PREFACE. That none of the Treatises of S. Gregory of Nyssa have hitherto been translated into English, or even (with one exception long ago) into French, maybe partlydue to the imperfections, both in number and quality, of the MSS., and by consequence of the Editions, of the great majority of them. The state of the MSS., again, may be owing to the suspicion diligently fostered by the zealous friends of the reputation of this Father, in ages when MSS. could and should have been multiplied and preserved, that there were large importations into his writings from the hands of the Origenists—a statement which a very short study of Gregory, whose thought is always taking the direction of Origen, would disprove. Th^s suspicion, while it resulted in throwing doubts upon the genuineness of the entire text, has so far deprived the current literature of the Church of a great treasure. For there are two qualities in this Gregory's writings not to be found in the same degree in any other Greek teacher, namely, a far-reaching use of philosophical speculation (quite apart from allegory) in bringing out the full meaning of Church doctrines, and Bible truths ; and excellence of style. With regard to this last, he himself bitterly deplored the days which he had wasted over the study of style ; but we at all events need not share that regret, if only for this reason, that his writings thereby show that patristic Greek could rise to the level of the best of, its time. It is not necessarily the thing which it is, too easily, even in other instances, assumed to be. Granted the prolonged decadence of the language, yet perfects are not aorists, nor aorists perfects, the middle is a middle, there are classical constructions of the participle, the particles of transition and prepositions in composition have their full force in Athanasius ; much more in Basil ; much more in Gregory. It obscures facts to say that there was good Greek only in the age of Thucydides. There was good and bad Greek of its kind, in every epoch, as long as Greek was living. So far for mere syntax. As for adequacy of language, the far wider range of his subject-matter puts Gregory of Nyssa to a severer test ; but he does not fail under it. What could be more dignified than his letter to Flavian, or more choice than his description of the spring, or more richly illustrated than his praises of Contemplation, or more pathetic than his pleading for the poor? It would have been strange indeed if the Greek language had not possessed a Jerome of its own, to make it speak the new monastic devotion. But the labours of J. A. Krabinger, F. Oehler, and G. H. Forbes upon the text, though all abruptly ended, have helped to repair the neglect of the past. They in this century, as the scholars of Paris, Ghent, and Basle, though each working with fewer or more imperfect MSS., in the sixteenth and seventeenth, have been better friends to Gregory than those who wTote books in the sixth to defend his orthodoxy, but to depreciate his writings. In this century, too. Cardinal Mai has rescued still more from oblivion in the Vatican—a slight compensation for all the materials collected for a Benedictine edition of Gregory, but dispersed in the French Revolution. The longest Treatise here translated is that Against Eunomius in 13 Books. The repro- duction of so much ineffectual fencing in logic over a question which no longer can trouble the Church might be taken exception to. But should men like Gregory and Basil, pleading for the spirit and for faith and for mystery against the conclusions of a hard logician, be an indifferent spectacle to us ? The interest, too, in the contest deepens when we know that their opponent not only proclaimed himself, but was accepted, as a martyr to the Anomoean cause ; and that he had large congregations to the very end. The moral force of Arianism was stronger than ever as its end drew near in the East, because the Homoeans were broken up and there was no more complicity with the court and politics. It was represented by a man who had suffered and had made no compromises ; and so the life-long work, previous to his, of Valens the bishop at last bore fruit in conversions ; and the Anomoean teaching came to a head in the easily