Rise, thou most skilful pilot, from thy sleep, Thy words, thy prayers, the world in awe will keep. There's one Almighty God, and none but thee, Truth's boldest champion, and the Christian's light, Whose praise shall fill present and future story; "Cæsarea's citizens within this grave, And shortly let him in thy palace live, Who, warmed with flames that from above descend, Dreams out those days which he on earth doth spend." While thou 'mong men didst breathe, Heaven did command Truth's guardian, which we've sadly mangled since, To practise the divine philosophy. While now the happy Basil has attained His journey's end, and left me dumb behind; Farewell, my Basil, since I'm left behind; SECTION VII. A CHARACTER AND ACCOUNT OF HIS PERSON, TEMPER, and WRITINGS. His character. His natural abilities, and acquired improvements. The extent of his learning in all faculties. His incomparable style. The judgment of the ancients concerning it. The high commendation of his eloquence given by Liberius. His moral and divine accomplishments, piety, zeal, constancy, temperance, contempt of the world, charity, humility, peaceable-mindedness. The description of his person. His works, whereof some only ascribed to him. His genuine distinguished into commentaries, controversies, sermons, encomiastics, epistles, and canonical tracts. A distinct survey of each class. His ascetic constitutions. His liturgy, how far genuine. Nazianzen's high encomium of his writings. Ir is no easy matter to attempt his just character; Nazianzen himself despaired of it, and if his pencil could not draw him to the life, it must not be expected from a meaner hand. We shall only therefore remark some main lines and strokes. Considered in his natural faculties, he was a man of a very clear and perspicacious apprehension, a nimble and ready wit, a smart dexterous reasoning, a deep and solid judgment. His acquired abilities highly improved, and added an incomparable lustre and ornament to his natural perfections. As he wanted no advantages of education, so he was not wanting in industry and diligence to make use of them, whereby he soon became a most comprehensive scholar, καὶ πάσης παιδείας εἰς ἄκρον ἐληλακὼς, and attained the utmost empire in all polite and useful learning, wherein he left no path untrodden;" and yet was as conversant in all, as any other man is in any single science, while he himself was as accurate in every art, as if he had studied none but that. He t Suid in voc. Βασίλ. " Greg. Naz. Orat. xx. p. 332. Vid. Nyss. Orat. in Bas. vol. ii. p. 911. was eminent in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, physic, and what not? He had rifled all the treasures of the Gentiles, and searched into the most secret retirements of philosophy and secular learning; in which respect Philostorgius says," and perhaps truly, Athanasius was but a child to him. Nor content with this, he chiefly applied himself to the knowledge of the holy scriptures, and the principles of Christian theology: he perfectly understood all the sublime and nice speculations of those times, and knew the subtleties and subterfuges of the several sects, and where to countermine and blow them up. He was, in short, says his own brother, ȧpioTevs πepidéέios, a two-handed champion; who, being armed both with divine and human literature, beat down his adversaries wherever he came, and successfully encountered both heathens and heretics, seldom failing to come off a conqueror. This made his judgment so oft desired, and so much relied on in weighty and important cases; this made the heresiarchs of those times so afraid to meddle with him, choosing rather to rail at him at a distance, than to engage with him in a close dispute. Nay, Eunomius himself, though a man otherwise of a steeled forehead, yet when he undertook to answer what Basil had writ against him, suppressed his book for many years, and would not publish it till after St. Basil's death, when he promised himself he should be without the reach of confutation. II. His style and way of writing is admirable, and almost inimitable; it is proper, perspicuous, significant, soft, smooth, and easy, and yet persuasive and powerful, and flowing from him with a natural and unaffected grace and sweetness. His accuracy in philosophy did not vitiate the terseness and fluency of his style, nor the softness and elegancy of his expressions weaken the nervous force and conviction of his arguments. Philotheus, patriarch of Constantinople, tells us, it was observed as peculiar to him, that he so subtly penetrates, searches, adjusts, and treats of the most sublime and intricate speculations of theology, as at once both to inform the mind, and to move the passions; that he seems to speak nothing but life, and to breathe a soul into the dullest argument he discourses of. And Photius, one X * Orat. in Bas. Greg. et Chrys. bibl. patrum, Gr. Lat. vol. ii. p. 330. ed. 1624. of Philotheus's predecessors in that see, a man, if any other, able to pass sentence in these matters, says of him, that for the persuasive and panegyrical way of discoursing, no other pattern need be set; no, not that of Plato or Demosthenes themselves, though so much admired and magnified by the ancients. Erasmus prefers him before the most famed orators of Greece," in whom he finds something short of him. Pericles spake like thunder, but it was without art; Lysias evaporated into emptiness and subtlety; Phalareus was pleasant, but wanted gravity; Isocrates lost the native grace of speech by too-affected periods; and Demosthenes himself, besides other things, had this fault, that his compositions were too forced and elaborate. Whereas in this great man, neither art nor nature, neither study nor exercise, were wanting to render him most accomplished. Nay, he sticks not to give him the preeminence of all the great ecclesiastic worthies of his time: Athanasius was excellent at teaching, but defective in human learning; Nazianzen a great man, but too greedy of a smart period, and a florid style; Nyssen was content with a pious simplicity; Chrysostom, eloquent indeed, but diffusive and luxuriant, and over-apt to run out into needless digressions. But now in Basil, the nicest palate could not find that which might distaste. His way of expressing himself simple and natural; he spake with all the advantages of art, and yet made no ostentation of any thing elaborate and artificial; he shewed himself master of philosophy at every turn, and yet without any affectation, nor ever made use of foreign arts, but when they might be subservient to piety and religion. In expounding scripture he is wary and cautious, and yet plain and perspicuous; in his encomiastic way, he so admirably accommodated himself to popular auditories, that he spake nothing but what the people understood, and yet the learned admired. Whatever argument he manages, it is always attended with a chaste and pleasant eloquence, that falls naturally from him. His discourses lose much of their native grace and beauty, when derived into any other language. And therefore George Trapezuntius, though a learned man, and a Greek born, undertaking the translation of his works, was forced to give over, and confess the Roman tongue wanted something to reach the elegancy and ornaments of his language. The truth is, if in any one thing he excelled more than other, 2 Præf. in Edit. Gr. Bas. et inter Epp. 1. cclxxxviii. ep. 7. it was eloquence. It was this principally that endeared him to Libanius, the great professor and master of eloquence at that time, who magnifies him upon this account as the wonder of the age. And when once, in an assembly of great and honourable persons, a letter from Basil was delivered to him, he had no sooner read it, but in a kind of triumph he cried out, “We are overcome." The assembly wondered at the passage, and inquired the reason; "We are overcome," said he, "in the elegancy of epistles; it is Basil that is the conqueror, who is my friend, and for that reason I rejoice." The company not satisfied, commanded the letter to be read, and then unanimously gave sentence that it was so indeed; nor would Alypius, who had read the letter, part with it, till some time after he was hardly prevailed with to restore it. And indeed how much Libanius (notwithstanding the prejudices of his religion, and the common emulations of learned men) admired the eloquence of this great man, (for surely they were something more than compliments he bestowed upon him,) is abundantly evident from the epistles still extant that passed between them. b III. We have seen what were his natural and acquired perfections, let us next survey him in his moral and divine accomplishments. He was a man acted by the true genius and spirit of religion; he loved God sincerely, whose honour and the interests of religion he preferred infinitely before his own ease and safety. He frequently bewailed the unhappy dissensions of those times, and set himself to consult and promote the peace of the church; to the settlement whereof he thought all other things ought to give way. A passionate admirer, and a most resolute assertor of truth, and of that "faith that was once delivered to the saints." For though his enemies, to serve their own ends by blasting his reputation, did sometimes charge him with corrupting the Christian doctrine, and entertaining impious and unorthodox sentiments, and that too in some of the greater articles; yet the objection, when looked into, did quickly vanish, himself solemnly professing upon this occasion, that however in other respects he had enough to answer for, yet this was his glory and triumph, that he had never entertained false notions of God, but had constantly kept the faith pure and inviolate, as a Vid. Ep. Liban. inter Bas. Ep. cccxxxviii. с e Epist. cexxiii. s. 3. |