The friends had been educated for rhetoricians,
and their oratorical powers were such, that they[{5}]
seemed to have every prize in prospect which a
secular ambition could desire. Their names were
known far and wide, their attainments
acknowledged by enemies, and they themselves personally
popular in their circle of acquaintance. It was[{10}]
under these circumstances that they took the
extraordinary resolution of quitting the world
together,—extraordinary the world calls it,
utterly perplexed to find that any conceivable
objects can, by any sane person, be accounted[{15}]
better than its own gifts and favors. They
resolved to seek baptism of the Church, and to
consecrate their gifts to the service of the Giver.
With characters of mind very different—the
one grave, the other lively; the one desponding,[{20}]
the other sanguine; the one with deep feelings,
the other with feelings acute and warm;—they
agreed together in holding, that the things that
are seen are not to be compared to the things that
are not seen. They quitted the world, while it[{25}]
entreated them to stay.
What passed when they were about to leave
Athens represents as in a figure the parting which
they and the world took of each other. When
the day of valediction arrived, their companions[{30}]
and equals, nay, some of their tutors, came about
them, and resisted their departure by entreaties,
arguments, and even by violence. This occasion
showed, also, their respective dispositions; for
the firm Basil persevered, and went; the
tender-hearted Gregory was softened, and stayed awhile[{5}]
longer. Basil, indeed, in spite of the reputation
which attended him, had, from the first, felt
disappointment with the celebrated abode of
philosophy and literature; and seems to have given up
the world from a simple conviction of its emptiness.[{10}]
"He," says Gregory, "according to the way of human
nature, when, on suddenly falling in with what we hoped
to be greater, we find it less than its fame, experienced
some such feeling, began to be sad, grew impatient, and
could not congratulate himself on his place of residence.[{15}]
He sought an object which hope had drawn for him;
and he called Athens 'hollow blessedness.'"
Gregory himself, on the contrary, looked at
things more cheerfully; as the succeeding
sentences show.[{20}]
"Thus Basil; but I removed the greater part of his
sorrow, meeting it with reason, and smoothing it with
reflections, and saying (what was most true) that
character is not at once understood, nor except by long time
and perfect intimacy; nor are studies estimated, by[{25}]
those who are submitted to them, on a brief trial and
by slight evidence. Thus I reassured him, and by
continual trials of each other, I bound myself to him."
—Orat. 43.
III
Yet Gregory had inducements of his own to[{30}]
leave the world, not to insist on his love of Basil's
company. His mother had devoted him to God,
both before and after his birth; and when he was
a child he had a remarkable dream, which made
a great impression upon him.
"While I was asleep," he says in one of his poems,[{5}]
which runs thus in prose, "a dream came to me, which
drew me readily to the desire of chastity. Two virgin
forms, in white garments, seemed to shine close to me.
Both were fair and of one age, and their ornament lay
in their want of ornament, which is a woman's beauty.[{10}]
No gold adorned their neck, nor jacinth; nor had they
the delicate spinning of the silkworm. Their fair robe
was bound with a girdle, and it reached down to their
ankles. Their head and face were concealed by a veil,
and their eyes were fixed on the ground. The fair glow[{15}]
of modesty was on both of them, as far as could be seen
under their thick covering. Their lips were closed in
silence, as the rose in its dewy leaves. When I saw
them, I rejoiced much; for I said that they were far
more than mortals. And they in turn kept kissing me,[{20}]
while I drew light from their lips, fondling me as a dear
son. And when I asked who and whence the women
were, the one answered, 'Purity,' the other, 'Sobriety';
'We stand by Christ, the King, and delight in the beauty
of the celestial virgins. Come, then, child, unite thy[{25}]
mind to our mind, thy light to our light; so shall we carry
thee aloft in all brightness through the air, and place
thee by the radiance of the immortal Trinity.'"
—Carm. p. 930.
He goes on to say, that he never lost the[{30}]
impression this made upon him, as "a spark of
heavenly fire," or "a taste of divine milk and
honey."
As far, then, as these descriptions go, one might
say that Gregory's abandonment of the world
arose from an early passion, as it may be called,
for a purity higher than his own nature; and
Basil's, from a profound sense of the world's
nothingness and the world's defilements. Both[{5}]
seem to have viewed it as a sort of penitential
exercise, as well as a means towards perfection.