Letter 162

162. To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata

This, it seems, both makes me hesitant to write, and again shows the writing to be necessary. For whenever I look to the debt of my own coming to you, and reckon the benefit of meeting, I am very much inclined to think little of letters, as not able to fulfil even the account of a shadow set beside the truth. But when, again, I reflect that the only consolation, for one who has missed the greatest and first things, is to address so great a man, and to entreat him, as my custom is, not to forget me in his prayers, then I come to judge the matter of letters no small thing. The hope of my coming, then, I do not myself wish to cast out of my soul, nor would I have your Godliness despair of it. For I should be ashamed not to show myself, through your prayers, so confident as even to become young again out of an old man, if there were need of it — not to say merely a little stronger, out of one who is weak and altogether failing, such as I now am.

The causes of my not being present already are not easy to set out in words — not only because I am shut out by my present weakness, but because I never had such power of speech as to declare plainly a sickness so manifold and various. Only that from the day of Pascha until now fevers and fluxes, and risings of the bowels, like waves washing over me, do not allow me to keep my head above water. What my condition was, and of what kind, the brother Barachus too could tell, even if not worthily of the truth, yet enough to bear witness to the cause of the postponement. And I am fully persuaded that, if you would truly pray together with me, all my difficulties would readily be loosed.