APPENDIX TO THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE WORKS OF ST. BASIL THE GREAT, CONTAINING CERTAIN WORKS FALSELY ASCRIBED TO HIM, TO WHICH THE WORK OF EUNOMIUS IS ADDED.
NOTICE.
323 These three homilies, which had already been published long ago—namely, the first two in the Basle edition, and the third in the Parisian edition—the most learned Combefis has taken care to have published again in his revised edition of Basil, from which we have borrowed both the Greek and the Latin. He himself explains in the first volume, page 558, why he undertook this course of action. "In order," he says, "that I might provide these homilies in their entirety, one or two Royal codices, already ascribed to [Basil], prompted me, as well as the need to confirm these labors as an appendix to Basil upon their authority; and especially because the first two were published very poorly, with many things missing, and in a composition entirely different from what the manuscript codices contain—most especially the one marked with the insignias of Henry II, no. 1472 (now 503), from which I also produce an illustrious excerpt of Gregory of Nyssen for the defense of Basil." The antiquary of that manuscript holds an opinion such that he neither claims it for Basil nor rejects it, but leaves the matter in doubt, with the opinions of various people in conflict. It is truly strange that, with the connection of these treatises to Basil thus explained, the doubt concerning them should have taken such deep root with regard to his ninth homily on the [i]Hexaëmeron[/i]—namely, that the ancients remembered only nine of them; whereas one might easily remember them in such a way because they were spoken as if on an effort, received with great applause, and immediately published, while Basil rested due to sickly health, and in his leisure, as he was able, supplied such things. Nor does Bellarmine think otherwise. Budé also frequently interprets passages from this source under Basil's name. That Gregory of Nyssen supplied the labor of his brother Basil on the [i]Hexaëmeron[/i] in [the work on] Man, he performed excellently, in a work almost rivaling that one, in which he expended the greatest amount of labor, and more so in that most illustrious book [i]On the Making of Man[i], which he wrote at the urging of his brother Peter on that very subject, and expressed the entire physiology of man with admirable art and effort; and here he happily fulfilled the very vows of that same Basil. I note a few things; what I have performed will teach more, which I present having been collated with the published editions, as may please [the reader]. So much for that man whom I have mentioned, who deserved so well of Basil the Great. When I first read these three homilies in the published editions, I indeed judged them not to be Basil's; but after I found them more complete in the revised Basil of Combefis, I was confirmed in this opinion of mine to a far greater degree. And indeed, those things which have been added, and those which Combefis thought were missing in the published editions, show the falsity of these orations more and more. Nor do I think that anyone who has compared both of them to each other will think otherwise. Read the Preface, where each matter is discussed in its proper place and order. That is, those things which are placed in the first position in the Appendix, are discussed in the first position in the Preface; likewise, those things which occur in the second position in the Appendix are examined in the second position in the Preface; which order will be kept to the very end.
OF OUR HOLY FATHER BASIL, ARCHBISHOP OF CAESAREA IN CAPPADOCIA. ORATION I. ON THE STRUCTURE OF MAN.
1. I arrive to pay a long-standing debt; the payment of which I delayed, not through any defect of ill-will, but through bodily infirmity: for what is most necessary, a debt must be held to be, and owed to your hearing. For it would be 324 a shame—the things concerning animals and swimmers and cattle and winged creatures, and the heaven and the...