116 (174). To Firminus
SAINT BASIL
knife. They are mad with passion without fruition~because of their own turpitude. These will not stand as witnesses at the Judgment, but the eyes of the just and the countenances of virile men, who then will see with their eyes what they are looking toward with their understanding.
116. To Firminus 1 Your letters are both rare and brief, either because of your reluctance to write, or for some other reasons~because you are planning to escape the satiety arising from voluminous correspondence, or even because you are accustoming yourself to brevity in speech. For us, certainly, they are not at all sufficient. However, even if their number should be excessive, they are less than we desire, because we wish to learn every detail about you~how your health is; how your practices of asceticism progress; whether you are persevering in the resolutions formerly determined upon, or have made some change, altering your decision according to circumstances.
Now, if you had persevered, we would not have been asking for a large number of letters, but this much would suffice for us: 'So-and-so to So-and-so: be assured that we are well, and farewell.' Yet, since we hear what we are ashamed even to say, that, having left the ranks of your blessed forefathers,
\OU are going over to the side of your paternal grandfather and are striving to become Brettanius instead of Firminus, we are eager to hear the facts themselves and to learn the reasons inducing you to change to this profession. But, since
FirminllS. as w,ell as his father. Firminll', and grandfather, Brettanius, are unknown except through this letter. Firminus seems to have aban,
<loned the ascetic life wbich he had first embraced in order to join the UIll\'. St. Basil wrote this letter about 372.