Who has woe? who has sorrow? who has contentions? who has babbling? who has wounds without cause? who has redness of eyes?
Read Chapter 23
Basil the Great
AD 379
“Who has woe? Who has sorrow?” For whom is there distress and darkness? For whom eternal doom? Is it not for the transgressors? For those who deny the faith? And what is the proof of their denial? Is it not that they have denied their own confession? And when and what did they confess? Belief in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Ghost, when they renounced the devil and his angels and uttered those saving words. What fit title, then, has been discovered for them, for [these former] children of light to use? Are they not addressed as transgressors, as having violated the covenant of their salvation? On the Spirit
People who want to be like this try miserably to excuse themselves. They say, My friend will be unpleasant if I do not give him as much as he wants to drink when I invite him to a banquet. [But I say to you,] Do not have a friend who is willing to make you displeasing to God, for he is both his own enemy and yours. If you make yourself and someone else intoxicated, you will have a man as your friend but God as an enemy.
Understand this, brethren, that every drunkard who has made drinking a habit will have leprosy within, in his soul, because the soul of the drunkard is known to be such as the flesh of the leper is seen to be. Therefore one who wishes to free himself of the sin of drunkenness, where not only his soul is killed but even his body is weakened, should drink merely as much as suffices. If he is unwilling to observe this rule, he will be hateful to God and an object of reproach to people.
By the mention of redness of eyes—a sign of death—it is made clear that the winebibber is already dead to the Word and to reason. It declares his death to the Lord. If one forgets the motives that prompt him to seek the true life, he is dragged down to corruption. With good reason, then, the Educator, in his concern for our salvation, sternly forbids us, “Do not drink wine to drunkenness.” –.
Since you are the presbyters and deacons of Christ, you ought always to be sober, both among yourselves and among others, so that you may be able to warn the unruly. Now the Scripture says, “The men in power are passionate. But let them not drink wine, lest by drinking they forget wisdom and are not able to judge aright.” Wherefore, [the bishops] and the presbyters and the deacons are those of authority in the church next to God Almighty and his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. We say this, not that they are not to drink at all, otherwise it would be to the reproach of what God has made for cheerfulness, but that they not be disordered with wine. For the Scripture does not say, “Do not drink wine”; but what says it? “Drink not wine to drunkenness.” .
