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AT this time the recent feeder of the flock at Nazianzus was living
at Constantinople, continually withstanding the blasphemies of the
Arians, watering the holy people with the teaching of the Gospel,
catching wanderers outside the flock and removing them from poisonous
pasture. So that flock once small he made a great one. When the
divine Meletius saw him, knowing as he did full well the object which
the makers of the canon had before them when, with the view of
preventing the possibility of ambitious efforts, they forbade the
translation of bishops, he confirmed Gregory in the episcopate of
Constantinople. Shortly afterwards the divine Meletius passed away
to the life that knows no pain, crowned by the praises of the funeral
eloquence of all the great orators.
Timotheus, bishop of Alexandria, who had followed Peter, the
successor of Athanasius in the patriarchate, ordained in place of the
admirable Gregorius, Maximus, a cynic who bad but recently suffered
his cynic's hair to be shorn, and had been carried away by the flimsy
rhetoric of Apollinarius. But this absurdity was beyond the endurance
of the assembled bishops, admirable men, and full of divine zeal and
wisdom, such as Helladius, successor of the great Basil, Gregorius
and Peter, brothers of Basil, and Amphilochius from Lycaonia,
Optimus from Pisidia, Diodorus from Cilicia.
The council was also attended by Pelagius of Laodicaea, Eulogius of
Edessa, Acacius, our own Isidorus, Cyril of Jerusalem,
Gelasius of Caesarea in Palestine, who was renowned alike for lore
and life and many other athletes of virtue.
All these then whom I have named separated themselves from the
Egyptians and celebrated divine service with the great Gregory. But
he himself implored them, assembled as they were to promote harmony,
to subordinate all question of wrong to an individual to the promotion
of agreement with one another. "For," said he, "I shall be
released from many cares and once more lead the quiet life. I bold so
dear; while you, after your long and painful warfare, will obtain the
longed for peace. What can be more absurd than for men who have just
escaped the weapons of their enemies to waste their own strength in
wounding one another; by so doing we shall be a laughing stock to our
opponents. Find then some worthy man of sense, able to sustain heavy
responsibilities and discharge them well, and make him bishop." The
excellent pastors moved by these counsels appointed as bishop of that
mighty city a man of noble birth and distinguished for every kind of
virtue as well as for the splendour of his ancestry, by name
Nectarius. Maximus, as having participated in the insanity of
Apollinarius, they stripped of his episcopal rank and rejected. They
next enacted canons concerning the good government of the church, and
published a confirmation of the faith set forth at Nicaea. Then they
returned each to his own country. Next summer the greater number of
them assembled again in the same city, summoned once more by the needs
of the church. and received a synodical letter from the bishops of the
west inviting them to come to Rome, where a great synod was being
assembled. They begged however to be excused from travelling thus far
abroad; their doing so, they said, would be useless. They wrote
however both to point out the storm which had risen against the
churches, and to hint at the carelessness with which the western
bishops had treated it. They also included in their letter a summary
of the apostolic doctrine, but the boldness and wisdom of their
expressions will be more clearly shown by the letter itself.
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