Basil'S Reproaches
I.7]
BASIL'S REPROACHES
WHEN AT last he had calmed down a little from his agitation of mind, he said :
Even if you have washed your hands of me and respect me no longer (though I do not know why), you should at least have considered your own reputation. As it is, you have set every tongue wagging. Everyone is saying that it was through the love of worldly honours that you declined this ministry. And there is no one to clear you of this imputation.
Personally, I cannot bear even to go to the market-place, so many there are who come up to me and reproach me every day. Whenever they see me in daylight anywhere in the city all my intimate acquaintances take me aside and impute the greater share of the blame to me. "Since you knew his intentions", they say, "-and none of his plans was ever hidden from you-you ought not to have concealed them.
You should have passed them on to us. You may be sure we should not have been at a loss for some trick in the hunt."
And I am covered with shame. I blush to tell them that I did not know you had been planning this for a long time, for fear they should think our friendship a mere sham. If in fact it is-and surely it must be, and you cannot deny it yourself after what you have just done to me-it is only right to hide our troubles at least from strangers and from those who have an indifferent opinion of us. So I shrink from telling them the truth and the real state of affairs between us, and I am constantly compelled to hold my peace and stare at the ground and avoid people who meet me and bolt off. For if I clear myself of the charge I have mentioned,
BASIL'S REPROACHES
I shall inevitably be thought a liar, as they will never bring themselves to believe that you treated Basil no better than all the others who have no right to know your secrets.
But this is no great matter to me, since you are so pleased with what has happened. But how shall I bear the shame of their other accusations? Some accuse you of arrogance and others of worldly ambition, and the more brutal of these accusers level both charges equally against us and for good measure add the accusation of insolence towards those who did us an honour. They say it would have served them right if they had been treated even more contemptuously by us, since they passed over men of quality and experience, and took mere striplings who only yesterday or perhaps the day before got engrossed in the cares of the world (or seemed to, if for a moment they screwed up their faces and put on subfuse and assumed a pensive look!), and suddenly exalted them to greater dignity than they had ever dreamed of attaining. Men who from their earliest years to a ripe old age have maintained their self-discipline are under authority, and their rulers are their children who have never so much as heard of the laws which ought to guide them in exercising their authority.
They dog my footsteps unceasingly with these reproaches and more of the same sort. And I do not know what answer to make to them. I beg you to tell me. :For I suppose it was not without due thought and reflection that you made your escape and so incurred the serious hostility of such important people. You must have reached this decision after careful reckoning and inquiry. And so I infer that you have some reason ready to give in your defence. Tell me, then, whether
I shall be able to offer any good excuse to those who accuse you. I do not demand any satisfaction for the wrong you rave done to me or for your deceit or your treachery or for
BASIL'S REPROACHES
the favours you have enjoyed from me in the past. I brought my very soul and, so to speak, placed it in your hands. But you have used as much craft towards me as if your concern was to guard against an enemy. And yet, if you knew their plan was good, you should not have refused the advantage yourself; and if you thought it hannful, you should have saved me too from the loss, since you always professed to think more of me than of others. But you actually did everything to make me fall into the trap, and you resorted to trickery and pretence in dealing with the very one who in word and act tow~rds you was always open and sincere.
But still, as I said before, I bring no such charge against you now; nor do I reproach you with the wilderness into which you have led me by bringing to an end those times together which often gave us unusual pleasure and profit.
I pass over all that. I accept it, humbly and silently-not because your offence against me showed any humility, but because I have made it a rule for myself, since the day I first formed my friendship with you, that I would never demand an explanation of any pain you might choose to cause me.
To be sure, you know yourself that you have inflicted on me no little punishment-unless you have forgotten what was said about us repeatedly by strangers, and by ourselves, to the effect that it was a great advantage for us to be united and secure in our mutual friendship. Everyone else said our concord would be a great help to a lot of other people. I, personally, never thought about its helping anyone else; but I did say we should get at least one great advantage from it, that we should not be easy victims to people who wanted to get the better of us.
I never stopped reminding you of this. "The times are dangerous," I said. "Our enemies are many. True love is dead. The poison of malice has taken its place. We 'go
BASIL'S REPROACHES
[1.7 about in the midst of snares and walk upon battlements of cities'.' There are many all round us who stand ready to rejoice over any misfortune that might happen to us. There are few, if any, to share our sorrow. Take care we do not incur a lot of ridicule, and penalties worse than ridicule, if we are ever divided. 'A brother by a brother helped is as a strong city and a kingdom securely barred.' 1 Do not part this true love; do not cut through this secure bar."
All that and more I was for ever saying, though I never suspected anything like this. On the contrary, I thought your disposition towards me was sound and that I was wanting gratuitously to heal the healthy. But it seems I was unwittingly administering medicine to a sick man. And even so I, poor fool, did not effect my purpose; nor have I got any reward from my excessive forethought. You discarded my advice all at once and laid none of it to heart. You have turned me adrift like a vessel without ballast on a boundless ocean and given no thought to those cruel waves with which I must contend. When I happen to meet with calumny or mockery or any other kind of insolence or abuse (and that kind of thing must often occur), to whom shall I run for help? To whom shall I confide my fears? Who will agree to help me? Who will check those who trouble me and make them stop, and comfort me and equip me to endure the illmannered conduct of others? There is no one, if you stand aloof from this dreadful warfare and cannot even hear the di..'1 !)f battle. Do you know how much harm you have done?
Do you realize, even now after striking me, how deadly is the blow you have dealt?
But let it pass. We cannot undo what is done or find help for the helpless. But what shall I say to the world at large?
What reply shall I make to their charges?
1 Ecclu8. 9.13.
1 Cf. Provo 18.19 (LXX).
1.8]
JOHN'S REPLY
JOHN: Take courage! I am not only ready to let myself be questioned about this, but I will also try to explain, as far as I can, those other matters you have excused me from explaining. And, if you like, I will make them the very opening of my defence. For I should be unnatural and quite unfeeling, if I were anxious for the good opinion of strangers and exerted myself to prevent them from accusing us, and yet should fail to acquit myself in the eyes of my greatest friend; and that although he has treated me with such gentleness that he will not accuse me for my supposed injuries to him, but sets his own interests aside and can still think of mine. It would be strange if I seemed more casual about him than he is concerned about me.
How, then, did I wrong you? For this is where I have decided to embark upon my defence. Is it that I misled you and concealed my own intention? But this was for the advantage both of yourself who were deceived and of those to whom I betrayed you by my deception.
For if fraud is always wrong and we cannot use it when we need, then I am ready to pay any penalty you like. Or rather, as you will never consent to bring me to court, I will pronounce the verdict against myself, as jurors do against criminals when they are convicted by their accusers. But if it is not always harmful; if it is made bad or good by the intentions of those who use it, stop accusing me of deception, and prove that I used this means for an evil end. For while this proof is lacking, it remains the duty of those who want
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[1.8 to be fair, so far from finding fault and criticizing, rather to . give their approval to the deceiver. A timely deception used
I with a right purpose is such an advantage that a lot of men have been called to account on many occasions for failing to deceive.
If you consider famous generals from the beginning of history, you will find that most of their successes are triumphs of deceit, and that men like this can earn more praise than others who conquer by straightforward methods. For the others are successful in their wars at a greater expense of money and men; and so they gain no advantage from their victory, but the victors suffer almost as much as the vanquished, both in loss of life and in financial loss. Moreover their methods do not allow them to enjoy the whole credit of the victory. For even the fallen enjoy no small part of it, because they were victorious in spirit and vanquished only in body, so that, if they had been able not to fall when hit, and if death had not come to stop them, they would never have halted in their eagerness. But the man who can conquer by deceit involves his enemy not only in disaster but also in ridicule. It is not a case of both sides carrying off equal honours for shrewdness-as in the other instance for valour.
No, the prize belongs to the victors alone. What is more, they keep for their country the joy of victory unimpaired. For shrewdness of mind is not like wealth in money or manpower. When you use them continually in war, the supply becomes exhausted and fails its possessors. But the more you use shrewdness, the more it will increase.
Not only in war, but in peace too, you can find many cases in which the use of deceit is necessary, and not only in public life, but in domestic matters. A husband needs it for a wife, a wife for a husband, a father for a son, a friend for a friend, and sometimes even children for a father. Saul's
1.8]
JOHN'S REPLY
daughter could not have rescued her own husband by any other device from her father's grasp except by tricking him.
And when her brother wanted to save from danger the very man she had rescued, he, too, used the same weapons as she did.
Basil: None of this applies to me. I am not a foe or enemy or one who plans to hurt you, but just the opposite.
I always entrusted all my plans. to your decision, and used to follow the path you told me to take.
John: Why, my dear good friend, this is the very reason why I got my word in first and said that it is right to use deceit, not in war only, nor only with enemies, but in peace and with our best friends.
To discover how useful deceit is, not only to the deceivers but to the deceived, go to any doctor and inquire how they cure their patients of diseases. You will hear them say that they do not rely on their skill alone, but sometimes they resort to deceit, and with a tincture of its help they restore the sick man to health. When the plans of doctors are hindered by the whims of their patients and the obstinacy of the complaint itself, then it is necessary to put on the mask of deception, in order to conceal the truth about what is happening-as they do on the stage.
With your permission, I will relate to you one of the many tricks which, I have heard, doctors devise. Once a fever fell suddenly upon a patient very violently, and his temperature kept rising. The sick man refused the medicine which would have allayed the fever, but longed and insisted, with requests to everyone who visited him, that he should be given a long drink of neat wine and be allowed to take his fill of the deadly thing he wanted. It would not only have inflamed the fever but have thrown the poor man into a hemiplegia, if anyone had granted him this favour. In this
JOHN'S REPLY
[I.g case, where professional skill was baffled and at the end of its resources and quite useless, deception stepped in and showed the extent of its power, as you shall now hear.
The doctor took an earthenware vessel fresh from the kiln and steeped it in wine. Then he took it out empty and filled it with water. Next he gave orders for the room where the patient was lying to be darkened with thick curtains, for fear that the daylight might show up the trick.
He then gave the vessel to the patient to drink from, pretending it was full of neat wine. The patient was deceived, even before he took it into his hand, by the aroma that reached him. He did not stop to examine closely what was offered to him. Convinced by the aroma, deceived by the darkness, and impelled by his craving, he snatched the vessel impatiently. And when he had drunk his fill, he immediately shook off the fever and escaped his imminent danger.
Do you see the advantage of deception? If you were to collect all the tricks of doctors, the list would stretch interminably. And you will find that it is not only those who heal the body who constantly use this remedy, but those who treat the diseases of the soul, too. By this means St Paul won over all those thousands of Jews.l With this intention he circumcised Timothy/ even though he wrote to the Galatians that Christ would not profit those who were circumcised.3 On this account he became subject to the Law 4-he who reckoned the righteousness of the Law but loss after finding faith in Christ.!
Great is the power of deceit; only it must not be applied with a treacherous intention. Or rather, it is not right to call such action deceit, but good management and tact and skill enough to find many ways through an impasse, and to cor1 Acts 21.20.
2 Acts ,6.3.
3 Gal. 5.2.
4, Cor. 9.20.
5 Phil. 3.'.
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JOHN'S REPLY
rect the faults of the spirit. I should not call Phinehas a murderer, though he took two lives with one blow,6 nor Elijah, in spite of the hundred soldiers and their captains 7 and the great river of blood he made flow from the slaughter of those who sacrificed to devils.s If we were to allow that description, a man could strip all action of the intention of the agents, examine it out of context, and, if he liked, condemn Abraham for murdering his son,lI and accuse his grandson and his descendant of evil-doing and fraud, since it was by this means that the one gained the privileges of the first-bom,IO and the other transferred the wealth of the Egyptians to the host of the Israelites.u
But this will not do, it will not do! Perish the presumption! We not only acquit them of blame, we revere them for these very things, since God praised them on their account.
He alone can justly be called a deceiver who performs the action for unjust ends, since it is often necessary to deceive and by this means aid great causes. The straightforward man does great harm to those he will not deceive.
6 Num. 25.7-8.
72 Kings 1.10, u. lOGen.27.
8 1 Kings 18.40'
II Ex. 11.2.
II Gen. 22.10.