Sister Projects: Wikichristian | WikiMD
BelieversCafe is a large collection of christian articles with over 40,000 pages
Our sponsors:
598 cf. Verg., Aen. ii. Quis talia fando . . . temperet a lacrymis?
601 i.e. of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclus. xliii. 30.
607 i.e. Dianius, bp. of the Cappadocian Caesarea, who baptized St. Basil c. 357 on his return from Athens, and ordained him Reader. He was a waverer, and signed the creed of Ariminum in 359; Basil consequently left him, but speaks reverentially of him in Ep. 51.
611 Dionysius was Patriarch of Alexandria a.d. 247-265. Basil's "strange to say" is of a piece with the view of Dionysius' heretical tendencies expressed in Letter ix. q.v. Athanasius, however, (De Sent. Dionysii) was satisfied as to the orthodoxy of his predecessor. Bp. Westcott (Dict. C. Biog. I. 851) quotes Lumper (Hist. Pat. xii. 86) as supposing that Basil's charge against Dionysius of sowing the seeds of the Anomoean heresy was due to imperfect acquaintance with his writings. In Letter clxxxviii. Basil calls him "the Great." which implies general approval.
612 Clem. Rom., Ep. ad Cor. lviii. Bp. Lightfoot's . Fathers, Pt. I. ii. 169.
613 Irenaeus is near he Apostles in close connexion, as well as in time, through his personal knowledge of Polycarp. Vide his Ep. to Florinus quoted in Euseb., Ecc. Hist. v. 20. In his work On the Ogdoad, quoted in the same chapter, Irenaeus says of himself that he th/n pswth\n tw=n 0 Apostolw=n kateilhfe/nai thn diadoxh/n "had himself had the nearest succession of the Apostles."
614 The reference is presumably to 1 Cor. ii. 11 and iii. 1.
615 i.e. Eusebius of Caesarea, the historian, so called to distinguish him from his namesake of Nicomedia. cf. Theodoret, Ecc. Hist. I. 1. The work is not extant. It may be that mentioned by Eusebius in his Praep. Evang. vii. 8, 20 under the title of peri\ th=j tw=n palaiw=n a'ndrw=n polupaidi/aj.
616 The quotation is from the Eighth Book.
618 AS to Origen's unorthodoxy concerning the Holy Spirit St. Basil may have had in his mind such a passage as the following from the First Book of the De Principiis, extant in the original in Justinian, Ep. ad Mennam. Minge, Pat. Gr. xi. p. 150. o!ti o 9 me\n qeo\j kai\path=r sune/xwn ta\ pa/nta fqa/nei eij ekaston tw=n o!ntwn metadidou\j e 9ka/stw a'po\ ton= i'di/on to\ ei\nai : w$n ga\r e!stin : e'la/ttwn de\ para to\n pate/ra o 9 Ui 9o\j fqa/nei e'pi\ mo/na ta\ logika/. den/teroj la/r e'sti tou= patro/j: e!ti de= h 9neu=ma to\ a!lio/ e'pi\ mo/nouj ton= a 9gi/ouj di iknou=menon. w!ste kata\ tou=to meizwn h\ du/namij tou= Patro\j para\ to\n Uio\n kai\ to\ pneu=ma to\ a!gion plei/wn de\ h 9 tou= Ui 9ou= papa= to\ pneu=ma to\ a!gion. The work does not even exist as a whole in the translation of Rufinus, who omitted portions, and St. Jerome thought that Rufinus had misrepresented it. Photius (Biblioth. cod. viii.) says that Origen, in asserting in this work that the Son was made by the Father and the Spirit by the Son, is most blashemous. Bp. Harold Browne, however (position of the xxxix. Art. p. 113, n. 1), is of opinion that if Rufinus fairly translated the following passage, Origen cannot have been fairly charged with heresy concerning the Holy Ghost: "Ne quis sane existimet nos ex co quod diximus Spiritum sanctum solis sanctis praestari. Patris vero et Filii beneficia vel inoperationes pervenire ad bonos et malos, justos et injustos, proetulisse per hoc Patri et Filio Spiritum Sanctum, vel majorem ejus per hoc asserere dignitatem; quod utique valde inconsequens est. Proprietatem namque gratiae ejus operisque descipsimus. Porro autem nihil in Trinitate majus minusve dicendum est, quum unius Divinitatis Fons verbo ac ratione sua teneat universa, spiritu vero oris sui quae digna sunt, sanctificatione sanctificet, sicut in Psalmo scriptum est verbo domini coeli firmati sunt et spiritu oris ejus omnis virtus eorum." De Princ. I. iii. 7.
On the obligations of both Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus to Origen, cf. Socrates iv. 26.
619 Of the chief writings of Julius Africanus (called Sextus Africanus by Suidas), who wrote at Emmaus and Alexandria c. 220, only fragments remain. A Letter to Origen is complete. His principal work was a Chronicon from the Creation to a.d. 221, in Five Books. Of this Dr. Salmon (D.C.B. I 56) thinks the doxology quoted by Basil was the conclusion.
620 Ps. cxli. was called o 9 e\pilu/xnioj yalmo/j (Ap. Const. viii. 35). In the Vespers of the Eastern Church an evening hymn is sung, translated in D.C.A. I. 634, "Joyful Light of the holy glory of the immortal Father, the heavenly the holy, the blessed Jesus Christ, we having come to the setting of the sun and beholding the evening light, praise God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is meet at all times that thou shouldest be hymned with auspicious voices, Son of God, Giver of Life: wherefore the world glorifieth thee."
621 Identified by some with two early hymns, Do/ca e'n u 9yi/stoij, and fwj i 9laro/n.
622 The mss. vary between e'cith/rion and a'lecith/rion, farewell gift and amulet or charm. In Ep. cciii. 229 Basil says that our Lord gave His disciples peace as an e'cith/rion dw=ron, using the word, but in conjunction with dw=ron. Greg. Naz., Orat. xiv. 223 speaks of our Lord leaving peace "w!sper a!llo ti e''cith/pion."
623 i.e. Gregory, bishop of Neocaesarea, known as Gregorius Thaumaturgus, or Gregory the Wonder-worker. To the modern reader "Gregory the Great" more naturally suggest Gregory of Nazianzus, but this he hardly was to his friend and contemporary, though the title had accrued to him by the time of the accepted Ephesine Council in 431 (videLabbe, vol. iv. p. 1192) Gregory the Wonder-worker, _ c. 270.
626 e.g. according to the legend, the Lycus. cf. Newman, Essays o Miracles, p. 267.
627 The story is told by Gregory of Nyssa, Life ofGreg. Thaum. Migne xliv. 926-930.
628 The Neocaesareans appear to have entertained a Puritan objection to the antiphonal psalmody becoming general in the Church in the time of Basil. cf. Ep. ccvii.
629 Firmilian, like Gregory the Wonder-worker, a pupil of Origen, was bishop of Caesarea from before a.d. 232 (Euseb. vi. 26) to 272 (Euseb. vii. 30). By some his death at Tarsus is placed in 265 or 5.
632 The Benedictine version for ta\j tima=j tou= kuri/on is honorem quem Dominus tribuit Spiritui. The reading of one ms. is ta=j fwna/j. There is authority for either sense of the genitive with timh/, i.e. the houours due to the Lord or paid by the Lord.
636 i.e. after the condemnation of Arius at Nicaea/
637 In Ep. ccxlii. written in 376, St. Basil says: "This is the thirteenth year since the outbreak of the war of heretics against us." 363 is the date of the Acacian Council of Antioch; 364 of the accession of Valens and Valentian, of the Semi-Arian Synod of Lampsacus, and of St. Basil's ordination to the priesthood and book against Eunomius. On the propagation by scission and innumerable subdivisions of Arianism Cannon Bright writes:
The extraordinary versatility, the argumentative subtlety, and the too frequent profanity of Arianism are matters of which a few lines can give no idea. But it is necessary , in even the briefest notice of this long-lived heresy, to remark on the contrast between its changeable inventiveness and the simple steadfastness of Catholic doctrine. On the one side, some twenty different creeds (of which several, however, were rather negatively than positively heterodox) and three main sects, the Semi-Arians, with their formula of Homoiousion, i.e. the Son is like in essence to the Father; the Acacians, vaguely calling Him like (Homoion); the Aetians, boldly calling Him unlike, as much as to say He is in no sense Divine. On the other side, the Church with the Nicene Creed, confessing Him as Homoousion, 'of one essence with the Father,' meaning thereby, as her great champion repeatedly bore witness, to secure belief in the reality of the Divine Sonship, and therefore in the real Deity, as distinguished from the titular deity which was so freely conceded to Him by the Arians." Cannon Bright, St. Leo on the Incarnation, p. 140
Socrates (ii. 41), pausing at 360, enumerates, after Nicaea:
1. 1st of Antioch
omitted the o 9mooou\sion, a.d. 341)
2. 2d of Antioch
3. The Creed brought to Constans in Gaul by Narcissus and other Arians in 342.
4. The Creed "sent by Eudoxius of Germanicia into Italy," i.e. the "Macrostich," or "Lengthy Creed," rejected at Milan in 346.
5. The 1st Creed of Sirmium; i.e. the Macrostich with 26 additional clauses, 351.
6. The 2d Sirmian Creed. The "manifesto;" called by Athanasius (De Synod. 28) "the blasphemy," 357.
7. The 3d Sirmian, or "dated Creed," in the consulship of Flavius Eusebius and Hypatius, May 22d, 359.
8. The Acacian Creed of Seleucia, 359.
9. The Creed of Ariminum adopted at Constantinople, as revised at Nike.
638 On the authority of the ms. of the tenth century at Paris, called by the Ben. Editors Regius Secundus, they read for pneu/matoj pa/qonj, denying pneumatoj to be consistent with the style and practice of Basil, who they say, never uses the epithet swth/oioj of the Spirit. Mr. C. F. H. Johnston notes that St. Basil "always attributes the saving efficacy of Baptism to the presence of the Spirit, and here applies the word to Him." In § 35, we have to\ awth/rion ba/ppisua.
641 Among the bishops exiled during the persecution of Valens were Meletius of Antioch. Eusebius of Samosata, Pelagius of Laodicea, and Barses of Edessa. cf. Theodoret, st. Ecc. iv. 12 sq. cf. Ep. 195.
642 The identification of an unsound Monarchianism with Judaism is illustrated in the 1st Apology of Justin Martyr e.g. in § lxxxiii. (Reeves' Trans.). "The Jews, therefore, for maintaining that it was the Father of the Universe who had the conference with Moses, when it was the very Son of God who had it, and who is styled both Angel and Apostle, are justly accused by the prophetic spirit and Christ Himself, for knowing neither the Father nor the Son; for they who affirm the Son to be the Father are guilty of not knowing the Father, and likewise of being ignorant that the Father of the Universe has a Son, who, being the Logos and First-begotten of God, is God."
643 i.e. the Arians, whose various ramifications all originated in a probably well-meant attempt to reconcile the principles of Christianity with what was best in the old philosophy, and a failure to see that the ditheism of Arianism was of a piece with polytheism.
644 The word spoudarxi/dhj is a comic patronymic of spouda/rxhj, a place-hunter, occurring in the Archarnians of Aristophanes, 595.
646 a'narxi/a a'po\ filarxi/aj.
2 cf. Joseph. ii. x. 2. So Justin M., Cohort. ad gent., Philio, Vit. Moys, and Clem. Al., Strom. I. Vide Fialon, Et. Hist. 302.
6 cf. note on Letter viii. on the stoixei=a or elements which the Ionian philosophers made the a'rxai of the universe. Vide Plato, Legg. x. § 4 and Arist., Met. i. 3.
7 Posidonius the Stoic name Moschus, or Mochus of Sidon, as the originator of the atomic theory "before the Trojan period." VideStrabo, xvi. 757. But the most famous Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera, in the 5th c. b.c., arose in opposition to the Eleatic school, and were followed in the 3d by Epicurus. VideDiog. Laert. ix. § 30. sq. and Cicero, De Nat. Deo. I. 24-26. Ista enim flagitia Democriti, sive etiam ante Leucippi, esse corpuscula quaedam laevia, rotunda alia, partim autem angulata, curvata quae dam, et quasi adunca: ex his effectum esse coelum atque terram, nulla cogente natura, sed concursu quodam fortuito. Atqui, si haec Democritea non audisset, quid audierat? quid est in physicis Epicuri non a Democrito? Nam, esti quaedam commodavit, ut, quod paulo ante de inclinatione atomorum dixi: tamen pleraque dixit eadem; atomos, inane, imagines, infinitatem locorum, innumerabilitatemque mundorum eorum ortus, interitus, omnia fere, quibua naturae ratio continetur.
8 cf. the Fortuna gubernans of Lucretius (v. 108).
9 Fialon refers to Aristotle (De Caelo.) i. 5) on the non-infinitude of the circle. The conclusion is "Oti me\n ou\n to\ ku/klw kinou/menon ou'k e!stin a'teleu/thton ou'd0 a!peiron, a'll0 e!xei te/loj, fanero/n.N