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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 81: Must We Blame Equally the Good and the Indifferent, When Both are Found…

If we look at the disposition of the sinner and the manner of his sin, we shall know also the manner of rebuke. For though the sin of the indifferent and the good may seem to be the same, yet there is a great difference between them. For the good man, being good and struggling and agonising to please God, stumbles and falls by misadventure and almost involuntarily. But the indifferent man, recking nought either of himself or of God, and making no difference between sin and virtue, as his very name implies, is suffering from fundamental and great ills—either contempt of God, or disbelief in God’s existence. For there are two causes of sin in the soul, as the Scripture testifies when if says in one place: ‘The lawless says, to sin within himself, there is no fear of God before his eyes ’¹; and in another place: “The fool said in his heart, There is no God: they become corrupt and abominable in practices.”² So that either he has despised God and therefore sins, or he denies the very existence of God, and therefore is corrupted in his practices, though he seems to profess. For they profess that they know God”’ it says ‘“but by their works they deny him.”³ Since this is so I reckon that the manner of rebuke must be different in such cases. For the good man needs local help, so to speak, and ought to receive rebuke concerning the actual matter in which he fell. But the indifferent man, having corrupted the whole fairness of his soul and suffering from more general ailments, either as a despiser, as I said, or an unbeliever, ought to be grieved over and admonished and rebuked until he can be persuaded, either that God is a righteous judge, and fear; or else that God really exists, and be terrified. But you must know this also that the faults of the good often turn out by divine permission beneficially: for God allows them sometimes to fall in order to cure previous elation; take, for instance, the words spoken by Peter and what happened in his case.

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