Select Orations (2/40/43) 3-1 part 2/5

But he—for it is a human experience, that whenever, having hoped for great things, we suddenly meet with what we hoped for, we see the appearance fall short of the expectation—undergoing this himself, was downcast, distressed; he could not commend himself for the journey hither; he kept seeking what he had hoped for, and called Athens an empty blessedness.

But I took away the greater part of his grief, conversing with him rationally and charming away his reasonings, and—what was the truth—saying that a man's character is not at once to be captured, except by long time and more perfect intimacy, nor is one's learning to be made known to those who test it from few things and in a short space.

Whence I brought him back to good cheer, and by giving and receiving proof, I bound him more closely to myself.

And as time went on and we confessed to one another our longing, and that philosophy was the object of our zeal, from then on we were all things to one another—sharing the same roof, the same table, of one nature, looking to the one goal, ever increasing our mutual longing for one another, warmer and surer.

For loves of bodies, since they are of things that flow, themselves also flow like spring flowers;

for neither does the flame abide when the fuel is spent, but departs together with that which kindled it, nor does desire endure when the tinder withers away.

But loves that are according to God and chaste, since they are of an abiding object, are for this very reason also more lasting; and the more their beauty appears to them, the more it binds those who love the same things both to itself and to one another.

This is the law of the love that is above us.

I perceive, then, that I am being carried beyond the occasion and the due measure, and I know not how I fall into these themes, yet I cannot find how to restrain myself from the narrative;

for always what has been omitted seems to me necessary and better than what has been taken up before;

and if anyone should drag me from going forward by force, I shall suffer the fate of the octopuses, whose cells, when they are dragged out, the rocks cling fast to their suckers, and they are not released before taking something from one another by the violence.

If, then, anyone will grant me leave, I have what I seek;

but if not, I shall take it for myself.

Being thus disposed toward one another, and having set up such "golden pillars in a well-walled chamber," as Pindar says, thus we advanced onward, using God and longing as fellow-workers.

How can I bear the memory of these things without tears!

Equal hopes led us on toward the most envied of pursuits, eloquence;

but envy was absent, while emulation was eagerly cultivated.

There was a contest for both of us—not which of us should himself hold the first place, but how each might yield this to the other;

for we made each other's good repute our own.

There seemed to be one soul in both of us, bearing two bodies;

and if we are not to believe those who say that all things lie in all, yet at least we are to be believed, that we lay in one another and beside one another.

And one task was for both of us—virtue, and living for the hopes to come, removing ourselves from this world before departing from it;

looking to which, we directed both our life and our every action, being thus led by the commandment and whetting one another's virtue, and—if it is not too much for me to say this—being to one another rules and measuring-lines, by which the straight and the not-straight are distinguished.

For we associated with companions—not the most licentious but the most temperate, not the most quarrelsome but the most peaceable and those with whom association was most profitable;

knowing that it is easier to take a share of vice than to impart a share of virtue, since it is easier to catch a disease than to bestow health.

And of studies we delighted not in the most pleasant more than in the noblest;

since from this source too the young are molded either toward virtue or toward vice.

Of the roads, the first and more honorable, and the second, not of equal account;

namely, the one leading to our sacred houses and the teachers there, and the one leading to the teachers outside.

But the other things—festivals, theaters, public assemblies, banquets—we left to those who wished them.

For I think nothing honorable that does not lead to virtue, nor make better those who are zealous about it.

Others, then, have various appellations—either from their father or their household, from their own pursuits or deeds;

but for us the great thing and the great name was both to be and to be called Christians;

in which we took more pride than Gyges in the turning of his ring (if it was not a fable), by which he became tyrant of the Lydians;

or than Midas once in his gold, through which he perished, having obtained his prayer and acquired everything as gold—that other Phrygian fable.

For why should I speak of the arrow of Abaris the Hyperborean, or the Argive Pegasus, for whom traveling through the air was not so great a thing as for us to be lifted up to God through one another and with one another?

Harmful to others is Athens in the things of the soul;

for this is not lightly supposed by the more pious;

for in idols she is rich with that evil wealth, more than the rest of Greece, and it is hard not to be swept along with their praisers and advocates;

but to us there was no harm from these, our mind being made dense and fenced about.

On the contrary, indeed—if one must say something paradoxical—we were thence confirmed in the faith, having thoroughly learned their deceitfulness and counterfeit nature, and there despising the demons where demons are admired.

And if there is, or is believed to be, any river that flows sweet through the brine, or any creature that leaps in fire by which all else is consumed, that is what we were among all our age-mates.

And the finest thing was that there was about us a brotherhood not ignoble, schooled and led under that same guide, and rejoicing in the same things;

even if we ran on foot beside a Lydian chariot—that course and manner of his;

from which it came about that we were distinguished both among our own teachers and fellow-workers, and distinguished throughout all Greece, and especially among the most notable of her men.

And already we advanced even as far as foreign lands, as has become clear from the many who relate these things.

For our teachers were known among as many as Athens was;

and we were known among as many as our teachers were, being heard of together with one another and spoken of together, a pair not nameless, both being among them and being talked about.

No such thing to them were the Orestes-and-Pylades pairs;

nothing the Molionidae, that wonder of the Homeric tablet, whom fellowship in misfortunes made famous, and the fine driving of the chariot, sharing in the same place the reins and the whips.

But indeed, I have unawares been drawn into my own praises—I, who never even accepted this from another;

and it is no wonder if here too I have shared in something of his friendship, profiting, as while he lived it was unto virtue, so now that he has departed it is unto good fame.

But let our discourse be brought back again to the turning-post.

Who was so gray in understanding even before the gray hairs? Since by this Solomon too defines old age.

—in character? What kind of learning did he not take up? Or rather, what kind did he not pursue with surpassing excellence, as though it were the only one? He went through all so thoroughly, as no one goes through a single subject;

and each one to such a peak, as though he studied nothing else;

for zeal ran together with natural talent, from which the sciences and arts derive their power.

Least of all did he need speed of nature on account of intensity, nor intensity on account of speed;

but he so combined both and brought them into one, that it was unclear in which of these that man was the more admirable.

Who was so great in rhetoric, which breathes the force of fire, even if his character was not after the manner of rhetoricians? Who in grammar, which Hellenizes the tongue and gathers history and presides over meters and legislates for poems? Who in philosophy, the truly lofty and upward-mounting—whether the practical or the contemplative, and all that concerns logical proofs and antitheses and the wrestling-bouts, which they call dialectic;

so that it was easier to thread the labyrinths than to escape the nets of his arguments, if there were need of this? And of astronomy and geometry and the proportion of numbers he took just so much as not to be confounded by those clever in these matters, but spat out the superfluous as useless to those who wish to be pious;

so that one may admire the chosen more than the omitted, but the omitted more than the chosen.

As for medicine, the infirmity of the body and the care of the sick—being a fruit of philosophy and of love of toil—made it necessary for him;

whence, having made a beginning, he arrived at proficiency in the art;

and that, not the part of it which concerns the manifest and the things lying below, but as much as is doctrinal and philosophical.

But what are these things, great though they happen to be, compared with the education in the man's character? A trifle, to those who have had experience of the man, are that Minos and Rhadamanthus, whom the Greeks deemed worthy of meadows of asphodel and Elysian fields, having in fancy come upon a Paradise such as ours—drawn, I suppose, from the books of Moses and of our own, even if they differed somewhat about the name, indicating this same thing under other names.

Thus, then, these matters stood, and full of learning was the cargo-ship, as far at least as is attainable to human nature;

for what lies beyond Gadeira is not to be crossed;

but there remained the return, and a more perfect life, and the laying hold of the things hoped for by us and agreed upon between us.

The day of departure came, and all that belongs to departure:

farewell speeches, escorts, recallings, lamentations, embraces, tears.

For nothing is so grievous to anyone as for those who have there shared the life of Athens and of one another to be cut apart.

There came to pass then a spectacle pitiable and worthy of record.

Standing about us, the chorus of our companions and age-mates—and there were some of our teachers too—declared that they would not let us go, whatever might happen, beseeching us, constraining us, persuading us;

for what did they not say? what did they not do, of the things natural to those in grief? Here I will accuse myself, and I will accuse that divine and unassailable soul too, even if it is a bold thing to say.

For he, having stated the reasons for his eagerness about the return, was seen to be stronger than those who detained him;

and though by force, yet nevertheless his departure was conceded;

but I was left behind at Athens;

partly having weakened—for the truth shall be told—and partly betrayed by him, who was persuaded to let me go though I was unwilling to be let go, and to yield me to those who would drag me back.

A thing not to be believed before it came to pass;

for it became as it were the cutting of one body into two and the deadening of both, or the parting of yoke-fellow calves reared together, bellowing mournfully at one another and not bearing the estrangement.

Yet the time of my loss was not longer;

for I could not endure to be seen as pitiable any longer and to render to all an account of our separation;

but after I had remained at Athens for no long time, longing made me the Homeric horse;

and bursting the bonds of those who held me, I stamped over the plains and was borne toward my yoke-fellow.

So when we had returned, after granting a little to the world and to outward display, and only so much as to discharge the duty of satisfying the desire of the many;

for we ourselves had nothing of the theatrical or the showy about us;

very quickly we came to be ourselves, and passed from beardless youths into men, advancing more manfully toward philosophy;

no longer with one another, for envy did not allow it, but with one another in longing.

For the city of the Caesareans held him, as a kind of second founder and protector;

then certain journeys abroad—since indeed it could not keep us—the necessities took up, and these were not off the mark of the philosophy he had set before himself.

But as for me, my parents' piety, the care of their old age, and an onset of misfortunes laid hold of me and led me away from the man;

not rightly perhaps, nor justly, yet it led me away.

And I consider whether from this very cause there did not also befall me all the unevenness and difficulty of my life, and that my path toward philosophy was not smooth nor worthy of my desire and resolve.

Let our affairs, then, be led wherever it is dear to God;

and may they be led better by his intercessions.

But him the manifold loving-kindness of God and his dispensation concerning our race, having made known through the many intervening events and ever displayed him more brilliantly, sets forth as a conspicuous and far-renowned lamp of the Church, having for the time enrolled him among the sacred thrones of the presbytery, and through the single city of the Caesareans kindling a beacon for the whole inhabited world.

And in what manner? Not by improvising the rank, nor at once washing and making him wise, after the fashion of the many nowadays who aspire to the office of leadership;

but having deemed him worthy of the honor by the order and law of spiritual ascent.

For I do not commend the disorder and unseemliness among us, which sometimes occurs even in the case of those presiding from the sanctuary thrones;

for I will not dare to accuse all, nor would it be just.

I commend the nautical law, which, having first put the oar into the hand of him who is now helmsman, and thence having led him to the prow and entrusted to him the forward parts, thus at last seats him at the rudders—after the much-beaten sea and the surveying of the winds;

as it is also in military affairs;

soldier, captain, general.

This is the best order, and the most profitable to those who are ruled.

And our situation would be worth much, if it were thus.

But as it is, the most holy order of all among us is in danger of being the most ridiculous of all.

For the presidency comes not from virtue rather than from wickedness, nor do the thrones belong to the more worthy but to the more powerful.

Samuel is among the prophets, he who sees the things ahead;

but Saul also, the rejected.

Rehoboam is among the kings, the son of Solomon;

but Jeroboam also, the slave and apostate.

And no physician or painter ever exists who has not first examined the natures of diseases, or mixed many colors and shaped his forms;

but the bishop is found readily without having toiled, fresh in his dignity, sown and brought up all at once, as the fable makes the Giants.

We fashion saints in a single day, and bid them be wise, men who have learned no wisdom and have contributed nothing to the rank except the willing of it.

And the one contents himself with the lower place and stands humbly—he who is worthy of the lofty one, who has both meditated much on the divine words and laid down many laws for the flesh unto subjection to the spirit;

while the other sits in pride at the head, and lifts his brow against his betters, and does not tremble at the thrones, nor shudder in countenance when looking down upon the self-controlled man;

but together with his power, he also supposes himself the wiser, being ill aware of it and stripped of right thinking by his authority.

But not such was the great and mighty Basil;

rather, as in all other things, so also in the good order concerning these matters, he is set up as a model for the many.

—honor; but rather pursued by the honor, and receiving not human favor, but a divine grace from God.

Let the account of the presidency, then, wait;

but on the matter of the lower seat let us linger a little.

For what a thing this too was, which nearly escaped me, lying in the midst of what has been said!

There arose a certain difference toward the man on the part of him who was before this the leader of the Church;

as to whence and how, it is better to be silent—except that it did arise;

with a man in other respects not ignoble and admirable for his piety, as the persecution then and his resistance against it showed, yet who had suffered toward that man something human;

for Momus lays hold not only of the many but also of the best, so that only what is wholly without stumbling and unassailable by passions could belong to God.

There was stirred up, then, against him all the choice and wiser part of the Church—if indeed those are wiser than the many who have separated themselves from the world and consecrated their life to God;

I mean those Nazirites among us, who had been especially zealous about such things;

who, deeming it a terrible thing to overlook their own influence outraged and thrust aside, dared a most perilous deed;

they contemplate defection and a rending of the great and undivided body of the Church, cutting off no small portion even of the people, both of the lower sort and of those in dignity.

And this was very easy, owing to three most powerful factors.

For the man was venerable, as I do not know if any other of the philosophers among us was, and able to furnish courage, had he wished, to the faction;

and the city held the one who grieved them under suspicion, from the disturbance concerning his installation;

as having received the presidency not lawfully nor canonically, but rather tyrannically;

and there were present some of the Western bishops, drawing over to themselves all that was orthodox in the Church.

What then did that noble man and disciple of the Peaceable One do? For he could neither resist the insolent or the partisans, nor was it for him to fight or to tear apart the body of the Church—already warred upon and precariously placed under the domination of the heretics of that time.

And at the same time, having taken us as his counselors in this matter and genuine advisers, he withdraws hence as a fugitive together with us toward Pontus, and presides over the monasteries there;

and he establishes among them something worthy of memory, and embraces the desert together with Elijah and John, those great philosophers, considering this more profitable for himself than to plan anything concerning present affairs unworthy of his own philosophy, and to destroy in a storm the steering of his reasonings that had been conducted in calm.

Yet, philosophical and marvelous as the withdrawal was, we shall find the return mightier and more marvelous;

While we were among these things, suddenly there set in a cloud full of hail and crackling with destruction, crushing every church against which it broke and as much as it overtook;

an emperor most gold-loving and most Christ-hating, sick with these two greatest maladies, insatiable greed and blasphemy;

the persecutor after the persecutor, and after the apostate not an apostate indeed, yet no better to Christians—rather, to the most pious and purest portion of Christians and worshipers of the Trinity, which alone I call piety and saving glory.

For we do not weigh the Godhead in the balance, nor do we estrange the one and unapproachable nature from itself by foreign alienations, nor do we heal evil with evil, dissolving the godless contraction of Sabellius by a more impious division and severance;

the contraction which Arius, sick with it—he whose name signifies madness—shook and corrupted the greater part of the Church, neither honoring the Father, and dishonoring the things that are from Him by the unequal degrees of the Godhead.

But we acknowledge one glory of the Father—the equality of honor of the Only-begotten;

and whatever of the Three we set below, we reckon that we are pulling down the whole;

worshiping and acknowledging Three in their individual properties, but One in the Godhead.

Of which that man, conceiving none and unable to look upward, but humbled by those who led him, dared to humble together with himself the nature of the Godhead as well;

and it becomes an evil creature, bringing the lordship down into servitude and placing the uncreated and supratemporal nature together with the creation.

So then, the man who thought thus campaigns against us with such impiety as this;

for this must be regarded as nothing other than a barbarian onslaught, demolishing not walls and cities and houses, nor any of the small and hand-made things that are raised up again, but dragging down the very souls.

And there invades along with him an army worthy of him: the wicked leaders of the Churches, the bitter tetrarchs of the world under him;

those who already held some of the Churches, were assailing another, and hoped for yet another from the emperor's inclination and hand—the one being brought to bear, the other being threatened—came also to overthrow ours, having confidence in nothing of all things so much as in the faint-heartedness of the aforesaid men, and in the inexperience of him who then presided over us, and in the maladies among us.

But the zeal of most was not ignoble, while the battle-line was weak, not having its champion and skilled defender mighty in the power of word and Spirit.

What then did that noble and high-minded soul, truly a lover of Christ, do? He had no need of many words to be present and to fight alongside us;

but as soon as he saw us making our appeal—for the struggle was common to both of us, as men set forward on behalf of the word—he was overcome by the entreaty;

and having discerned excellently within himself and most philosophically by the reasonings of the Spirit, that there is one season for faint-heartedness, if indeed one must suffer any such thing—the season of safety;

and another for forbearance—the season of necessity;

straightway he sets out from Pontus with us, and zealously espouses the truth that was in peril, and becomes a volunteer ally, and giving himself to his mother the Church, presents himself to her.

Did he, then, show such zeal, but fight less than his zeal? Or did he contend manfully, but not prudently? Or learnedly, but not without peril? Or all these things perfectly and beyond words, yet was there left in him some remnant of faint-heartedness? By no means.

But all things at once he reconciles, deliberates, marshals;

he removes the obstacles and stumbling-blocks in the way, and the things in which those men had put confidence when they campaigned against us;

the one he takes to himself, another he holds fast, another he beats off;

he becomes to some a strong wall and palisade, to others an axe cutting the rock, or fire among thorns, as the divine Scripture says, easily consuming the brushwood-like and the insolent against the Godhead.

And if Barnabas too—he who says and writes these things—contended together with Paul, thanks be to Paul, who chose him and made him a fellow-worker in the contest.

Those men, then, departed thus baffled, and being wicked, were wickedly put to shame then for the first time and defeated, and learned not lightly to despise the Cappadocians, even if they despised all other men;

of whom nothing is so characteristic as the unbreakableness of their faith and their faithful and genuine devotion to the Trinity;

from which comes also their being united and their strength—the things which aid them when aided, or rather, things far better and stronger.

And to him a certain second work and zealous task arises: to attend upon the president, to dissolve the suspicion, to persuade all men that the things over which he had been grieved were a trial of the evil one and a wrestling-bout of him who begrudges concord unto the good;

but he himself knew the laws of obedience and of spiritual order.

an expounder, a guide in what must be done, a staff for old age, a buttress of faith, the most faithful in things within, the most practical in things without;

in a word, he became as great in goodwill as he had formerly been reckoned in enmity.

From this there accrued to him also the power of the Church, even though he held the second place of the chair;

for by contributing his goodwill, he received authority in exchange;

and there was a wonderful harmony and interweaving of power.

The one led the people, the other led him who led;

and he was like a lion-keeper, taming with art the one who held sway;

for he had need of it, having lately been set upon the chair, still breathing somewhat of worldly matter, not yet fully equipped in the things of the Spirit, while a great surge boiled all around and the enemies of the Church pressed in—the need, that is, of one to lead him by the hand and to support him.

Of the man's solicitude and protection concerning the Church there are many other tokens;

boldness toward the rulers, both the others and the most powerful men of the city;

settlements of disputes not distrusted, but shaped by his voice, his manner serving as law;

protections of those in need, the more numerous spiritual, but not a few also bodily;

for this too often brings benefit to the soul, when it is enslaved through goodwill;

nourishings of the poor, hospitalities to strangers, care of virgins;

legislations for monks, both written and unwritten;

ordinances of prayers, the good ordering of the sanctuary, the other things by which the one who is truly a man of God and set in order with God might benefit the people;

but one thing, which was both the greatest and the most well-known.

There was a famine, and the most grievous of all those ever recorded.

The city was sick, and there was succor from nowhere, nor any remedy for the affliction.

For coastal regions bear such scarcities without difficulty, giving of their own and receiving the things from the sea;

but to us inlanders both the surplus is useless and the deficiency irremediable, since we have no way either to dispose of any of the things we have or to import the things we have not.

And what is most grievous in such circumstances is the unfeelingness and insatiability of those who have.

For they watch the opportune times and trade upon the scarcity and farm the calamities;

neither hearing that he who has mercy on the poor lends to the Lord;

nor that he who withholds grain is cursed by the people;

nor any other of the things either promised to the kindly or threatened against the inhuman.

But they are more insatiable than is fitting and are evilly minded;

shutting up to those others their own goods, but to themselves the bowels of God's compassion, of whom they have greater need than others have of them.

These things did the grain-buyers and grain-dealers, neither reverencing their kindred, nor being thankful toward the Deity, from whom comes their possessing, while others are oppressed.

But he could not, by prayer, rain bread from heaven and feed a fugitive people in the wilderness, nor make food spring inexhaustibly from jars filled by being emptied—a paradox—that the one who feeds might be fed, in return for hospitality;

nor with five loaves to feast thousands, of which even the leftovers were the fullness of many tables.

For these were the works of Moses and of Elijah and of my God, from whom came to those men too the power to do these things;

and perhaps too they belonged to those times and to the situation then, since the signs are for the unbelieving, not for those who believe.

But the things which are consequent upon these and tend to the same end—these he both devised and accomplished with the same faith;

for by word having opened the storehouses of those who had, and by exhortations, he does the thing of the Scripture: he breaks bread to the hungry and fills the poor with bread and nourishes them in famine and fills hungry souls with good things.

And in what manner? For this too is no small thing to add.

Gathering together infants, old men, every pitiable age, every kind of food that happens to be a help against famine—setting out kettles full of pulse-soup and of the salted fish of our region that nourishes the poor;

then, imitating the ministry of Christ, who, girded with a towel, did not disdain to wash the feet of the disciples, and using for this his own servants—or rather, fellow-servants—as fellow-workers, he tended the bodies of those in need, and tended also their souls, weaving together with their necessity the element of honor, and making them lighter on both counts.

Such was our new dispenser of grain, a second Joseph;

except that we have something more to say.

For the one trafficked upon the famine and bought up Egypt by his benevolence, disposing the season of plenty for the season of famine, and ordering all this for the benefit of others' dreams;

but this one was gratuitously kind, and a succor in the food-shortage without bargaining, looking to one thing—to acquire, by his benevolence, the benevolent One, and to obtain the good things of yonder world through the measuring-out of grain here.

These things, together with the nourishment of the word and the more perfect benefaction and distribution, the truly heavenly and lofty;

if indeed the word is the bread of Angels, by which souls are nourished and given drink, hungering for God and seeking food that does not flow away nor pass off, but ever abides;