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| To Eustathius the Physician.
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Letter
CLI.2499
To Eustathius the Physician.2500
If my letters are of any
good, lose no time in writing to me and in rousing me to write.
We are unquestionably made more cheerful when we read the letters of
wise men who love the Lord. It is for you to say, who read it,
whether you find anything worth attention in what I write. Were
it not for the multitude of my engagements, I should not debar myself
from the pleasure of writing frequently. Pray do you, whose cares
are fewer, soothe me by your letters. Wells, it is said, are the
better for being used. The exhortations which you derive from
your profession are apparently beside the point, for it is not I who am
applying the knife; it is men whose day is done, who are falling upon
themselves.2501
| 2501 i.e.
Eustathius, the bishop, is rushing upon the knife. | The phrase of
the Stoics runs, “since things do not happen as we like, we like
what happens;” but I cannot make my mind fall in with what is
happening. That some men should do what they do not like because
they cannot help it, I have no objection. You doctors do not
cauterise a sick man, or make him suffer pain in some other way,
because you like it; but you often adopt this treatment in obedience to
the necessity of the case. Mariners do not willingly throw their
cargo overboard; but in order to escape shipwreck they put up with the
loss, preferring a life of penury to death. Be sure that I look
with sorrow and with many groans upon the separation of those who are
holding themselves aloof. But yet I endure it. To lovers of
the truth nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.2502
| 2502 The view
of the Ben. Ed. is that the bales thrown overboard represent the
loss of unity incurred by the Sebastenes by leaving the communion of
Eustathius for his own. cf. Letter
ccxxxvii. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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