departs? For perhaps he will share the journey with the good Sanctissimus, who is full of zeal and is going around the East collecting signatures and letters from each of the notable men. What we ought to write through them, or how to agree with those who write, I myself do not know; but if you quickly find people coming to us, deign to let us know. For I am inclined to quote the word of Diomedes: "Would you had not entreated him," because, he says, the man is haughty. For indeed haughty characters, when they are courted, naturally become more contemptuous. For if the Lord is propitious to us, what further addition do we need? But if the wrath of God remains, what help to us is Western superciliousness? They neither know the truth nor bear to learn it, but, preoccupied by false suspicions, they are doing now what they did before in the case of Marcellus: quarreling with those who tell them the truth, and by their own act confirming the heresy. For I myself wished, apart from the common letter, to write to their leader, saying nothing about ecclesiastical matters except to hint that they neither know the truth of our affairs nor accept the way by which they might learn it; but in general that one ought not to attack those who have been humbled by trials, nor take haughtiness for dignity, a sin which by itself is enough to make one an enemy of God.

[To the presbyters of Nicopolis.] … what we advise ourselves, this we also write to your reverence: that these things have happened to many; and not in the present time only, but in times past there are countless examples of such things, some of which the histories have left in writing, while others we have received in unwritten memory from those who knew them; that both man by man and city by city trials have surrounded those who hoped in him, for the name of the Lord. Yet all of them passed, and none of the gloomy things had a grief that was immortal. For as hailstorms and torrents and all sudden evils easily harm and ruin what is soft, but, meeting what is resistant, suffer rather than do harm, so too the violent trials stirred up against the Church have proved weaker than the firmness of faith in Christ. As then the hail cloud passed and the torrent flowed by (the one dissolved into clear sky, the other disappeared into the depths, leaving the way along which it flowed dry and without moisture), so too what now storms around us will soon be no more. Only let us consent not to look at the present, but to fix our hopes on what lies a little further on. Whether, then, the trial is heavy, brothers, let us endure the toils; for no one is crowned without being struck in the contests and covered with dust; or whether these are the devil's playthings, and those who … are troublesome because they are his servants, but contemptible because to their wickedness they have joined weakness, let us beware of the reproach of lamenting greatly over small sufferings. For one thing alone deserves grief: the destruction of the man who for the sake of temporary glory (if indeed one should call public disgrace glory) deprives himself of the eternal honor of the just. You are children of confessors, and children of martyrs, who resisted sin to the point of blood. Let each use the examples of his own family for resistance on behalf of godliness. None of us has been torn with scourges; no one's house has been confiscated; we have not lived in exile; we have not known prison. What terrible thing have we suffered? Unless perhaps this is grievous, that we have suffered nothing, and have not been thought worthy of sufferings for Christ. But if it grieves you that he holds the house of prayer while you worship the Lord of heaven and earth in the open air, consider that the eleven disciples were shut up in the upper room, while those who had crucified the Lord fulfilled the Jewish worship in the famous temple. Judas, by preferring death by hanging to living in shame, perhaps showed himself more to be chosen than those who now have lost all blush before the condemnation of all people, and are therefore shamelessly disposed toward base things. 3. Only do not be deceived by their lies, when they profess orthodoxy of faith. For such men are traffickers in Christ, not Christians, always preferring what profits them in this life to living in truth. When they thought they could gain this empty office, they joined the enemies of Christ; when they saw the peoples angry, they again put on a show of orthodoxy. I do not recognize as bishop, nor would I number among the priests of Christ, one who has been put forward to leadership by profane hands for the destruction of the faith. This is my judgment. If you have any part with us, you will clearly think as we do; but if you take counsel by yourselves, each is master of his own opinion; we are innocent of this blood. I wrote this not because I distrust you, but to strengthen the wavering of some by making my judgment known; so that no one may be drawn into communion beforehand, and then, after receiving the laying on of their hands, when peace comes, force their way into being counted among the priestly body. Through you we greet all the clergy, both those in the city and those in the district, with all the people who fear the Lord.

To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata. It is not to increase your dejection that we often do not spare our troubles in our letters to your honor, but both to give ourselves some consolation through groans, which somehow naturally dispel the pain deep within when they are uttered, and to rouse your magnanimity to more earnest prayer for the Churches. For Moses too prayed always for the people; yet when the struggle with Amalek was upon him, he did not let down his hands from morning till evening, but the stretching out of the holy man's hands lasted to the end of the battle.

To the Westerns. 1. Since the holy God promises a way out of every affliction to those who hope in him, even if we have been caught in the midst of a sea of evils and are tormented by waves raised against us by the spirits of wickedness, yet we hold out in Christ who strengthens us, and we have not slackened the vigor of our zeal for the Churches; nor, as in a storm when the surge overwhelms, have we despaired of safety and awaited our dissolution; but we still hold to the zeal possible for us, knowing that he too who was swallowed by the sea-monster, because he did not despair of himself but cried to the Lord, was deemed worthy of salvation. So we too, having come to the extremity of evils, do not let go of our hope in God, but look round on every side for his help. Hence we have now looked to you, most honored brothers, whom we often expected to appear to us in the time of our afflictions; but falling from our hope, we too said to ourselves: "I waited for one to grieve with me, and there was none; and for comforters, and I found none." For our sufferings are such that they have reached the ends of the inhabited world; and if, when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, surely your compassion ought to have been moved toward us, who have long been in distress. For it is not nearness of place but conjunction in the Spirit that naturally creates intimacy; and this we have believed that we have with your love. 2. Why then has there been no letter of encouragement, no visit of brothers, nothing else of what is owed us by the law of love? For this is the thirteenth year since the heretical war rose against us, in which more afflictions have come upon the Churches than are recorded since the Gospel of Christ was proclaimed. We decline to tell you of them one by one, lest the weakness of our words weaken the vividness of the evils; and at the same time we do not think that you need teaching, having long since been taught the truth of the facts by report. The sum of the evil is this: the peoples, having left the houses of prayer, gather in the deserts. A pitiable sight: women, children, old men, and others who are otherwise weak, suffering in the open air in the most violent rains, in snows and winds and the frost of winter, and likewise in summer under the blaze of the sun. And they suffer this because they will not consent to share in the evil leaven of Arius. 3. How could words present these things to you vividly, unless experience itself and the sight of your own eyes should move you to sympathy? So we urge you now at least to stretch out a hand to the Churches in the East, now bowed to their knees, and to send some men to remind them of the rewards stored up for the endurance of sufferings for Christ. For a familiar voice does not naturally work as much as a stranger's voice produces encouragement, especially when it comes from men known everywhere by the grace of God for the noblest things, such as report proclaims you to be to all people: men who have remained unwounded in the faith, and have kept the apostolic deposit inviolate. But our affairs are not such. We have some who, from desire of glory and from the conceit that most of all overthrows the souls of Christians, have boldly ventured on innovations of words; whence the Churches, having become rotten, like porous vessels have received the heretical corruption flowing in. But you, beloved and longed-for, become physicians to the wounded and trainers to the healthy, healing what is sick and anointing what is healthy for godliness.

[To the bishops of Italy and Gaul … Basil,] bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. 1. Our Lord Jesus Christ, having deigned to call the whole Church of God his own body, and having shown each one of us to be members of one another, has granted to all of us to be on terms of intimacy with all, in keeping with the harmony of the members. Therefore, even though we are very far separated from one another in our dwelling places, yet by the principle of our union we are near to one another. Since, then, the head cannot say to the feet, "I have no need of you," surely you too will not bear to disown us; but you will sympathize with us in the afflictions to which we have been handed over for our sins as much as we rejoice with you as you glory in the peace the Lord has granted you. Already on another occasion we called upon your love for help and sympathy; but because the punishment had surely not yet been filled up, you were not permitted to rise up to help us. What we seek above all is that our confusion should be made plain, through your piety, to the very ruler of your part of the world; but if this is difficult, that some of you should come to visit and console the afflicted, so as to put before your eyes the sufferings of the East, which cannot be received by hearing, since no words can be found that would present our condition to you vividly. 2. Persecution has overtaken us, most honored brothers, and the heaviest of persecutions. For shepherds are persecuted, so that the flocks may be scattered. And what is heaviest of all is that neither do those who are ill-treated accept their sufferings with the assurance of martyrdom, nor do the peoples honor the contenders as martyrs, because the persecutors bear the name of Christians. One charge is now severely punished: the exact keeping of the traditions of the fathers. For this the godly are driven from their homelands and removed to the deserts. The judges of injustice have no respect for grey hairs, for the practice of godliness, for a life according to the Gospel lived from youth to old age. No criminal is condemned without proof; but bishops have been convicted on slander alone, and are handed over to punishment without any evidence being brought for the charges. Some have not known their accusers, nor seen a tribunal, nor even been slandered at all; but, seized violently at an untimely hour of the night, they have been driven beyond the frontier into exile, handed over to death by the hardships of the desert. What follows from this is known to everyone, even if we keep silent: banishment of presbyters, banishment of deacons, and the plundering of the whole clergy. For it is necessary either to worship the image or to be handed over to the cruel flame of the scourges. Groans of the peoples, tears without ceasing in homes and in public, all lamenting to one another what they suffer. For no one is so stony-hearted that, deprived of his father, he bears his orphanhood calmly. A sound of mourning in the city, a sound in the fields, on the roads, in the deserts; one voice of all, uttering pitiable and gloomy things. Joy and spiritual gladness have been taken away. Our feasts have been turned into mourning; houses of prayer have been shut; the altars of spiritual worship stand idle. No more assemblies of Christians, no more presidings of teachers, no saving teachings, no festal gatherings, no night hymn-singing, no more that blessed exultation of souls which arises in the souls of those who believe in the Lord at the assemblies and in the fellowship of spiritual gifts. It is fitting for us to say: "There is not at this time ruler, nor prophet, nor leader, nor offering, nor incense, no place to sacrifice before the Lord and find mercy." 3. We write this to those who know it, for there is no part of the world that is still ignorant of our calamities. So you should not think that we are using these words to teach you, but to remind your diligence. For we know that you would never forget us, any more than a mother would forget the offspring of her womb. But since those held fast by great pain naturally lighten their pains somehow through groans, we too do this, as it were unloading the weight of our grief by announcing our many kinds of calamity to your love, in the hope that, moved more strongly to prayer for us, you may prevail on the Lord to be reconciled to us. If, then, afflictions alone were weighing us down, we would have advised ourselves to keep quiet and to rejoice in sufferings for Christ, since "the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." But now we fear lest the evil, as it grows, like a flame advancing through burning material, when it has consumed what is near, may lay hold of what is far off as well. For the evil of the heresy is spreading, and there is fear that, having devoured our Churches, it may then creep on to the sound part of your district too. Perhaps, because sin has abounded among us, we were handed over first to be devoured by the savage teeth of the enemies of God; but perhaps, and this is more likely to be guessed, since the Gospel of the kingdom, beginning from our regions, went out into the whole world, for this reason the common enemy of our souls strives to have the seeds of apostasy, taking their beginning from the same regions, spread throughout the whole world. For on those on whom the light of the knowledge of Christ shone, on them he plans that the darkness of impiety should come too. 4. Count our sufferings, then, as your own, as genuine disciples of the Lord. We are not being warred against for money, nor for glory, nor for any other temporary thing; but we stand contending for our common possession, the inherited treasure of the sound faith. Grieve with us, you lovers of the brothers, because among us the mouths of the godly have been shut, while every bold and blasphemous tongue of those who speak unrighteousness against God has been opened. The pillars and foundation of the truth are scattered; and we, who have been overlooked because of our insignificance, have no freedom to speak. Be in anguish for the peoples; and do not look only to your own affairs, that you are moored in calm harbors, the grace of God having granted you complete shelter from the storm of the spirits of wickedness. But stretch out a hand to the storm-tossed Churches too, lest, being abandoned, they suffer complete shipwreck of the faith. Groan for us, because the Only-begotten is blasphemed, and there is no one to contradict; the Holy Spirit is set at nought, and he who could refute is driven away. Polytheism has prevailed. Among them there is a great God and a small one. "Son" has been held to be the name not of a nature but of some honor; the Holy Spirit is held not to complete the Holy Trinity, nor to share in the divine and blessed nature, but to be one of the creatures, attached to the Father and the Son at random and by chance. "Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes," and I will weep for many days for the people that is being driven to destruction by these evil teachings? The ears of the simpler are being led astray; they have now grown used to the heretical impiety. The infants of the Church are being nurtured on the words of impiety. For what are they to do? Baptisms are with them, escorts for those who depart this life, visits to the sick, consolation of those who grieve, help for the distressed, assistance of every kind, communion in the mysteries; all of which, being performed by them, becomes a bond of concord between the peoples and them; so that in a little while, even if some freedom should come, there will no longer be hope that those who have been held by long-continued error … 5. For these reasons many of us ought to have hastened to your reverence, and each to have become the interpreter of his own affairs. But now let this very thing be a proof to you of the hardship in which we live: that we are not even free to travel. For if anyone departed even for the shortest time from his Church, he would leave the peoples exposed to those lying in wait. But by the grace of God we have sent one in place of many, our most reverent and beloved brother Dorotheus, our fellow presbyter, who is able by his own account to fill in whatever has escaped our letter, since he has followed everything closely and is zealous for the right faith. Receive him in peace and send him back to us quickly, bringing us good news of your zeal to help the brotherhood.