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# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 29

Letter XXIX.
To the Church of Ancyra. Consolatory.
My amazement at the most distressing news of the calamity which has befallen you for a long time kept me silent. I felt like a man whose ears are stunned by a loud clap of thunder. Then I somehow recovered a little from my state of speechlessness. Now I have mourned, as none could help mourning, over the event, and, in the midst of my lamentations, have sent you this letter. I write not so much to console you,—for who could find words to cure a calamity so great?—as to signify to you, as well as I can by these means, the agony of my own heart. I need now the lamentations of Jeremiah, or of any other of the Saints who has feelingly lamented a great woe. A man has fallen who was really a pillar and stay of the Church or rather he himself has been taken from us and is gone to the blessed life, and there is no small danger lest many at the removal of this prop from under them fall too, and lest some men’s unsoundness be brought to light. A mouth is sealed gushing with righteous eloquence and words of grace to the edification of the brotherhood. Gone are the counsels of a mind which truly moved in God. Ah! how often, for I must accuse myself, was it my lot to feel indignation against him, because, wholly desiring to depart and be with Christ, he did not prefer for our sakes to remain in the flesh! To whom for the future shall I commit the cares of the Churches? Whom shall I take to share my troubles? Whom to participate in my gladness? O loneliness terrible and sad! How am I not like to a pelican of the wilderness? Yet of a truth the members of the Church, united by his leadership as by one soul, and fitted together into close union of feeling and fellowship, are both preserved and shall ever be preserved by the bond of peace for spiritual communion. God grants us the boon, that all the works of that blessed soul, which he did nobly in the churches of God, abide firm and immovable. But the struggle is no slight one, lest, once more strifes and divisions arising over the choice of the bishop, all your work be upset by some quarrel.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in 368.
* ↑ cf. Letters xxiv. and xxv., and note.
* ↑ cf. Phil. i. 23, 24.
* ↑ cf. Ps. cii. 6.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 290

Letter CCXC.
To Nectarius.
May many blessings rest on those who encourage your excellency in maintaining a constant correspondence with me! And regard not such a wish as conventional merely, but as expressing my sincere conviction of the value of your utterances. Whom could I honour above Nectarius—known to me from his earliest days as a child of fairest promise, who now through the exercise of every virtue has reached a position of the highest eminence?—So much so, that of all my friends the dearest is the bearer of your letter.
Touching the election of those set over districts, God forbid that I should do anything for the gratification of man, through listening to importunities or yielding to fear. In that case I should be not a steward, but a huckster, battering the gift of God for the favour of man. But seeing that votes are given but by mortals, who can only bear such testimony as they do from outward appearances, while the choice of fit persons is committed in all humility to Him Who knows the secrets of the heart, haply it is best for everybody, when he has tendered the evidence of his vote, to abstain from all heat and contention, as though some self-interest were involved in the testimony, and to pray to God that what is advantageous may not remain unknown. Thus the result is no longer attributable to man, but a cause for thankfulness to God. For these things, if they be of man, cannot be said to be; but are pretence only, altogether void of reality.
Consider also, that when a man strives with might and main to gain his end, there is no small danger of his drawing even sinners to his side; and there is much sinfulness, such is the weakness of man’s nature, even where we should least expect it.
Again, in private consultation we often offer our friends good advice, and, though we do not find them taking it, yet we are not angry. Where then it is not man that counsels, but God that determines, shall we feel indignation at not being preferred before the determination of God?
And if these things were given to man by man, what need were there for us to ask them of ourselves? Were it not better for each to take them from himself? But if they are the gift of God, we ought to pray and not to grieve. And in our prayer we should not seek our own will, but leave it to God who disposes for the best.
Now may the holy God keep from your home all taste of sorrow; and grant to you and to your family a life exempt from harm and sickness.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in the episcopate.
* ↑ On the word συμμορίας the Ben. note is: “Hac voce non designatur tota diocesis, sed certos quidam pagorum numerus chorepiscopo commissus, ut patet ex epist. cxlii.,” q.v., “erat autem chorepiscoporum sedes insigni alicui affixa pago, cui alii pagi attribuebantur. Unde Basilius in epist. clxxxviii. § 10. Auctor est Amphilochio ut agrum Mestiæ subjectum Vasodis subjiciat.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Goodness of Heart indispensible to a man of genius

126. Goodness of Heart indispensable to a Man of Genius.
"If men will impartially and not asquint look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a great poet without being first a good man."
Ben Jonson's Dedication to Volpone.
Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble sentiment from Strabo, lib. i. Ουκ οιον αγαθον γενεσθαι ποιητην, μη προτερον γενηθεντα ανδρα αγαθον.
# Omniana/Volume 1/He shall set the Sheep on his right hand, but the Goats on his left

149. He shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Mat. xxv, 33.
Because the Latin text says oves instead of arietes, Vieyra takes it for granted that ewes are meant, not rams, and ​explains it by affirming that more women than men are to be saved. This he proves not only by the text in question, but also by the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, in which as many entered as were excluded: whereas when men are spoken of as bidden to the marriage feast, it is written "that many are called but few chosen." In addition to these authorities he quotes S. Teresa, who affirms both from her own knowledge, and that of the blessed Fr. Pedro de Alcantara, that the Lord imparts his favours to many more women than men. Thus, he adds, we see in the lives of the saints that females are much more the darlings of God, and much more regaled by him, and the reason may be because the holiest of all pure creatures was a woman. But besides this, he says, there are many other strong reasons among christians. Women usually die with all the sacraments, which does not happen to men, of whom so many thousands ​finish without confession, in war, in shipwreck, in quarrels, in duels, &c. They have less occasion of damnation, for they are neither judges, nor advocates nor presidents, nor ministers of kings; neither are they bishops, nor priests; property in the ordinary course of things seldom passes through their hands;.. finally they are so free from occasion to offend God, that they who go to hell deserve double punishment there. Hæc pro devoto fæmineo sexu. That devout sex will acquit him of all flattery when they hear the conclusion of his argument... More frequently than men, he says, they may be saved by reason of invincible ignorance; because they have less understanding they have less malice, and being the weaker vessels, they move divine mercy the more to compassion.
Tirante el Blanco has also some curious reasons, theological and physical, why women are better than men. Because, says this strangest of all the knights of ​romance, Christ after his resurrection, appeared to his mother and to Mary Magdalen, before he appeared to the apostles: because God made man of clay, but woman of the man's rib: and because if a woman washes her hands thrice successively, the second water remains unsoiled, whereas let a man wash in fifty waters, the last will always be sullied: proof of his impure origin, his flesh being of the earth earthy, her's, as it were, of double refined materials.
Italian translation, T. 2. ff. 45.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Goldsmith

152. Goldsmith.
A fraud has been practised in France upon Goldsmith's reputation. At the end of a volume which bears date, 1774. is the following title in a list of new books, Histoire de François Wills, ou le Triomphe de le Bienfaisance, par l'Auteur du Ministre de Wakefield. Traduction de l'Anglois.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Grapes in Madagascar

61. Grapes in Madagascar.
The grape was believed to be poisonous in Madagascar till the French taught the natives to eat it. Can this have been a mere prejudice, or was the opinion introduced by some of their Moorish visitors, who thought prejudice a better security against the abuse of the grape than prohibition would be.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Hans Engelbrecht

22. Hans Engelbrecht.
Francis Okely, of St. Johns, Cambridge, translated in 1780 some of the works of the German visionary Hans Engelbrecht, who wrote an account of his own death and recovery, and of what he had seen in the other world. The sign which he gave to prove that he had seen hell was not an unapt one. "God," says he, "made the people who were with me to smell such a diabolical, horrible, and infernal stench, whilst I was getting out of bed, which was so immeasurably bad, and such a dreadful stench, that no other stench they could think of ​in all the world was comparable to it; and I thereupon said, by this you are to conclude infallibly that I have been before hell." Had the bystanders taken a candle to look for it, it is possible that poor Hans might have exhibited a specimen of the blue flames of the lower regions also.
This Engelbrecht wrote an account of his own death and recovery, and of what he had seen in his journey to the other world. Heaven, Hell, the Mountain of Salvation, &c. An Angel expressly ordered him to write a full and particular narative and publish it; "now, he says, this was my motive for getting up very early this morning at four o'clock to begin,.. and therefore do I exhort you, all ye men in the world who get the reading of this narrative into your hands, to be sure not to suffer your reason to perk up and be dictating therein, but believe you this simply, just as I have written it down." This is as rich a passage as any ​in the whole Bibliotheca Fanatica, and might serve as a text to half the volumes which compose it.
"Such as will not believe what I am now about to write will be damned,"... says this poor crazy German; crazy however as he was, he found a believer and translator at Cambridge, above a century after his death;.. and the volume of his revelations which I picked up at a stall, bears throughout the marks of a thumb warm with devotion.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Hereticks of the early ages

107. Hereticks of the early ages.
The ancient hereticks are so extravagantly calumniated that it is not easy to discover their real opinions or character. Something however is to be made out.
The success of Christianity tempted some bold spirits to set up for themselves. Every thing about Simon Magus must be false, except perhaps his Simony; but it is plain that certain early hereticks took advantage of the promise of the Comforter. Montanus is said to have called himself the Paraclete. Others tried to amalgamate eastern superstition with Christianity. In both these attempts Mahommed succeeded. Mosellama was his Simon Magus, who declared against him, and failed.
Others saw that a new religion was likely to succeed, but wished to substitute some other object of adoration in the place of Christ,—probably to avoid the reproach of the crucifixion. Seth, Melchisedeck, and Moses were set up. The ​Pagans tried Apollonius Tyanæus. The stories of the Cainites cannot be true.
A large class consists of those who resisted the various corruptions of Christianity step by step, from Cerinthus down to Berenger. Another of those who proposed corruptions of their own,—in this are included all the species of Arians, and all the Greek metaphysical sects. Two other divisions remain,—plain, reasonable, pious non-conformists, to whom Robinson attributes too much,—and infatuated fanatics, whom he has not taken sufficiently into his view, but who, under some shape or other, have existed in all times and all countries.
It is curious to see how some of these heresies leavened the conquering Church. The distinguishing tenet of Manichæism, is the root and foundation of all ascetic rigour;—the celibacy of the clergy is traceable to Manes and Marcion, and fatalism, which infects us at this day under the name of Calvinism, its vilest and ​vulgarest form,—was brought by the Gnostics from the East.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Government of Norcia

134. Government of Norcia.
It is curious that an institution should exist in the Papal territories, founded upon an anti-clerical feeling, not less inveterate than that of the bigotted Quakers, who always say steeple-house instead of ​church. The little town of Norcia had the privilege of making its own laws and chasing its own magistrates, and so jealous were the people of all priests, that in order to prevent the possibility of any one obtaining authority among them, one of their laws was, that all men who could read and write, should be incapable of bearing a share in their government. Their magistracy therefore, which consisted of four persons, were called, Gli quatre Illiterati, the four illiterates,..and as a necessary consequence of this singular institution, all causes were examined without writings, and decided orally.
I know not when this brutalizing system was established, nor what circumstances occasioned it. It would be interesting to trace its history;. . . .a Jack Cade establishing a permanent order of things is a phenomenon, of which there is no other instance. The fact is mentioned in a volume of letters concerning the ​state of Italy, in 1687, written as a supplement to Gilbert Burnet's Travels, p. 189. And as it is noticed by Busching also, as a still-existing custom, it was probably not abrogated till the general wreck of all the institutions in Italy under Buonaparte's tyranny.
This strange institution is the more remarkable, because Norcia is the birthplace of St. Benedict, one of the most eminent of the Romish Church, from whose institution almost all the Apostles of the North of Europe proceeded.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Ground-fires

140. Ground-fires.
Jacob Bryant refers to the Saxon Chronicles, to Roger de Hoveden, Brompton, and Simon Dunelmensis for various accounts of fires breaking out from the earth in this country during ​various earthquakes, which occurred from the year 1032 to 1135, when the last eruption was recorded. "Fires" says Holinshed, "burst out of certain riffes of the earth, in so huge flames that neither by water nor otherwise it could be quenched." Bryant would fain prove the impossible authenticity of Rowley's poem by these phenomena, insisting that they are the gronfers which Chatterton interprets fires exhaled from a fen.
The ground-fire of 1048 is said to have burnt towns as well as fields of corn; villas et segetes multas ustulavit. Sim. Dun. This broke out in Derbyshire and the adjoining counties; but it is difficult if not impossible to conceive how any volcanic flames should have extended to towns, there being no mountain in eruption. The fiery vapour, whatever it may have been, seems more analogous to the sea-fire which extended so far into Spain.
In turning over a most worthless volume entitled Reflexions sur le Desastre ​de Lisbonne, an extract from Mezerai reminds me of what I have read in many old historians, that the pestilence which in the 14th century spread from the East over the whole of Europe, was believed to have been produced by a fiery vapour, horriblement puante, which issued from the earth in the province of Catag, in China, and consumed every thing within a circuit of two hundred leagues. I do not know to what authority this news from China is to be traced.
In 1802 a gentleman who is a native of Llantrissant in the county of Glamorganshire, was shooting upon the hills near that town; he had occasion to pass what appeared to him a patch of red mire, over which one step would have carried him; but having set his foot on it, it sunk; he fell and found his leg burnt through the boot so severely that he was confined many weeks by the wound. The place is remote from any path, but it was found upon enquiry ​that a few old persons knew that such a ground fire existed there, where it had been burning time out of mind. This is not related upon any doubtful authority. I heard the fact from the person to whom it happened. Some scientific traveller will do well to find out this singular spot, over which, if it were in their country, the Parsees would build a temple.
# Omniana/Volume 1/Henrietta Maria

54. Henrietta Maria.
The priests whom Henrietta Maria brought over with her to this country, ​were absurd and insolent enough to bid her, as a penance, walk barefoot to Tyburn, and pray upon the spot for those of her own religion who had been executed there for treason.
This is mentioned in a little book entitled, "The Life and Death of Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, Queen to that Blessed King and Martyr, Charles the first;" it is "dedicated and devoted to the most high and mighty Monarch, the Grand Exemplar of Magnanimity, Majesty, and Mercy, Charles the second;" and this is somewhat remarkable, as it did not appear till after his death, James the second being mentioned in the title-page.
The muttering of some is spoken of, who said they, "could discern no cause of joy in her being pregnant, God having better provided for us in the hopeful progeny of the Queen of Bohemia." It is no wonder that such mutterers were called scandalous and seditious at the time; but it must be admitted now, that they spake ​with that wise foresight which may be called political prophecy.
# On the Ancient and Modern Influence of Poetry

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On the Ancient and Modern Influence of Poetry By Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.)
From The New Monthly Magazine, Vol 35, 1832 Compiled by Peter J. Bolton
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 93

Letter XCIII.
To the Patrician Cæsaria, concerning Communion.
It is good and beneficial to communicate every day, and to partake of the holy body and blood of Christ. For He distinctly says, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.” And who doubts that to share frequently in life, is the same thing as to have manifold life. I, indeed, communicate four times a week, on the Lord’s day, on Wednesday, on Friday, and on the Sabbath, and on the other days if there is a commemoration of any Saint. It is needless to point out that for anyone in times of persecution to be compelled to take the communion in his own hand without the presence of a priest or minister is not a serious offence, as long custom sanctions this practice from the facts themselves. All the solitaries in the desert, where there is no priest, take the communion themselves, keeping communion at home. And at Alexandria and in Egypt, each one of the laity, for the most part, keeps the communion, at his own house, and participates in it when he likes. For when once the priest has completed the offering, and given it, the recipient, participating in it each time as entire, is bound to believe that he properly takes and receives it from the giver. And even in the church, when the priest gives the portion, the recipient takes it with complete power over it, and so lifts it to his lips with his own hand. It has the same validity whether one portion or several portions are received from the priest at the same time.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in 372.
* ↑ Two mss. read Cæsarius.
* ↑ John vi. 54.
* ↑ A various reading is “martyr.” In Letter cxcvii. to S. Ambrose, S. Basil, states that the same honour was paid to S. Dionysius of Milan in his place of sepulture as to a martyr. So Gregory Thaumaturgus was honoured at Neocæsarea, and Athanasius and Basil received like distinction soon after their death.
* ↑ The custom of the reservation of the Sacrament is, as is well known, of great antiquity. cf. Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 85; Tertull., De Orat. xix. and Ad Ux. ii. 5; S. Cyprian, De Lapsis cxxxii.; Jerome, Ep. cxxv. Abuses of the practice soon led to prohibition. So an Armenian Canon of the fourth century (Canones Isaaci, in Mai, Script. Vet. Nov. Coll. x. 280) and the Council of Saragossa, 380; though in these cases there seems an idea of surreptitious reservation. On the doctrine of the English Church on this subject reference may be made to the Report of a Committee of the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury in 1885. The Rubric of 1549 allowed reservation, and it does not seem to have been prohibited until 1661. Bishop A. P. Forbes on Article xxviii. points out that in the Article reservation is not forbidden, but declared not to be of Christ’s institution, and consequently not binding on the Church. The distinction will not be forgotten between reservation and worship of the reserved Sacrament.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 95

Letter XCV.
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
I had written some while since to your reverence about our meeting one another and other subjects, but I was disappointed at my letter not reaching your excellency, for after the blessed deacon Theophrastus had taken charge of the letter, on my setting out on an unavoidable journey, he did not convey it to your reverence, because he was seized by the sickness of which he died. Hence it happened that I was so late in writing, that, the time being now so exceedingly short, I did not look for there being much use in this letter. The godly bishop Meletius and Theodotus had strongly urged me to visit them, representing that a meeting would be a proof of affection, and being wishful of remedying the troubles which are at present a cause of anxiety. They had appointed, as a time for our meeting, the middle of the approaching month of June, and for the place, Phargamus, a spot famous for martyr’s glory and for the large number of people attending the synod there every year. Directly I returned and heard of the death of the blessed deacon, and that my letter was lying useless at home, I felt that I must not be idle, because thirty-three days were still remaining up to the appointed time, and so I hurriedly sent the letter to the very reverend Eustathius, my fellow minister, with the object of its being sent on by him to your reverence and of getting an answer without delay. If, then, it is possible and agreeable to you to come, I will come too. If not, I, God willing, will pay the debt of meeting due from last year: unless haply some hindrance for my sins comes in the way again, in which case I must put off my meeting with the bishops to another time.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in 372.
* ↑ Theodotus of Nicopolis was distressed at Basil’s being in communion with Eustathius.