Gregory was bishop, honourably illustrating as late as the fourth century the right of bishops to live in the married state. He appears to have first met Basil at Cæsarea, where he had been sent to school. The schoolboy attachment ripened into a life-long friendship. Afterwards studying at Cæsarea in Palestine, and then at Alexandria, he came on at length to the great university of Athens, where he found Basil already winning a brilliant reputation for scholarship. In his funeral oration over his friend he gives a vivid account of university life at the classic centre of culture during the fourth century. Theatres, wine parties, frivolous discussions dissipated the time and energies of fashionable students. But the two Cappadocians had come to work, and sternly avoiding all these distractions, they gave themselves to severe study. Gregory stayed on longer than his friend, apparently for twelve years altogether, from the age of eighteen till he was past thirty. At last, fascinated by the attractions of the devotional life, he joined Basil for a short time in his Pontic retreat.
In the year 360 Gregory returned home, probably to assist his father. Much against his will, but at the urgent wish of the people of Nazianzus, his father ordained him presbyter. It was "good form" to appear reluctant to take office in the Church; but evidently Gregory's shrinking from the responsibility was genuine; he even described his ordination as an act of tyranny, and immediately after fled to his old retreat with Basil. His Defence of his Flight to Pontus—his first sermon after his return—sets forth the loftiest ideal of the Christian ministry with a richness of thought and a passionate earnestness of feeling that make this book live to-day as truly as Baxter's Reformed Pastor—a work on similar lines. But he could not long resist the call of duty. Subsequently Basil forced him to the episcopate of a little posting-station named Sasima, a noisy, dusty village of one narrow street with no grass or trees in its neighbourhood. The masterful Basil did this for the benefit of his friend's soul, as a discipline in submission and humility—an action the merit of which was not highly appreciated by its victim.
