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Shorter Rules
St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925
234. Rule 234: How Does One Proclaim the Death of the Lord?
As the Lord taught when He said: If any man cometh to me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.”1 The apostle declared the same when he said: ‘The world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.”2 This very thing we covenanted to do in our actual baptism. For as many,” he says, of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”3 To which he adds, interpreting the meaning of being baptized into the death of the Lord: “Our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer be in bondage to sin,”4 and being pure from all desire for living might become worthy of the testimony of the apostle who said: “For ye died and your life is hid with Christ in God,”5 so that we say boldly and with confidence: ‘The prince of this world cometh and he hath nothing in me.”6
Notes
- Mt. xvi. 24 conflated with Lk. xiv. 26**.
- Gal. vi. 14 add τῷ before κόσμῳ K.
- Rom. vi. 3.
- Rom. vi. 6.
- Col. iii. 3.
- Jn. xiv. 30.