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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 129 Pages
Page 43
Letter CCXXXIX. [3015]
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
1. The Lord has granted me the privilege of now saluting your holiness by our beloved and very reverend brother, the presbyter Antiochus, of exhorting you to pray for me as you are wont, and offering in our communication by letter some consolation for our long separation. And, when you pray, I ask you to beg from the Lord this as the first and greatest boon, that I may be delivered from vile and wicked men, who have gained such power over the people that now I seem to see, indeed, a repetition of the events of the taking of Jerusalem. [3016] For the weaker grow the Churches the more does men's lust for power increase. And now the very title of bishop has been conferred on wretched slaves, for no servant of God would choose to come forward in opposition to claim the see;--no one but miserable fellows like the emissaries of Anysius the creature of Euippius, and of Ecdicius of Parnassus: whoever has appointed him [3017] has sent into the Churches a poor means of aiding his own entry into the life to come.
They have expelled my brother from Nyssa, and into his place have introduced hardly a man--a mere scamp [3018] worth only an obol or two, but, so far as regards the ruin of the faith, a match for those who have put him where he is.
At the town of Doara they have brought shame upon the poor name of bishop, and have sent there a wretch, an orphans' domestic, a runaway from his own masters, to flatter a godless woman, who formerly used George as she liked, and now has got this fellow to succeed him.
And who could properly lament the occurrences at Nicopolis? That unhappy Fronto did, indeed, for a while pretend to be on the side of the truth, but now he has shamefully betrayed both the faith and himself, and for the price of his betrayal has got a name of disgrace. He imagines that he has obtained from these men the rank of bishop; in reality he has become, by God's grace, the abomination of all Armenia. But there is nothing that they will not dare; nothing wherein they are at a loss for worthy accomplices. But the rest of the news of Syria my brother knows better, and can tell you better, than I.
[3015] Placed in 376.
[3016] 'Ioudaikes haloseos, which the Ben. note is no doubt right in referring to the events of 70.
[3017] The sudden change from the vaguer plural marks the strong contempt of the writer for the individual pointed at.
[3018] The paronomasia in andra and andrapodon is untranslatable.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters-3.asp?pg=43
