---
title: "Letters and Select Works"
author: "Basil of Caesarea"
translator: "Blomfield Jackson"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Church Fathers"
section: 91 of 102
url: https://scriptura.si/works/basil-of-caesarea-letters-and-select-works/91/
cite: "Basil of Caesarea, tr. Blomfield Jackson, Letters and Select Works, section 91. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/basil-of-caesarea-letters-and-select-works/91/"
---

# Letters and Select Works

*Basil of Caesarea, tr. Blomfield Jackson*

Basil on the Holy Spirit, the six days of creation, and his letters.

## 91. To Modestus the Prefect

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/basil-of-caesarea-letters-and-select-works/91/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/basil-of-caesarea-letters-and-select-works/91/#p-N

### Letter CCLXXXI

[¶1] I am mindful of the great honour I received in the encouragement you gave me, along with others, to address your excellency. I avail myself of the privilege and the enjoyment of your gracious favour.

[¶2] I congratulate myself upon having such a correspondent, as also upon the opportunity afforded your excellency of conferring an honour on me by your reply.

[¶3] I claim your clemency on behalf of Helladius my special friend. I pray that he may be relieved from the anxieties of Tax-assessor, and so be enabled to work in the interests of our country.

[¶4] You have already so far given a gracious consent, that I now repeat my request, and pray you to send instructions to the governor of the Province, that Helladius may be released from this infliction.

### To a bishop

### Letter CCLXXXII

[¶7] You blame me for not inviting you; and, when invited, you do not attend. That your former excuse was an empty one is clear from your conduct on the second occasion. For had you been invited before, in all probability you would never have come.

[¶8] Act not again unadvisedly, but obey this present invitation; since you know that its repetition strengthens an indictment, and that a second lends credibility to a previous accusation.

[¶9] I exhort you always to bear with me; or even if you cannot, at any rate it is your duty not to neglect the Martyrs, to join in whose commemoration you are invited. Render therefore your service to us both; or if you will not consent to this, at any rate to the more worthy.

### To a widow

### Letter CCLXXXIII

[¶12] I hope to find a suitable day for the conference, after those which I intend to fix for the hill-country. I see no opportunity for our meeting (unless the Lord so order it beyond my expectation), other than at a public conference.

[¶13] You may imagine my position from your own experience. If in the care of a single household you are beset with such a crowd of anxieties, how many distractions, think you, each day brings to me?

[¶14] Your dream, I think, reveals more perfectly the necessity of making provision for spiritual contemplation, and cultivating that mental vision by which God is wont to be seen. Enjoying as you do the consolation of the Holy Scriptures, you stand in need neither of my assistance nor of that of anybody else to help you to comprehend your duty. You have the all-sufficient counsel and guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead you to what is right.

### To the assessor in the case of monks

### Letter CCLXXXIV

[¶17] Concerning the monks, your excellency has, I believe, already rules in force, so that I need ask for no special favour on their behalf.

[¶18] It is enough that they share with others the enjoyment of your general beneficence; still I feel it incumbent upon me too to interest myself in their case. I therefore submit it to your more perfect judgment, that men who have long since taken leave of this life, who have mortified their own bodies, so that they have neither money to spend nor bodily service to render in the interests of the common weal, should be exempted from taxation. For if their lives are consistent with their profession, they possess neither money nor bodies; for the former is spent in communicating to the needy; while their bodies are worn away in prayer and fasting.

[¶19] Men living such lives you will, I know, regard with special reverence; nay you will wish to secure their intervention, since by their life in the Gospel they are able to prevail with God.

### Without Address

### Letter CCLXXXV

[¶22] The hearer of this letter is one on whom rests the care of our Church and the management of its property—our beloved son.

[¶23] Deign to grant him freedom of speech on those points that are referred to your holiness, and attention to the expression of his own views; so shall our Church at length recover herself, and henceforth be released from this many-headed Hydra.

[¶24] Our property is our poverty; so much so that we are ever in search of one to relieve us of it; for the expenses of the Church property amount to more than any profit that she derives from it.