1. Your desire for
information, my right well-beloved and most deeply respected brother
Amphilochius, I highly commend, and not less your industrious
energy. I have been exceedingly delighted at the care and
watchfulness shewn in the expression of your opinion that of all the
terms concerning God in every mode of speech, not one ought to be left
without exact investigation. You have turned to good account your
reading of the exhortation of the Lord, “Every one that asketh
receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth,” Luke xi. 10. and by your diligence in asking might, I
ween, stir even the most reluctant to give you a share of what they
possess. And this in you yet further moves my admiration, that
you do not, according to the manners of the most part of the men of
our time, propose your questions by way of mere test, but with the
honest desire to arrive at the actual truth. There is no lack
in these days of captious listeners and questioners; but to find a
character desirous of information, and seeking the truth as a remedy
for ignorance, is very difficult. Just as in the
hunter’s snare, or in the soldier’s ambush, the trick is
generally ingeniously concealed, so it is with the inquiries of the
majority of the questioners who advance arguments, not so much with
the view of getting any good out of them, as in order that, in the
event of their failing to elicit answers which chime in with their
own desires, they may seem to have fair ground for
controversy.