Part 4

Basil and Gregory were both natives of Cappadocia, but here, again, under different 5 circumstances; Basil was born of a good family, and with Christian ancestors: Gregory was the son of the Bishop of Nazianzus, who had been brought up an idolater, or rather an Hypsistarian, a mongrel sort of religionist, part Jew, part Pagan. 10 He was brought over to Christianity by the efforts of his wife Nonna, and at Nazianzus admitted by baptism into the Church. In process of time he was made bishop of that city; but not having a very firm hold of the faith, he was betrayed in 15 360 into signing the Ariminian creed, which caused him much trouble, and from which at length his son recovered him. Cæsarea being at no unsurmountable distance from Nazianzus, the two friends had known each other in their own country; 20 but their intimacy began at Athens, whither they separately repaired for the purposes of education. This was about A.D. 350, when each of them was twenty-one years of age. Gregory came to the seat of learning shortly before Basil, 25 and thus was able to be his host and guide on his arrival; but fame had reported Basil's merits before he came, and he seems to have made his way, in a place of all others most difficult to a stranger, with a facility peculiar to himself. He soon found himself admired and respected by his fellow-students; but Gregory was his only friend, and shared with him the reputation of 5 talents and attainments. They remained at Athens four or five years; and, at the end of that time, made the acquaintance of Julian, since of evil name in history as the Apostate. Gregory thus describes in after life his early intimacy 10 with Basil:

"Athens and letters followed on my stage; Others may tell how I encountered them;-- How in the fear of God, and foremost found Of those who knew a more than mortal lore;-- 15 And how, amid the venture and the rush Of maddened youth with youth in rivalry, My tranquil course ran like some fabled spring, Which bubbles fresh beneath the turbid brine; Not drawn away by those who lure to ill, 20 But drawing dear ones to the better part. There, too, I gained a further gift of God, Who made me friends with one of wisdom high, Without compeer in learning and in life. Ask ye his name?--in sooth, 'twas Basil, since 25 My life's great gain,--and then my fellow dear In home, and studious search, and knowledge earned. May I not boast how in our day we moved A truest pair, not without name in Greece; Had all things common, and one only soul 30 In lodgment of a double outward frame? Our special bond, the thought of God above, And the high longing after holy things. And each of us was bold to trust in each, Unto the emptying of our deepest hearts; And then we loved the more, for sympathy Pleaded in each, and knit the twain in one."

The friends had been educated for rhetoricians, and their oratorical powers were such, that they 5 seemed to have every prize in prospect which a secular ambition could desire. Their names were known far and wide, their attainments acknowledged by enemies, and they themselves personally popular in their circle of acquaintance. It was 10 under these circumstances that they took the extraordinary resolution of quitting the world together,--extraordinary the world calls it, utterly perplexed to find that any conceivable objects can, by any sane person, be accounted 15 better than its own gifts and favors. They resolved to seek baptism of the Church, and to consecrate their gifts to the service of the Giver. With characters of mind very different--the one grave, the other lively; the one desponding, 20 the other sanguine; the one with deep feelings, the other with feelings acute and warm;--they agreed together in holding, that the things that are seen are not to be compared to the things that are not seen. They quitted the world, while it 25 entreated them to stay.

What passed when they were about to leave Athens represents as in a figure the parting which they and the world took of each other. When the day of valediction arrived, their companions 30 and equals, nay, some of their tutors, came about them, and resisted their departure by entreaties, arguments, and even by violence. This occasion showed, also, their respective dispositions; for the firm Basil persevered, and went; the tender-hearted Gregory was softened, and stayed awhile 5 longer. Basil, indeed, in spite of the reputation which attended him, had, from the first, felt disappointment with the celebrated abode of philosophy and literature; and seems to have given up the world from a simple conviction of its emptiness. 10

"He," says Gregory, "according to the way of human nature, when, on suddenly falling in with what we hoped to be greater, we find it less than its fame, experienced some such feeling, began to be sad, grew impatient, and could not congratulate himself on his place of residence. 15 He sought an object which hope had drawn for him; and he called Athens 'hollow blessedness.'"

Gregory himself, on the contrary, looked at things more cheerfully; as the succeeding sentences show. 20

"Thus Basil; but I removed the greater part of his sorrow, meeting it with reason, and smoothing it with reflections, and saying (what was most true) that character is not at once understood, nor except by long time and perfect intimacy; nor are studies estimated, by 25 those who are submitted to them, on a brief trial and by slight evidence. Thus I reassured him, and by continual trials of each other, I bound myself to him." --_Orat._ 43.

III

Yet Gregory had inducements of his own to 30 leave the world, not to insist on his love of Basil's company. His mother had devoted him to God, both before and after his birth; and when he was a child he had a remarkable dream, which made a great impression upon him.

"While I was asleep," he says in one of his poems, 5 which runs thus in prose, "a dream came to me, which drew me readily to the desire of chastity. Two virgin forms, in white garments, seemed to shine close to me. Both were fair and of one age, and their ornament lay in their want of ornament, which is a woman's beauty. 10 No gold adorned their neck, nor jacinth; nor had they the delicate spinning of the silkworm. Their fair robe was bound with a girdle, and it reached down to their ankles. Their head and face were concealed by a veil, and their eyes were fixed on the ground. The fair glow 15 of modesty was on both of them, as far as could be seen under their thick covering. Their lips were closed in silence, as the rose in its dewy leaves. When I saw them, I rejoiced much; for I said that they were far more than mortals. And they in turn kept kissing me, 20 while I drew light from their lips, fondling me as a dear son. And when I asked who and whence the women were, the one answered, 'Purity,' the other, 'Sobriety'; 'We stand by Christ, the King, and delight in the beauty of the celestial virgins. Come, then, child, unite thy 25 mind to our mind, thy light to our light; so shall we carry thee aloft in all brightness through the air, and place thee by the radiance of the immortal Trinity.'"

--_Carm._ p. 930.

He goes on to say, that he never lost the 30 impression this made upon him, as "a spark of heavenly fire," or "a taste of divine milk and honey."

As far, then, as these descriptions go, one might say that Gregory's abandonment of the world arose from an early passion, as it may be called, for a purity higher than his own nature; and Basil's, from a profound sense of the world's nothingness and the world's defilements. Both 5 seem to have viewed it as a sort of penitential exercise, as well as a means towards perfection.

When they had once resolved to devote themselves to the service of religion, the question arose, how they might best improve and employ 10 the talents committed to them. Somehow, the idea of marrying and taking orders, or taking orders and marrying, building or improving their parsonages, and showing forth the charities, the humanities, and the gentilities of a family man, 15 did not suggest itself to their minds. They fancied that they must give up wife, children, property, if they would be perfect; and, this being taken for granted, that their choice lay between two modes of life, both of which they regarded as 20 extremes. Here, then, for a time, they were in some perplexity. Gregory speaks of two ascetic disciplines, that of the solitary or hermit, and that of the secular;[27] one of which, he says, profits a man's self, the other his neighbor. Midway, 25 however, between these lay the Coenobite, or what we commonly call the monastic; removed from the world, yet acting in a certain select circle. And this was the rule which the friends at length determined to adopt, withdrawing from 30 mixed society in order to be of the greater service to it.

[27] [Greek: azyges] and [Greek: migades].

The following is the passage in which Gregory describes the life which was the common choice of both of them: 5

"Fierce was the whirlwind of my storm-toss'd mind, Searching,'mid holiest ways, a holier still. Long had I nerved me, in the depths to sink Thoughts of the flesh, and then more strenuously. Yet, while I gazed upon diviner aims, 10 I had not wit to single out the best: For, as is aye the wont in things of earth, Each had its evil, each its nobleness. I was the pilgrim of a toilsome course, Who had o'erpast the waves, and now look'd round, 15 With anxious eye, to track his road by land. Then did the awful Thesbite's image rise, His highest Carmel, and his food uncouth; The Baptist wealthy in his solitude; And the unencumbered sons of Jonadab. 20 But soon I felt the love of holy books, The spirit beaming bright in learned lore, Which deserts could not hear, nor silence tell. Long was the inward strife, till ended thus:-- I saw, when men lived in the fretful world, 25 They vantaged other men, but risked the while The calmness and the pureness of their hearts. They who retired held an uprighter port, And raised their eyes with quiet strength towards heaven; Yet served self only, unfraternally. 30 And so, 'twixt these and those, I struck my path, To meditate with the free solitary, Yet to live secular, and serve mankind."

AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS

"The just perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and men of mercy are taken away, for there is none to understand; for the just man is taken away from before the face of evil."

I

I began by directing the reader's attention to the labors of two great bishops, who restored the faith of Christianity where it had long been obscured. Now, I will put before him, by way of contrast, a scene of the overthrow of 5 religion,--the extinction of a candlestick,--effected, too, by champions of the same heretical creed which Basil and Gregory successfully resisted. It will be found in the history of the last days of the great Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in Africa. 10 The truth triumphed in the East by the power of preaching; it was extirpated in the South by the edge of the sword.

Though it may not be given us to appropriate the prophecies of the Apocalypse to the real 15 events to which they belong, yet it is impossible to read its inspired pages, and then to turn to the dissolution of the Roman empire, without seeing a remarkable agreement, on the whole, between the calamities of that period and the 20 sacred prediction. There is a plain announcement in the inspired page, of "Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth;" an announcement of "hail and fire mingled with blood," the conflagration of "trees and green grass," the destruction of ships, the darkening of the sun, and the 5 poisoning of the rivers over a third of their course. There is a clear prophecy of revolutions on the face of the earth and in the structure of society. And, on the other hand, let us observe how fully such general foretokenings are borne out, among 10 other passages of history, in the Vandalic conquest of Africa.

The coast of Africa, between the great desert and the Mediterranean, was one of the most fruitful and opulent portions of the Roman world. 15 The eastern extremity of it was more especially connected with the empire, containing in it Carthage, Hippo, and other towns, celebrated as being sees of the Christian Church, as well as places of civil importance. In the spring of the 20 year 428, the Vandals, Arians by creed, and barbarians by birth and disposition, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and proceeded along this fertile district, bringing with them devastation and captivity on every side. They abandoned 25 themselves to the most savage cruelties and excesses. They pillaged, ravaged, burned, massacred all that came in their way, sparing not even the fruit trees, which might have afforded some poor food to the remnant of the population, who 30 had escaped from them into caves, the recesses of the mountains, or into vaults. Twice did this desolating pestilence sweep over the face of the country.

The fury of the Vandals was especially exercised towards the memorials of religion. Churches, 5 cemeteries, monasteries, were objects of their fiercest hatred and most violent assaults. They broke into the places of worship, cut to pieces all internal decorations, and then set fire to them. They tortured bishops and clergy with the hope of 10 obtaining treasure. The names of some of the victims of their ferocity are preserved. Mansuetus, Bishop of Utica, was burnt alive; Papinianus, Bishop of Vite, was laid upon red-hot plates of iron. This was near upon the time when the 15 third General Council was assembling at Ephesus, which, from the insecure state of the roads, and the universal misery which reigned among them, the African bishops were prevented from attending. The Clergy, the religious brotherhoods, the 20 holy virgins, were scattered all over the country. The daily sacrifice was stopped, the sacraments could not be obtained, the festivals of the Church passed unnoticed. At length, only three cities remained unvisited by the general 25 desolation,--Carthage, Hippo, and Cirtha.

II

Hippo was the see of St. Austin, then seventy-four years of age (forty almost of which had been passed in ministerial labors), and warned, by the law of nature, of the approach of dissolution. It was as if the light of prosperity and peace were fading away from the African Church, as sank the bodily powers of its great earthly ornament and stay. At this time, when the terrors 5 of the barbaric invasion spread on all sides, a bishop wrote to him to ask whether it was allowable for the ruler of a Church to leave the scene of his pastoral duties in order to save his life. Different opinions had heretofore been expressed on 10 this question. In Augustine's own country Tertullian had maintained that flight was unlawful, but he was a Montanist when he so wrote. On the other hand, Cyprian had actually fled, and had defended his conduct when questioned by 15 the clergy of Rome. His contemporaries, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Gregory of Neocæsarea, had fled also; as had Polycarp before them, and Athanasius after them.

Athanasius also had to defend his flight, and he 20 defended it, in a work still extant, thus: First, he observes, it has the sanction of numerous Scripture precedents. Thus, in the instance of confessors under the old covenant, Jacob fled from Esau, Moses from Pharao, David from Saul; 25 Elias concealed himself from Achab three years, and the sons of the prophets were hid by Abdias in a cave from Jezebel. In like manner under the Gospel, the disciples hid themselves for fear of the Jews, and St. Paul was let down in a basket 30 over the wall at Damascus. On the other hand, no instance can be adduced of overboldness and headstrong daring in the saints of Scripture. But our Lord Himself is the chief exemplar of fleeing from persecution. As a child in arms He had to flee into Egypt. When He returned, He 5 still shunned Judea, and retired to Nazareth. After raising Lazarus, on the Jews seeking His life, "He walked no more openly among them," but retreated to the neighborhood of the desert. When they took up stones to cast at Him, He 10 hid Himself; when they attempted to cast Him down headlong, He made His way through them; when He heard of the Baptist's death, He retired across the lake into a desert place, apart. If it be said that He did so, because His time was not 15 yet come, and that when it was come, He delivered up Himself, we must ask, in reply, how a man can know that his time is come, so as to have a right to act as Christ acted? And since we do not know, we must have patience; and, 20 till God by His own act determines the time, we must "wander in sheepskins and goatskins," rather than take the matter into our own hands; as even Saul, the persecutor, was left by David in the hands of God, whether He would "strike 25 him, or his day should come to die, or he should go down to battle and perish."

If God's servants, proceeds Athanasius, have at any time presented themselves before their persecutors, it was at God's command: thus Elias 30 showed himself to Achab; so did the prophet from Juda, to Jeroboam; and St. Paul appealed to Cæsar. Flight, so far from implying cowardice, requires often greater courage than not to flee. It is a greater trial of heart. Death is an end of all trouble; he who flees is ever expecting 5 death, and dies daily. Job's life was not to be touched by Satan, yet was not his fortitude shown in what he suffered? Exile is full of miseries. The after-conduct of the saints showed they had not fled for fear. Jacob, on his 10 death-bed, contemned death, and blessed each of the twelve Patriarchs; Moses returned, and presented himself before Pharao; David was a valiant warrior; Elias rebuked Achab and Ochazias; Peter and Paul, who had once hid 15 themselves, offered themselves to martyrdom at Rome. And so acceptable was the previous flight of these men to Almighty God, that we read of His showing them some special favor during it. Then it was that Jacob had the 20 vision of Angels; Moses saw the burning bush; David wrote his prophetic Psalms; Elias raised the dead, and gathered the people on Mount Carmel. How would the Gospel ever have been preached throughout the world, if the Apostles 25 had not fled? And, since their time, those, too, who have become martyrs, at first fled; or, if they advanced to meet their persecutors, it was by some secret suggestion of the Divine Spirit. But, above all, while these instances abundantly 30 illustrate the rule of duty in persecution, and the temper of mind necessary in those who observe it, we have that duty itself declared in a plain precept by no other than our Lord: "When they shall persecute you in this city," He says, "flee into another;" and "let them that are in Judea 5 flee unto the mountains."