Sketch of the Life and Works of Saint Basil the Great

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Page 21

The episcopate thus began with troubles, both public and personal. Basil confidently confronted them. His magnanimity and capacity secured the adhesion of his immediate neighbours and subordinates, [153] and soon his energies took a wider range. He directed the theological campaign all over the East, and was ready alike to meet opponents in hand to hand encounter, and to aim the arrows of his epistolary eloquence far and wide. [154] He invokes the illustrious pope of Alexandria to join him in winning the support of the West for the orthodox cause. [155] He is keenly interested in the unfortunate controversy which distracted the Church of Antioch. [156] He makes an earnest appeal to Damasus for the wonted sympathy of the Church at Rome. [157] At the same time his industry in his see was indefatigable. He is keen to secure the purity of ordination and the fitness of candidates. [158] Crowds of working people come to hear him preach before they go to their work for the day. [159] He travels distances which would be thought noticeable even in our modern days of idolatry of the great goddess Locomotion. He manages vast institutions eleemosynary and collegiate. His correspondence is constant and complicated. He seems the personification of the active, rather than of the literary and scholarly, bishop. Yet all the while he is writing tracts and treatises which are monuments of industrious composition, and indicative of a memory stored with various learning, and of the daily and effective study of Holy Scripture.

[153] Greg. Naz., Or. xliii. S: 40.

[154] Id. S: 43.

[155] Basil, Epp. lxvi., lxvii.

[156] Ep. lxix.

[157] Ep. lxx.

[158] Ep. liii.

[159] Hex. Hom. iii. p. 65.

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