Letter 34

34. To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.

How could we keep silent in the present circumstances? Or, if we cannot endure to do so, how could we find any adequate word for what is happening, so that our voice should not be like a mere groan, but like a lament that sufficiently signifies the weight of the evil? Tarsus too is lost to us. And this is not the only dreadful thing, intolerable as it is; for there is something harder still than this — that so great a city, so favourably situated as to join together by itself the Isaurians and Cilicians, the Cappadocians and the Syrians, should become an incidental casualty of the madness of one or two men, while you delay and deliberate and look to one another. The best course, then — after the device of the physicians (and surely I have a great abundance of such examples, owing to the sickness that dwells with me), who, when the magnitude of the pain grows excessive, contrive for the patient an insensibility to his sufferings — is for our own souls, that they may not be held fast by unbearable pains, to pray together for an insensibility to these evils. Yet, wretchedly off as we are, we have one consolation: to look to your gentleness, and from the thought and remembrance of you to soothe the grieving part of our soul. For just as it brings the eyes some relief, when they have gazed intently upon bright things, to turn back to dark and verdant colours, so to our souls the memory of your gentleness and good measure is, as it were, a gentle touch that takes away the pain; and most of all when we reflect that you have done everything that lay in your power. By this you have sufficiently shown to us men also — if we judge matters fairly — that nothing has perished through any fault of yours, and you have won for yourself with God a great reward for your zeal in good things. And may the Lord grant you to us and to his own churches, for the benefit of life and the correction of our souls, and may he count us worthy once again of your profitable company.