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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

47. Rule 47: Should We Keep Silence When Men Sin? (R. 122)

That we should not is clear from the commands of the Lord in the Old Testament: Thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbour, and not bear sin because of him”’¹; and in the Gospel: “If thy brother sin against thee, go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the Church: and if he refuse to hear the Church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican.”²? But how great is the condemnation of this sin we may learn first from the Lord’s general declaration: ‘He that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God shall abide on him”’³; and secondly from stories told in both Old and New Testaments. Look at Achan: when he stole the golden wedge and the mantle, the wrath of God comes upon all the people—although they were ignorant both of sinner and sin— until the aforesaid was revealed and suffered that terrible destruction with all that was his. Eli again, though he did not pass over in silence the sins of his sons, who were pestilent fellows, but often warned them and said: “Nay, my sons, it is no good report I hear of you,”⁴ and with longer discourses established both the wickedness of sin and the inevitable nature of judgment, yet, because he did not take vengeance nor show against them befitting zeal, stirred up such wrath of God that both the people were destroyed with his sons and the ark itself was taken by foreigners, and he himself died with a pitiable end. But if so great wrath blazed out against those who knew nothing of the sinner and tried to prevent him and testified against the sin, what shall we say of those who know and remain silent? Grave is the danger of such if they show not the temper described by the apostle writing to the Corinthians: Why did ye not rather mourn that he that had done this deed might be taken away from among you?”’⁵ as well as by his subsequent words: For behold this selfsame thing, that ye were made sorry after a godly sort, what earnest care it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging! In everything ye proved yourselves to be pure in the matter.”⁶ “They are in danger, I say, of all together suffering the same destruction, or even worse, as he that sets at nought the Lord, and commits the same sin as one who has already sinned and been condemned, is worse than he who set at nought the law of Moses. For Cain was avenged sevenfold, but Lamech (who sinned in like manner) seventy and sevenfold.”⁷

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