62 (185). A Letter of Consolation to the Church of Parnassus
LETTERS
condemnation. Sufficient for him is his record and your letter itself which is read everywhere. We shall not cease showing it to all his relatives and friends, and to strangers. And, perhaps, even if the due penalties do not touch him at the present moment, as they did the Pharaoh,4 at some later period they will bring to him a heavy and painful retribution.
62. A Letter of Consolation to the Church of Parnassus1 Following an old custom established by long observance and revealing to you the fruit of the Spirit, love in God, we are visiting your Reverence by letter, sharing with you both your grief at your bereavement and your solicitude for the affairs now at hand. Concerning your distressing troubles we say only this, that it is an opportune time for us to look to the precepts of the Apostle and not to grieve 'even as others who have no hope';2 not to be insensible, of course, to what has happened, but, while conscious of our loss, not to be overcome by our grief. We should, on the other hand, consider our pastor happy in his death because he has laid aside his life at an age rich with years and has gone to his rest amid the greatest honors from the Lord.
Concerning all else we have this to recommend, that you should cast off all dejection, regain self-control, and rise to 4 An allusion to the plagues and the final destruction of the Pharaoh as described in Exodus.
This letter to the people of Parnassus (a town of Northern Cappadoda near the modern Tchikin Aghyl) on the death of their bishop. while ostensibly wri,tten for consolation. was in reality an exhortation to elect an orthodox bishop. They elected the orthodox Hypsis. but he was expelled by the Arians in 375. Cf. Letter 237. The date. according to Maran. op. cit. xvi. is 372. just before the visit of Val ens which gave the Arians of this church so much power.
2 I Thess. 4.13.