Letter 231 (375)
THE FATHERS SPEAK
BASIL TO AMPHILOCHIOS, BISHOP OF ICONIUM,
LETTER 231 (375)
. .. The book on the Holy Spirit has been written and achieved by us, as you know. But the brethren who are with me have not let me send it as it was written on paper
[X6:p'tU]; they said they had instructions from Your Nobility to have it transcribed on parchment [acu(la"dcpJ. So, in order not to appear transgressing your orders, we have waited until now, and we shall send the book a little later, if only we can find someone to carry it to yOll. Pray the Lord for us, and be as a gift of God to us and to His Church, through the love for men of the Holy One.
Adamantios, a sophist, presumably an "ex-Athenian," had been begging Gregory of Nazianzus for some profane literature, for which our hierarch had apparently no more use.
GREGORY OF NAZlANZUS TO AOAMANTIOS. LETTBR 235
You ask me for books [1tUK"[(cX, literally "writing tablets"], and you seem to be still engrossed with rhetoric, whereas we have forsaken it, extending our thoughts higher. through God's grace and for His sake. We had, at some time, to stop playing and stammering puerilities, in order to rise to a higher knowledge and offer our [human] words to the Word, together with the goods we owned fonnerly. It would be better if you asked me for divine books and not for these; we know that the fonner would be more advantageous to