65 (363). To Atarbius
SAINT BASIL
65. To Atarbius1 And what end will there be to our silence, if I, on the one hand, should claim the privileges of age and wait for you to take the initiative in offering salutations, while your Charity, on the other, should wish to persist in your sinister decision of maintaining silence? Yet, since I consider that defeat in matters of friendship has the force of victory, I admit that I am conceding to you the credit of seeming to have prevailed over my opinion. And I have been the first to start writing, knowing that charity 'bears with all things, endures all things,' nowhere 'seeks her own,' and therefore 'never fails.'2 For, he who submits to his neighbor through charity is not humbled. Therefore, see to it that you yourself exhibit for the future, at least, the first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, which is charity.3 Cast off the sullenness of an angry man which you are evincing by your silence, and regain joy in your heart, peace toward your like-minded brethren, and zeal and solicitude for the preservation of the churches of the Lord. In fact, be assured that, unless we resume a struggle for the churches equal to that which the opponents of sound doctrine maintain for their ruin and destruction, there will
Atarbius, whom Tillemont wrongly considered an Armenian bishop, was Bishop of Neo.Caesarea and probably a relative of St. Basil. Cf.
Letter 210. Letters 126, 204, 207, and 210 contain information on the break between St. Basil and Atarbius, and on the efforts made by St.
Basil to mend the breach and rescue Atarbius from his errors. That he was Bishop of Neo-Caesarea is evident from the fact that (I) he is so designated in some MSS. of St. Basil's Letters; (2) the character and circumstances of Atarbius, as depicted in Letter 126, entirely agree with those of the unnamed Bishop of Neo.Caesarea referred to in Letters
204, 207, and 210; (3) in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople he represents the Province of Pont us Palemoniacus, of which Neo-Caesarea was the metropolis.
2 Cf. I Cor. 13.5.7,8.
3 Cf. Gal. 5.22-23.