So in East and West a vigorous defence was maintained against the Macedonian assault.  The Catholic position is exactly defined in the Synodical Letter sent by Damasus to Paulinus of Tyre in 378. Theod. v. 11 in this edition, p. 139; Mansi iii. 486.  Basil died at the crisis of the campaign, and with no bright Pisgah view of the ultimate passage into peace.  The generalship was to pass into other hands.  There is something of the irony of fate, or of the mystery of Providence, in the fact that the voice condemned by Basil to struggle against the mean din and rattle of Sasima should be the vehicle for impressing on the empire the truths which Basil held dear.  Gregory of Sasima was no archiepiscopal success at Constantinople.  He was not an administrator or a man of the world.  But he was a great divine and orator, and the imperial basilica of the Athanasia rang with outspoken declarations of the same doctrines, which Basil had more cautiously suggested to inevitable inference.  The triumph was assured, Gregory was enthroned in St. Sophia, and under Theodosius the Catholic Faith was safe from molestation.