Sketch of the Life and Works of Saint Basil the Great

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Page 29

Eustathius signed, together with Fronto and Severus. But, when another meeting with other bishops was arranged, he violated his pledge to attend. He wrote on the subject as though it were one of only small importance. [214] Eusebius endeavoured, but endeavoured in vain, to make peace. [215] Eustathius renounced communion with Basil, and at last, when an open attack on the archbishop seemed the paying game, he published an old letter of Basil's to Apollinarius, written by "layman to layman," many years before, and either introduced, or appended, heretical expressions of Apollinarius, which were made to pass as Basil's. In his virulent hostility he was aided, if not instigated, by Demosthenes the prefect's vicar, probably Basil's old opponent at Caesarea in 372. [216] His duplicity and slanders roused Basil's indignant denunciation. [217] Unhappily they were not everywhere recognized as calumnies. Among the bitterest of Basil's trials was the failure to credit him with honour and orthodoxy on the part of those from whom he might have expected sympathy and support. An earlier instance of this is the feeling shewn at the banquet at Nazianzus already referred to. [218] In later days he was cruelly troubled by the unfriendliness of his old neighbours at Neocaesarea, [219] and this alienation would be the more distressing inasmuch as Atarbius, the bishop of that see, appears to have been Basil's kinsman. [220]

[214] Ep. ccxliv.

[215] Ep. cxxviii.

[216] Ep. ccxxxvii.

[217] Epp. ccxxiii., ccxliv., cclxiii.

[218] S: vi.

[219] Epp. cciv., ccvii.

[220] Ep. ccx. S: 4.

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