“COPIED FROM A FRONTISPIECE TO THE EDITION BY FRONTO DUCÆUS, A.D. 1636, OF ST. CHRYSOSTOM’S WORKS (IN THE CATHEDRAL LIBRARY, CHICHESTER). THE ORIGINAL IS STATED TO HAVE BEEN ENGRAVED FROM AN EIKON OF GREAT ANTIQUITY, AT CONSTANTINOPLE, AND AGREES WITH THE NOTICES OF CHRYSOSTOM’S APPEARANCE BY GREEK WRITERS, WHO DESCRIBE HIM AS SHORT, WITH A LARGE HEAD, AMPLE, WRINKLED FOREHEAD, EYES DEEP-SET BUT PLEASING, HOLLOW CHEEKS, AND A SCANTY GREY BEARD.”

SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
HIS LIFE AND TIMES

A SKETCH OF THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE IN
THE FOURTH CENTURY.

By W. R W. STEPHENS, M.A.
PREBENDARY OF CHICHESTER AND RECTOR OF WOOLBEDING; AUTHOR OF “LIFE AND LETTERS OF
WALTER FARQUHAR HOOK, D.D.,” “CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM,” ETC.

With Portrait.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1880.
The right of translation is reserved.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The present edition of this Essay is substantially a reproduction of the first. It is possible, indeed, and I hope probable, that the fruits of nine years’ more experience and study would have manifested themselves in some marked improvements upon the former work had I rewritten or recast the whole of it. But after mature consideration it did not seem to me that the defects of my original attempt were sufficient to warrant such an expenditure of time and toil.

I have therefore contented myself with carefully revising the text and references, and making here and there a few slight alterations in the way either of addition or omission.

Woolbeding Rectory,
xxxxxxFeby. 20, 1880.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The considerations which induced me to undertake this monograph are mentioned in the introductory chapter. How far the design there indicated has been satisfactorily fulfilled, it is for others to decide. I am of course conscious of defects, for every workman’s ideal aim should be higher than what he can actually accomplish. The work has incurred a certain risk from having been once or twice suspended for a considerable period; but I have always returned to it with increased interest and pleasure, nor can I charge myself with having wittingly bestowed less pains on one part than another. I have endeavoured to make it a trustworthy narrative by drawing from the most original sources to which I could gain access; and where, as in those portions which touch on secular history, the lead of general historians, such as Gibbon or De Broglie has been followed, I have, as far as possible, consulted the authorities to which they refer. To modern authors from whom I have derived valuable assistance for special parts of the work, such as M. Amédée Thierry and Dr. Foerster, my obligations are acknowledged in their proper place.

Neander’s Life of St. Chrysostom has, of course, throughout been frequently consulted. It is marked by the customary merits and defects of that historian. It is full of research, information, thought, and refined religious sentiment; but he fails to bring out strongly the personality of his subject. We have abundance of Chrysostom’s sayings and opinions, but somehow too little of Chrysostom himself. The fact is that Neander seems always to be thinking more of those views and theories about the growth of Christian doctrine and the Church, which he wishes to impress upon men’s minds, than of the person about whom he is writing. Thus, the subject of his biography becomes too much a mere vehicle for conveying Neander’s own opinions, and the personality of the character fades away in proportion. Some passages in the life of his subject are related at inordinate length; others, because less illustrative of Neander’s views, are imperfectly sketched, if not omitted.

In extracts from the works of Chrysostom, the somewhat difficult question of the comparative advantages of translation and paraphrase has been decided, on the whole, in favour of the latter. The condensation of matter gained by a paraphrase is an important, indeed necessary, object, if many specimens are to be given from such a very voluminous author as Chrysostom. A careful endeavour, at the same time, has been made to render faithfully the general sense of the original; and wherever the peculiar beauty of the language or the importance of the subject seemed to demand it, a translation has been given.

From an early date in the sixteenth century down to the present time the works of Chrysostom have occupied the attention of learned editors. The first attempts, after the invention of printing, were mainly confined to Latin translations of different portions. Afterwards appeared—

(1.) In 1529 the Greek text of the Homilies on St. Paul, published at Vienna, “typis Stephani et fratrum,” with a preface by Maximus Donatus. This was followed by the Commentaries on the New Testament, published by Commelin, a printer at Heidelberg, four vols. folio, A.D. 1591-1602.

(2.) In 1612 appeared a magnificent edition of the whole works, in eight thick folio volumes, printed at Eton, and prepared by Sir Henry Savile. Savile, born in 1549, was equally distinguished for his knowledge of mathematics and Greek, in which he acted for a time as tutor to Queen Elizabeth. He became Warden of Merton in 1585, and Provost of Eton in 1596. Promotion in Church and State was offered to him by James I., but declined, though he accepted a knighthood in 1604. His only son died about that time, and he devoted his fortune henceforth entirely to the promotion of learning. The Savilian Professorships of Geometry and Astronomy in Oxford were founded by him, and a library furnished with mathematical books for the use of his Professors. He spared no labour or expense to make his edition of St. Chrysostom handsome and complete. He personally examined most of the great libraries in Europe for mss., and, through the kindness of English ambassadors and eminent men of learning abroad, his copyists were admitted to the libraries of Paris, Basle, Augsburg, Munich, Vienna, and other cities. He used the Commelinian edition as his printer’s copy, carefully compared with five mss., the various readings of which are marked (by a not very distinct plan) in the margin. The chief value of the work consists in the prefaces and notes, contributed some of them by Casaubon and other learned men, though by far the best are Savile’s own. The whole cost of bringing out this grand edition is said to have been £8000. Savile’s wife was so jealous of her husband’s attachment to the work that she threatened to burn it.

(3.) Meanwhile, Fronton le Duc, a French Jesuit, had been labouring independently, but in most amicable intercourse with Savile, not only to edit the works of Chrysostom complete, but accompanied by a Latin translation, which he supplied himself for those pieces of which he failed to find any good one already existing. His death arrested the work, which was taken up, after a time, by the two brothers, Frederick and Claude Morel, and completed by the latter in 1633. It was published in Paris in 1636, in twelve large folio volumes. The Commelinian was again used as the printer’s copy, with fewer alterations than in the edition of Savile.

(4.) We now come to the great Benedictine edition, prepared under the care of Bernard de Montfaucon, who deserted the profession of arms at the age of twenty to become, as a member of the brotherhood of St Maur, one of the most marvellously industrious workers in literature that the world has ever seen. In 1698, when the Benedictines had completed their editions of SS. Augustine and Athanasius, they began to prepare for an edition of Chrysostom, which they had intended to do for more than thirty years. Montfaucon was sent to Italy, where he spent three years in examining libraries; and, on his return, obtained leave from the presidents of the congregation to employ four or five of the brethren in collating mss. in the Royal Library at Paris, and in those of Colbert and Coislin. Their labours extended over thirteen years; more than 300 MSS., containing different portions of Chrysostom’s works, having been discovered in those libraries. Montfaucon, meanwhile, corresponded with learned men in all parts of Europe, in order to procure materials and further collations. His correspondents in England were Potter, Bishop of Oxford, Bentley, and Needham; and in Ireland, Godwin, Bishop of Kilmore. The result was that, after more than twenty years of incessant toil, Montfaucon produced an edition, in which several pieces saw the light for the first time, and others, imperfect in previous editions, were presented entire. The text after all is the least satisfactory part of the work. Mr. Field has discovered that the eight principal MSS. employed were not very carefully collated, and that, though Savile’s text is extremely praised, that of Morel, by a curious inconsistency, is most closely followed, which is little more than a reproduction of the original Commelinian. The main value of the edition consists in the prefaces, written by Montfaucon to every set of homilies and every treatise, in which the chronology, contents, and character of the composition are most fully and ably discussed. The chronological arrangement also of the pieces is a great improvement on the editions of Savile and Fronton le Duc, who had made no attempt of that kind. The last volume, the thirteenth, contains a life of St Chrysostom, a most copious index, and dissertations on the doctrine, discipline, and heresies prevalent in his age, illustrated by notices collected from his works. On the whole, the edition must be pronounced a marvellous monument of ability and industry, especially when it is considered that at the date of its completion, 1738, Montfaucon was eighty-three years of age, and had been engaged for upwards of fifty years in literary work of a most laborious description. He died in 1741.

(5.) The last edition, which leaves little or nothing to be desired, is that which I have used in preparing this volume—the Abbé Migne’s, in 13 vols., Paris, 1863. It is substantially a reproduction of the Benedictine, in a rather less cumbrous size, and embodies some of the best corrections, notes, and prefaces of modern commentators, especially those of Mr. Field to the Homilies of St. Matthew, and some by the learned editor himself.

A brief sketch of the principal forms in which Chrysostom’s works have appeared seemed an appropriate introduction to the history of the man himself. If the perusal of that history shall afford to readers half as much interest, pleasure, and instruction as I have myself derived from the composition of it, I shall feel amply rewarded for my labour; and I gladly take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to my father-in-law for originally suggesting a work of this kind, and to many friends, and especially my wife, for constant encouragement, without which a mixture of indolence and diffidence might have prevented the completion of my design.

Densworth Cottage, Chichester,
xxxxxxxxxAll Saints Day 1871.

CONTENTS.

LIFE AND TIMES
OF
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

I. There are many great names in history which have been familiar to us from almost our earliest years, but of the personal character, the actual life of those who bore them, we are comparatively ignorant. We know that they were men of genius; industrious, energetic workers, who, as statesmen, reformers, warriors, writers, speakers, exercised a vital influence for good or ill upon their fellow-men. They have achieved a reputation which will never die; but from various causes their personality does not stand out before us in clear and bold relief. We know something about some of the most important passages in their life, a few of their sayings, a little of their writings; but the men themselves we do not know.

Frequently the reason of this is, that though they occupy a place, perhaps an important place, in the great drama of history, yet they have not played one of the foremost parts; and general history cannot spare much time or space beyond what is necessary to describe the main progress of events, and the actions and characters of those who were most prominently concerned in them. Other men may have been greater in themselves; they may have been first-rate in their own sphere, but that sphere was too much secluded or circumscribed to admit of the extensive and conspicuous public influence of which alone history takes much cognisance. They are to history what those side or background figures in the pictures of great medieval painters are to the grand central subject of the piece: they do but help to fill up the canvas, yet the picture would not be complete without them. They are notable personages, well worthy of being separately depicted, though in the large historical representation they play a subordinate part.

To take out one of these side figures of history, and to make it the centre of a separate picture, grouping round it all the great events and characters among which it moved, is the work of a biographer. And by many it will be felt that nothing invests the general history of any period with such a living interest as viewing it through the light of some one human life. How was this individual soul affected by the movement of the great forces with which it was surrounded? How did it affect them, in its turn, wherever in its progress it came into contact with them? This one consideration will confer on many details of history an importance and freshness of which they seemed too trivial or too dull to be susceptible.

II. Among these side characters in history, characters of men in themselves belonging to the first rank, men whose names will be renowned and honoured to the end of time, but precluded, by disposition or circumstances, from taking the foremost place in the larger canvas of general history, must be reckoned many of the great ecclesiastics of the first four or five centuries of Christianity. Every one recognises as great such names as Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil, the two Gregories, and many more. Every one would admit that the Church owes them a debt, but it may be safely affirmed that here the acquaintance of many with these eminent men begins and ends. A few scraps from their writings quoted in commentaries, one or two remarkable acts or sayings which have been thought worthy to be handed down, a few passages in which their lives flit across the stage of general history, complete the knowledge of many more. Such men, indeed, as Athanasius and Ambrose are to some extent exceptions. The magnitude of the principles for which they contended, the energy and ability which they displayed in the contest, were too conspicuous to be passed over by the general historian, civil or ecclesiastical. The proverbial expression “Athanasius contra mundum” attests of itself the pre-eminent greatness of the man. But with other luminaries of the Church, whose powers were perhaps equally great, but not exercised on so public a field or on behalf of such apparently vital questions, history has not dealt, perhaps cannot consistently with its scope deal, in any degree commensurate with their merits. Nor does this remark apply entirely to civil history. Ecclesiastical history also is so much occupied with the consideration of subjects on a large scale and covering a large space of time,—the course of controversies, the growth of doctrines, the relations between Church and State, changes in discipline, in liturgies, in ritual,—that the history of those who lived among these events, and who by their ability made or moulded them, is comparatively lost sight of. The outward operations are seen, but the springs which set them going are concealed. How can general history, for instance, adequately set forth the character and the work of such men as Savonarola or Erasmus, both in their widely different ways men of such incomparable genius and incessant activity? It does not; it only supplies a glimpse, a sketch, which make us long for a fuller vision, a more finished picture.[1]

III. It is designed to attempt, in the following pages, such a supplementary chapter in ecclesiastical history. An endeavour will be made not merely to chronicle the life and estimate the character of the great preacher of Antioch and Constantinople, but to place him in the centre of all the great movements, civil as well as religious, of his time, and see what light he and they throw upon one another.

The age in which he lived was a troublous one. The spectacle of a tempestuous sea may in itself excite our interest and inspire us with awe, but place in the midst of it a vessel containing human life, and how deeply is our interest intensified!

What was the general character and position of the clergy in the fourth century? What was the attitude of the Church towards the sensuality, selfishness, luxury, of an effete and debased civilisation on the one hand, and the rude ferocity of young and strong barbarian races on the other? To what extent had Christianity leavened, or had it appreciably leavened at all, popular forms of thought and popular habits of life? What was the existing phase of monasticism? what the ordinary form of worship in the Catholic Church? what the established belief respecting the sacraments and the great verities of the Christian faith? In answer to such inquiries, and to many more, much useful information may be extracted from the works of so prolific a writer and preacher as Chrysostom. Being concerned also, as a preacher, with moral practice more than with abstract theology, his homilies reflect, like the writings of satirists, the manners of the age. The habits of private life, the fashionable amusements, the absurdities of dress, all the petty foibles, as well as the more serious vices of the society by which he was surrounded, are dragged out without remorse, and made the subjects of solemn admonition, or fierce invective, or withering sarcasm, or ironical jest.

IV. Nor does secular history, from which not a single chapter in ecclesiastical history can without injury be dissociated, want for copious illustration. Not only from the memorable story of the sedition at Antioch, and from the public events at Constantinople, in which Chrysostom played a conspicuous part, but from many an allusion or incidental expression scattered up and down his works, we may collect rays of light on the social and political condition of the Empire. We get glimpses in his pages of a large mass of the population hovering midway between Paganism and Christianity; we detect an oppressive system of taxation, a widely-spread venality in the administration of public business, a general insecurity of life arising from the almost total absence of what we understand by police regulations, a depressed agriculture, a great slave population, a vast turbulent army as dangerous to the peace of society as the enemies from whom it was supposed to defend it, the presence of barbarians in the country as servants, soldiers, or colonists, the constantly-impending danger from other hordes ever hovering on the frontier, and, like famished wolves, gazing with hungry eyes on the plentiful prey which lay beyond it. But in the midst of the national corruption we see great characters stand out; and it is remarkable that they belong, without exception, to the two elements which alone were strong and progressive in the midst of the general debility and decadence. All the men of commanding genius in this era were either Christian or barbarian. A young and growing faith, a vigorous and manly race: these were the two forces destined to work hand in hand for the destruction of an old and the establishment of a new order of things. The chief doctors of Christianity in the fourth century—Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose—are incomparably greater than their contemporary advocates of the old religion and philosophy, Symmachus or Libanius; even as the Gothic Alaric and Fravitta, and the Vandal Stilicho, were the only generals who did not disgrace the Roman arms.

V. Some remarks on the theology of Chrysostom will be found in the concluding chapter. The appellation of preacher,[2] by which he is most generally known, is a true indicator of the sphere in which his powers were greatest. It was in upholding a pure and lofty standard of Christian morality, and in denouncing unchristian wickedness, that his life was mainly spent, rather than, like Augustine’s, in constructing and teaching a logical system of doctrine. The rage of his enemies, to which he ultimately fell a victim, was not bred of the bitterness of theological controversy, but of the natural antagonism between the evil and the good. And it is partly on this account that neither the remoteness of time, nor difference of circumstances, which separate us from him, can dim the interest with which we read his story. He fought not so much for any abstract question of theology or point of ecclesiastical discipline, which may have lost its meaning and importance for us, but for those grand principles of truth and justice, Christian charity, and Christian holiness, which ought to be dear to men equally in all ages.

VI. But there is also in the struggle of Chrysostom with the secular power an ecclesiastical and historical interest, as well as a moral one. We see prefigured in his deposition the fate of the Eastern Church in the Eastern capital of the Empire. As the papacy grew securely by the retreat from the old Rome of any secular rival, so the patriarchate of the new Rome was constantly, increasingly depressed by the presence of such a rival. Of all the great churchmen who flourished in the fourth century, Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Chrysostom, the last three alone survived into the fifth century. But the glory of the Western Church was then only in its infancy; the glory of the Eastern culminated in Chrysostom. From his time the patriarchs of Constantinople fell more and more into the servile position of court functionaries. The working out of that grand idea, a visible organised Catholic Church, uniform in doctrine and discipline, an idea which grew more and more as the political disintegration of the Empire increased, was to be accomplished by the more commanding, law-giving spirit of the West. Intrepid in spirit, inflexible of purpose, though Chrysostom was, he could not subdue, he could only provoke to more violent opposition, the powers with which he was brought into collision. Ineffectual was his contest with ecclesiastical corruption and secular tyranny, as compared with a similar contest waged by his Western contemporary, Ambrose; ineffectual also were the efforts, after his time, of the Church which he represented to assert the full dignity of its position.

VII. Chrysostom, and the contemporary fathers of the Eastern Church, naturally seem very remote from us; but, in fact, they are nearer to us in their modes of thought than many who in point of time are less distant. They were brought up in the study of that Greek literature with which we are familiar. Philosophy had not stiffened into scholasticism. The ethics of Chrysostom are substantially the same with the ethics of Butler. So, again, Eastern fathers of the fourth century are far more nearly allied to us in theology than writers of a few centuries later. If we are to look to “the rock” whence our Anglican liturgy “was hewn,” and “to the hole of the pit” whence Anglican reformed theology “was digged,” we must turn our eyes, above all other directions, to the Eastern Church and the Eastern fathers. It was observed by Mr. Alexander Knox,[3] that the earlier days of the Greek Church seem resplendent with a glow of simple, fervent piety, such as in a Church, as a whole, has never since been seen; and that this character is strikingly in harmony with our own liturgy, so overflowing with sublime aspirations, so Catholic, not bearing the impress of any one system of theology, but containing what is best in all. We may detect in Chrysostom the germ of medieval corruptions, such as the invocation of saints, the adoration of relics, and a sensuous conception of the change effected in the holy elements in the Eucharist; but these are the raw material of error, not yet wrought into definite shape. The Bishop of Rome is recognised, as will be seen from Chrysostom’s correspondence with Innocent, as a great potentate, whose intercessions are to be solicited in time of trouble and difficulty, and to whose judgment much deference is to be paid, but by no means as a supreme ruler in Christendom.

Thus, the tone of Chrysostom’s language is far more akin to that of our own Church than of the medieval or present Church of Rome. In his habit of referring to Holy Scripture as the ultimate source and basis of all true doctrine, “so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man as an article of faith;” in his careful endeavour to ascertain the real meaning of Scripture, not seeking for fanciful or mystical interpretations, or supporting preconceived theories, but patiently labouring, with a mixture of candour, reverence, and common sense, to ascertain the exact literal sense of each passage;—in these points, no less than in his theology, he bears an affinity to the best minds of our own reformed Church, and fairly represents that faith of the Catholic Church before the disruption of East and West in which Bishop Ken desired to die; while his fervent piety, and his apostolic zeal as a preacher of righteousness, must command the admiration of all earnest Christians, to whatever country, age, or Church, they may belong.

CHAPTER II.

FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE OFFICE OF READER, A.D. 345 OR A.D. 347 TO A.D. 370.

It has been well remarked by Sir Henry Savile, in the preface to his noble edition of Chrysostom’s works, published in 1612, that, as with great rivers, so often with great men, the middle and the close of their career are dignified and distinguished, but the primary source and early progress of the stream are difficult to ascertain and trace. No one, he says, has been able to fix the exact date, the year, and the consulship of Chrysostom’s birth. This is true; but at the same time his birth, parentage, and education are not involved in such obscurity as surrounds the earliest years of some other great luminaries of the Eastern Church; his own friend, for instance, Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia, and yet more notably, the great Athanasius.

There is little doubt that his birth occurred not later than the year A.D. 347, and not earlier than the year A.D. 345; and there is no doubt that Antioch in Syria was the place of his birth, that his mother’s name was Anthusa, his father’s Secundus, and that both were well born. His mother was, if not actually baptized, very favourably inclined to Christianity,[4] and, indeed, a woman of no ordinary piety. The father had attained the rank of “magister militum” in the Imperial army of Syria, and therefore enjoyed the title of “illustris.” He died when his son John was an infant, leaving a young widow, about twenty years of age, in comfortable circumstances, but harassed by the difficulties and anxieties of her unprotected condition as mistress of a household in days when servants were slaves, and life in large cities altogether unguarded by such securities as are familiar to us. Greatly did she dread the responsibility of bringing up a son in one of the most turbulent and dissolute capitals of the Empire. Nothing, she afterwards[5] declared to him, could have enabled her to pass through such a furnace of trial but a consoling sense of divine support, and the delight of contemplating the image of her husband as reproduced in his son. How long a sister older than himself may have lived we do not know; but the conversation between him and his mother, when he was meditating a retreat into a monastery, seems to imply that he was the only surviving child. All her love, all her care, all her means and energies, were concentrated on the boy destined to become so great a man, and exhibiting even in childhood no common ability and aptitude for learning. But her chief anxiety was to train him in pious habits, and to preserve him uncontaminated from the pollutions of the vicious city in which they resided. She was to him what Monica was to Augustine, and Nonna to Gregory Nazianzen.

The great influence, indeed, of women upon the Christianity of domestic life in that age is not a little remarkable. The Christians were not such a pure and single-minded community as they had been. The refining fires of persecution which burnt up the chaff of hypocrisy or indifference were now extinguished; Christianity had a recognised position; her bishops were in kings’ courts. The natural consequences inevitably followed this attainment of security; there were more Christians, but not more who were zealous; there were many who hung very loosely to the Church—many who fluctuated between the Church and Paganism. In the great Eastern cities of the Empire, especially Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, the mass of the so-called Christian population was largely infected by the dominant vices—inordinate luxury, sensuality, selfish avarice, and display. Christianity was in part paganised long before it had made any appreciable progress towards the destruction of Paganism. But the sincere and ardent piety of many amongst the women kept alive in many a home the flame of Christian faith which would otherwise have been smothered. The Emperor Julian imagined that his efforts to resuscitate Paganism would have been successful in Antioch but for the strenuous opposition of the Christian women. He complains “that they were permitted by their husbands to take anything out of the house to bestow it upon the Galilæans, or to give away to the poor, while they would not expend the smallest trifle upon the worship of the gods.”[6] The efforts also of the Governor Alexander, who was left in Antioch by the Emperor to carry forward his designs of Pagan reformation, were principally baffled through this female influence. He found that the men would often consent to attend the temples and sacrifices, but afterwards generally repented and retracted their adherence. This relapse Libanius the sophist, in a letter[7] to the Governor, ascribes to the home influence of the women. “When the men are out of doors,” he says, “they obey you who give them the best advice, and they approach the altars; but when they get home, their minds undergo a change; they are wrought upon by the tears and entreaties of their wives, and they again withdraw from the altars of the gods.”

Anthusa did not marry again; very possibly she was deterred from contracting a second marriage by religious scruples which Chrysostom himself would certainly have approved.[8] The Pagans themselves admired those women who dedicated themselves to a single life, or abstained from marrying again. Chrysostom himself informs us that when he began to attend the lectures of Libanius, his master inquired who and what his parents were; and on being told that he was the son of a widow who at the age of forty had lost her husband twenty years, he exclaimed in a tone of mingled jealousy and admiration: “Heavens! what women these Christians have!”[9]

What instruction he received in early boyhood, beside his mother’s careful moral and religious training; whether he was sent, a common custom among Christian parents in that age,[10] to be taught by the monks in one of the neighbouring monasteries, where he may have imbibed an early taste for monastic retirement, we know not. He was designed, however, not for the clerical but for the legal profession, and at the age of twenty he began to attend the lectures of one of the first sophists of the day, capable of giving him that secular training and learning which would best enable him to cope with men of the world. Libanius had achieved a reputation as a teacher of general literature, rhetoric, and philosophy, and as an able and eloquent defender of Paganism, not only in his native city Antioch, but in the Empire at large. He was the friend and correspondent of Julian, and on amicable terms with the Emperors Valens and Theodosius. He had now returned to Antioch after lengthened residence in Athens (where the chair of rhetoric had been offered to him, but declined), in Nicomedia, and in Constantinople.[11] In attending daily lectures at his school, the young Chrysostom became conversant with the best classical Greek authors, both poets and philosophers. Of their teaching he in later life retained little admiration,[12] and to the perusal of their writings he probably seldom or never recurred for profit or recreation, but his retentive memory enabled him to the last to point and adorn his arguments with quotations from Homer, Plato, and the Tragedians. In the school of Libanius also he began to practise those nascent powers of eloquence which were destined to win for him so mighty a fame, as well as the appellation of Chrysostomos, or the Golden Mouth, by which, rather than by his proper name of John, he will be known to the end of time.[13] Libanius, in a letter to Chrysostom, praises highly a speech composed by him in honour of the Emperors, and says they were happy in having so excellent a panegyrist.[14] The Pagan sophist helped to forge the weapons which were afterwards to be skilfully employed against the cause to which he was devoted. When he was on his deathbed, he was asked by his friends who was in his opinion capable of succeeding him. “It would have been John,” he replied, “had not the Christians stolen him from us.”[15] But it did not immediately appear that the learned advocate of Paganism was nourishing a traitor; for Chrysostom had not yet been baptized, and began to seek an opening for his powers in secular fields of activity.[16] He commenced practice as a lawyer; some of his speeches gained great admiration, and were highly commended by his old master Libanius. A brilliant career of worldly ambition was open to him. The profession of the law was at that time the great avenue to civil distinction. The amount of litigation was enormous. One hundred and fifty advocates were required for the court of the Prætorian Prefect of the East alone. The display of talent in the law-courts frequently obtained for a man the government of a province, whence the road was open to those higher dignities of vice-prefect, prefect, patrician, consul, which were honoured by the title of “illustrious.”[17]

But the pure and upright disposition of the youthful advocate recoiled from the licentiousness which corrupted society; from the avarice, fraud, and artifice which marked the transactions of men of business; from the chicanery and rapacity that sullied the profession which he had entered.[18] He was accustomed to say later in life that “the Bible was the fountain for watering the soul.” If he had drunk of the classical fountains in the school of Libanius, he had imbibed draughts yet deeper of the spiritual well-spring in quiet study of Holy Scripture at home. And like many another in that degraded age, his whole soul revolted from the glaring contrast presented by the ordinary life of the world around him to that standard of holiness which was held up in the Gospels.

He had formed also an intimate friendship with a young man, his equal in station and age, by whose influence he was diverted more and more from secular life, and eventually induced altogether to abandon it. This was Basil, who will come before us in the celebrated work on the priesthood. He must not be confounded with the great Basil,[19] Bishop of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, who was some fifteen years older than Chrysostom, having been born in A.D. 329, nor with Basil, Bishop of Seleucia, who was present at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, and must therefore have been considerably younger. Perhaps he may be identified with a Basil, Bishop of Raphanea in Syria, not far from Antioch, who attended the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.

Chrysostom has described his friendship with Basil in affecting language:[20] “I had many genuine and true friends, men who understood and strictly observed the laws of friendship; but one there was out of the many who exceeded them all in attachment to me, and strove to leave them all behind in the race, even as much as they themselves surpassed ordinary acquaintances. He was one of those who accompanied me at all times; we engaged in the same studies, and were instructed by the same teachers; in our zeal and interest for the subjects on which we worked, we were one. As we went to our lectures or returned from them, we were accustomed to take counsel together on the line of life it would be best to adopt; and here, too, we appeared to be unanimous.”

Basil early determined this question for himself in favour of monasticism; he decided, as Chrysostom expresses it, to follow the “true philosophy.” This occasioned the first interruption to their intercourse. Chrysostom, soon after the age of twenty, had embarked on a secular career, and could not immediately make up his mind to tread in the footsteps of his friend. “The balance,” he says, “was no longer even;” the scale of Basil mounted, while that of Chrysostom was depressed by the weight of earthly interests and desires.[21] But the decisive act of Basil made a deep impression on his mind; separation from his friend only increased his attachment to him, and his aversion from life in the world. He began to withdraw more from ordinary occupations and pleasures, and to spend more of his time in the study of Holy Scripture. He formed acquaintance with Meletius, the deeply respected Catholic Bishop of Antioch, and after three years, the usual period of probation for catechumens, was baptized by him.

A natural question arises: Why was he not baptized before, since his mother was a Christian, and there is abundant evidence that infant baptism was and had been the ordinary practice of the Church?[22] In attempting a solution of the difficulty, it will be proper to mention first certain reasons for delaying baptism which were prevalent in that age, and which may partially have influenced the mind of Chrysostom’s mother or himself. It may sound paradoxical to say that an exaggerated estimation of the import and effect of baptism contributed in two ways to its delay. But such appears to have been the case. It was regarded by many as the most complete and final purgation of past sin, and the most solemn pledge of a new and purified life for the future. To sin, therefore, before baptism was comparatively harmless, if in the waters of baptism the guilty stains could be washed away; but sin after the reception of that holy sacrament was almost, if not altogether, unpardonable—at least fraught with the most tremendous peril. Hence some would delay baptism, as many now delay repentance, from a secret or conscious reluctance to take a decisive step, and renounce the pleasures of sin; and under the comfortable persuasion that some day, by submitting to baptism, they would free themselves from the responsibilities of their past life. Others, again, were deterred from binding themselves under so solemn a covenant by a distrust of their ability to fulfil their vows, and a timorous dread of the eternal consequences if they failed. Against these misconceptions of the true nature and proper use of the sacrament, the great Basil, the two Gregories, and Chrysostom himself contend[23] with a vehemence and indignation which proves them to have been common. Many parents thought they would allow the fitful and unstable season of youth to pass before they irrevocably bound their children under the most solemn engagements of their Christian calling. The children, when they grew up, inherited their scruples, and so the sacrament was indefinitely deferred.

It is not impossible that such feelings may have influenced Chrysostom’s mother and himself; but considering the natural and healthy character of his piety, which seems to have grown by a gentle and unintermitting progress from his childhood, they do not seem very probable in his case. A more cogent cause for the delay may perhaps be found in the distracted state of the Church in Antioch, which lasted, with increasing complications, from A.D. 330, or fifteen years prior to Chrysostom’s birth, up to the time of his baptism by Meletius, when a brighter day was beginning to dawn.

The vicissitudes of the Church in Antioch during that period form a curious, though far from pleasing, picture of the inextricable difficulties, the deplorable schisms, into which the Church at large was plunged by the Arian controversy. Two years after the Council of Nice, A.D. 327, the Arians, through the assistance of Constantia, the Emperor’s sister, won the favour of Constantine. He lost no time during this season of prosperity in procuring the deposition of Catholic bishops. Eminent among these was Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch. He was ejected by a synod held in his own city on false charges of Sabellianism and adultery.[24] An Arian Bishop, Euphronius, was appointed, but the Catholic congregation indignantly withdrew to hold their services in another quarter of the town, on the opposite side of the Orontes.[25] The see remained for some time entirely in the hands of the Arians. When the Council of Sardica met in A.D. 342, and the Arian faction seceded from it to hold a Council of their own in Philippopolis, Stephen, Bishop of Antioch, was their president. He was deposed in A.D. 349 by the Emperor Constantius, having been detected as an accomplice in an infamous plot against some envoys from the Western Church.[26] But “uno avulso non deficit alter;” he was succeeded by another Arian, the eunuch Leontius.[27] He tried to conciliate the Catholics by an artful and equivocating policy, of which his manner of chanting the doxology was an instance. The Arian form of it was “Glory be to the Father BY the Son in the Holy Ghost;” this the bishop was accustomed to slur in such an indistinct voice that the prepositions could not be clearly if at all heard, while he joined loudly in the second part of the hymn where all were agreed.[28] He died towards the close of A.D. 357, when the see was fraudulently seized by Eudoxius, Bishop of Germanicia. He favoured the extreme Arians so openly that the Semi-Arians appealed to the Emperor Constantius to summon a General Council. Their request was granted; but the Arians, fearing that the Catholics and Semi-Arians would coalesce to overwhelm them, artfully suggested that Rimini, the place proposed for the Council, was too distant for the Eastern prelates, and that the Assembly should be divided, part meeting at Rimini, and part at Nice.[29] Their suggestion was accepted, and the result is well known. Partly by arguments, partly by artifices and delays which wore out the strength and patience of the members, the Arians completely carried the day; the creed of Rimini was ordered by the Emperor to be everywhere signed, and in the words of Jerome, “the world groaned and found itself Arian.”[30] An Arian synod sat at Constantinople. Macedonius, the archbishop, being considered too moderate, was deposed, and Eudoxius, the usurper of Antioch, was elevated to the see in his stead;[31] and Meletius, Bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia, was translated to the vacant see of Antioch, A.D. 361. But in him the Arians had mistaken their man. He was one of those who attended more to the practical moral teaching than to the abstract theology of Christianity; and, being not perhaps very precise in his language on doctrinal points, he had been reckoned an Arian.[32] After his elevation to the see of Antioch, he confined himself in his discourses to those practical topics on which all could agree. But this was not allowed to last long. The Emperor Constantius paid a visit to Antioch soon after the appointment of Meletius, and he was instigated by the Arians to put the bishop to a crucial test. He was commanded to preach on Proverbs viii. 22: “The Lord possessed me” (Septuagint ἔκτισε, that was the fatal word) “in the beginning,” etc. The interpretation put on the word “formed” ἔκτισε would reveal the man. Two other bishops discoursed first upon the same text: George of Laodicea, Acacius of Cæsarea. The first construed the passage in a purely Arian sense: the Word was a κτίσμα, “a created being,” though the first in time and rank; the second preacher took a more moderate line. Then came the turn of Meletius; short-hand writers took down every word as it fell. Meletius was a mild and temperate man, but he had his convictions, and he was no coward. To the horror of the Arians (the secret joy, perhaps, of those who disliked him) he entirely dissented from the Arian interpretation. The people loudly applauded his sermon, and called aloud for some brief and compendious statement of his doctrine. Meletius replied by a symbolical action: he held up three fingers, and then closing two of them, he said: “Our minds conceive of three, but we speak as to one.”[33] This was conclusive; the objectionable prelate was banished to Melitene, his native place in Armenia, thirty days after he had entered Antioch. Euzoius, who had been an intimate friend and constant associate of Arius himself, was put into the see. The Church of Antioch now split into three parties: the old and rigid orthodox set, who, ever since the deposition of Eustathius in A.D. 327, had adhered to his doctrine, and were called after his name; the moderate Catholics, who regarded Meletius as their bishop; and the Arians under Euzoius. The synod which had deposed him published a thoroughly Arian creed, which declared the Son to have been created out of nothing, and to be unlike the Father both in substance and will.[34]

This first banishment of Meletius, which occurred in A.D. 361, did not last long. Julian, who became Emperor the same year, recalled all the prelates who had been exiled in the two preceding reigns; partly, perhaps, from a really liberal feeling, partly from a willingness to foment the internal dissensions of the Church by placing the rival bishops in close antagonism. Athanasius returned to Alexandria amidst great ovations.[35] One of the questions which occupied the attention of a synod convened by him was the schism of Antioch. Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, a staunch Italian friend of Athanasius, was despatched to Antioch in order to heal the division; but he had been unhappily anticipated by another Western prelate, Lucifer of Cagliari, in Sardinia, a brave defender of orthodoxy, for which with Eusebius he had suffered exile, but a most unskilful peacemaker. He only complicated the existing confusion by consecrating as bishop a priest of the old Eustathian party, named Paulinus, instead of strengthening the hands of Meletius.[36] The unhappy Church at Antioch, where the whole Christian community amounted to not more than 100,000 souls,[37] was thus torn to tatters. There were now three bishops: the Arian Euzoius, Meletius, generally acknowledged by the Eastern Church, and Paulinus by the Western. And, as if three rival heads were not sufficient, the Apollinarians soon afterwards added a fourth. But the mild, prudent, and charitable disposition of Meletius procured for him the affection and esteem of the largest and most respectable part of the population, as well as of the common people. Even when he was banished for the first time after he had been only a month in Antioch, the populace endeavoured to stone the prefect as he was conducting the bishop out of the city. He was saved by Meletius himself, who threw a part of his own mantle round him, to protect him from their fury. And after he returned from exile the popularity of Meletius increased. In paintings on the walls of houses and engravings on signet rings, his face was often represented, and parents gave his name to their children both to perpetuate his memory and to remind them of an example which was worthy of their imitation.[38] Once more in A.D. 367, and yet again in A.D. 370 or A.D. 371, when the Arians recovered the favour of the Court under the Emperor Valens, he was sent into exile, but he returned after the death of Valens in A.D. 378; and it was as Bishop of Antioch that he presided over the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, and died during its session.[39] His funeral oration, pronounced by Gregory Nyssen, is extant. The final reparation of that schism which he nobly and constantly endeavoured to heal was not effected for nearly twenty years, when Chrysostom, then Archbishop of Constantinople, accomplished that good service for his native city.

It is interesting to dwell at some length upon the history of the Church in Antioch at this period, because it represents the painful feuds in which the Church at large became entangled through the baneful influence of the Arian controversy, that first great blow to the unity of Christendom; when bishop was set up against bishop, and rival councils manufactured rival creeds, when violence, and intrigue, and diplomatic arts were employed too often by both sides to gain their ends. But the distracted state of the Church at Antioch also supplies a possible answer to the question why the baptism of Chrysostom was delayed so long. One of the reasons frequently alleged for deferring the reception of that sacrament was the desire of the candidate to receive it at the hands of some particular bishop.[40] Now who were the bishops of Antioch during the infancy and boyhood of Chrysostom? The Arians were in possession of the see at the time of his birth, and retained it till A.D. 361, when Meletius was appointed, but banished almost immediately. The pious sensible mother and the well-disposed youth would not unnaturally hold aloof from a Church over which presided such prelates as Stephen, Leontius, Eudoxius, Euzoius. Their minds may well have been so sorely perplexed and suspended between the claims of opposing factions as to delay the reception of baptism from the hands of any.

But the prudent, conciliatory policy, the mild and amiable disposition of Meletius, would engage the sympathy and respect of an affectionate, pious, and sensible youth, such as Chrysostom was. He was about twenty when Meletius was banished in 367 by the Emperor Valens; but the bishop returned in a short time, when Chrysostom’s friend Basil had withdrawn into religious seclusion, and he himself was feeling an increasing repugnance to the world. He presented himself as a candidate for baptism to the bishop, and after the usual three years of preparation as a catechumen, was admitted into the Christian Church.

There can be no doubt that baptism, from whatever cause delayed, must on that very account have come home to the recipient with a peculiar solemnity of meaning. It was an important epoch, often a decisive turning-point in the life, a deliberate renunciation of the world, and dedication of the whole man to God. So Chrysostom evidently felt it; from this point we enter on a new phase in his life. He becomes for a time an enthusiastic ascetic, and then settles down into that more tranquil and steady, but intense glow of piety and love to God which burned with undiminished force till the close of his career.

The wise Bishop Meletius, however, desired to employ his powers in some sphere of active labour in the Church. As a preliminary step to this end, he ordained him soon after his baptism to the office of reader. This order appears not to have been instituted in the Church before the third century; at least there is no allusion to it in writers of the first two centuries, and frequent references in writers of the third and fourth.[41] The duty of readers was to read those portions of Scripture which were introduced into the first service or “Missa Catechumenorum,” which preceded the Communion, or “Missa Fidelium,” so called because only the baptized were admitted to it. They read from the Pulpitum or Tribunal Ecclesiæ, or Ambo, the reading-desk of the Church, which must not be confounded with the Bema, or Tribunal of the Sanctuary. This last was identical with the altar, or rather the steps of the altar, and no rank lower than that of deacon was permitted to read from this position. By the Novells of Justinian,[42] eighteen was fixed as the youngest age at which any one could be ordained to this office. But previous to this limitation, it was not uncommon to appoint mere children. Cæsarius of Arles is said to have been made a reader at the tender age of seven, and Victor Uticensis, describing the cruelties of the Vandalic persecution in Africa, affirms that among 500 clergy or more who perished by sword or famine, were many “infant readers.”[43]

The ceremony of ordination appears to have been very simple. The Fourth Council of Carthage ordains that the bishop should testify before the congregation to the purity, the faith, and conversation of the candidate. Then in their presence he is to place a Bible in his hands with these words: “Take thou this book, and be thou a reader of the word of God, which office if thou discharge faithfully and profitably thou shalt have part with those who have ministered the word of God.”[44]

CHAPTER III.

COMMENCEMENT OF ASCETIC LIFE—STUDY UNDER DIODORUS—FORMATION OF AN ASCETIC BROTHERHOOD—THE LETTERS TO THEODORE. A.D. 370.

The enthusiasm of minds newly awakened to a full perception of Christian holiness, and a deep sense of Christian obligations, was in early times seldom contented with anything short of complete separation from the world. The Oriental temperament especially has been at all times inclined to passionate extremes. It oscillates between the most abandoned licentiousness and intense asceticism. The second is the corrective of the first; where the disease is desperate, the remedies must be violent. Chrysostom, as will be perceived throughout his life, was never carried to fanatical extremes; a certain sober-mindedness and calm practical good sense eminently distinguished him, though mingled with burning zeal. But in his youth especially he was not exempt from the spirit of the age and country in which he lived. He irresistibly gravitated towards that kind of life which his friend Basil had already adopted—a life of retirement, contemplation, and pious study—“the philosophy” of Christianity, as it was called at that time.[45]

It does not appear that Basil had actually joined any monastic community, but merely that he was leading a life of seclusion, and practising some of the usual monastic austerities. Chrysostom, indeed, distinctly asserts that, previous to his own baptism, their intercourse had not been entirely broken off; only that it was impossible for him, who had his business in the law-courts and found his recreation in the theatre, to be so acceptable as formerly to one who now never entered public places, and who was wholly devoted to meditation, study, and prayer.[46] Their intercourse was necessarily more rare, though their friendship was substantially unshaken. “When, however, I had myself also lifted my head a little above this worldly flood, he received me with open arms” (probably referring here to his baptism or preparation for it); “but even then I was not able to maintain my former equality, for he had the advantage of me in point of time, and having manifested the greatest diligence, he had attained a very lofty standard, and was ever soaring beyond me.”[47]

This disparity, however, could not diminish their natural affection for one another; and Basil at length obtained Chrysostom’s consent to a plan which he had frequently urged—that they should abandon their present homes and live together in some quiet abode, there to strengthen each other in undisturbed study, meditation, and prayer. But this project of the young enthusiasts was for a time frustrated by the irresistible entreaties of Chrysostom’s mother, that he would not deprive her of his protection, companionship, and help. The scene is described by Chrysostom himself,[48] with a dramatic power worthy of Greek tragedy. It reminds the reader of some of those long and stately, yet elegant and affecting, narratives of the messenger who, at the close of the play, describes the final scene which is not represented. Certainly it bespeaks the scholar of a man who had made his pupils familiar with the best classical writers in Greek. “When she knew that we were meditating this course, my mother took me by the right hand and led me into her own chamber, and there, seating herself near the bed on which she had given birth to me, wept fountains of tears; to which she added words of lamentation more pitiable even than the tears themselves. ‘I was not long permitted to enjoy the virtue of thy father, my child: so it seemed good to God. My travail-pangs at your birth were quickly succeeded by his death; bringing orphanhood upon thee, and upon me an untimely widowhood, with all those miseries of widowhood which those only who have experienced them can fairly understand. For no description can approach the reality of that storm and tempest which is undergone by her who having but lately issued from her father’s home, and being unskilled in the ways of the world, is suddenly plunged into grief insupportable, and compelled to endure anxieties too great for her sex and age. For she has to correct the negligence, to watch against the ill-doings, of her slaves, to baffle the insidious schemes of kinsfolk, to meet with a brave front the impudent threats and harshness of tax-collectors.’”[49]

She then describes minutely the expense, and labour, and constant anxiety which attended the education of a son; how she had refrained from all thoughts of second marriage, that she might bestow her undivided energies, time, and means upon him; how amply it had all been rewarded by the delight of his presence, recalling the image of her husband;—and now that he had grown up, would he leave her absolutely forlorn? “In return for all these my services to you,” she cried, “I implore you this one favour only—not to make me a second time a widow, or to revive the grief which time has lulled. Wait for my death—perhaps I shall soon be gone; when you have committed my body to the ground, and mingled my bones with your father’s bones, then you will be free to embark on any sea you please.” Such an appeal to his sense of filial gratitude and duty could not be disregarded. Chrysostom yielded to his mother’s entreaties, although Basil did not desist from urging his favourite scheme.[50]

At the same time he assimilated his life at home as much as possible to the condition of a monk. He entirely withdrew from all worldly occupations and amusements. He seldom went out of the house; he strengthened his mind by study, his spirit by prayer, and subdued his body by vigils and fasting, and sleeping upon the bare ground. He maintained an almost constant silence, that his thoughts might be kept abstracted from mundane things, and that no irritable or slanderous speech might escape his lips. Some of his companions naturally lamented what they regarded as a morose and melancholy change.[51]

But the intercourse between him and Basil was more frequent than before; and two other young men, who had been their fellow-students at the school of Libanius, were persuaded to adopt the same kind of secluded life. These two were Maximus, afterwards Bishop of Seleucia, in Isauria; and Theodore, who became Bishop of Mopsuestia, in Cilicia.[52] This little fraternity formed, with some others not named, a voluntary association of youthful ascetics. They did not dwell in a separate building, nor were they in any way established as a monastic community, but (like Wesley and his young friends at Oxford) they lived by rule, and practised monastic austerities. The superintendence of their studies and general conduct they submitted to Diodorus and Carterius, who were presidents of monasteries in the vicinity of Antioch.[53] In addition to his own intrinsic merits and eminence, Diodorus claims our attention, because there can be no doubt that he exercised a great influence upon the minds of his two most distinguished scholars, Chrysostom and Theodore. Indeed, judging from the fragments of his works, and the notices of him by historians, it is not too much to say that he was the founder of a method of Biblical interpretation of which Chrysostom and Theodore became the most able representatives.

He was of noble family, and the friend of Meletius, who confided to him and the priest Evagrius the chief care of his diocese during his second exile under Valens about A.D. 370. And one of the first acts of Meletius, on his return in A.D. 378, was to make Diodorus Bishop of Tarsus. His writings in defence of Christianity were sufficiently powerful and notorious to provoke the notice of Julian, who, in a letter to Photinus, attacks him with no small asperity.[54] The Emperor finds occasion for ridicule in the pale and wrinkled face and the attenuated frame of Diodorus, wasted by his severe labours and ascetic practices; and represents these disfigurements as punishments from the offended gods against whom he had directed his pen. Being well known as a warm friend of Meletius, Diodorus was exposed to some risk from the Arian party during the exile of the bishop from A.D. 370-378. But he was not deterred from frequenting the old town on the south side of the Orontes, where the congregation of Meletius held their assemblies, and diligently ministering to their spiritual needs. He accepted no fixed stipend, but his necessities were supplied by the hospitality of those among whom he laboured.[55] Of his voluminous writings, a commentary on the Old and New Testament is that most frequently quoted by ecclesiastical writers. They expressly and repeatedly affirm that he adhered very closely to the literal and historical meaning of the text, and that he was opposed to those mystical and allegorical interpretations of Origen and the Alexandrian school, which often disguised rather than elucidated the true significance of the passage.[56] One evil of the allegorical method was, that it destroyed a clear and critical perception of the differences between the Older Revelation and the New. The Old Testament was regarded as a kind of vast enigma, containing implicitly the facts and doctrines of the New. To detect subtle allusions to the coming of our Saviour, to the events of his life, to his death and resurrection, in the acts, speeches, and gestures of persons mentioned in the Old Testament, was regarded as a kind of interpretation no less satisfactory than it was ingenious. To believe indeed that the grand intention running through Scripture from the beginning to the end is to bring men to Jesus Christ; that the history of the fall of man is given to enable us to appreciate the need of a Restorer, and to estimate his work at its proper value; that the history of a dispensation based on law enables us to accept with more thankfulness a dispensation of spirit; that the history of the Jewish system of sacrifices is intended to conduct us to the one great Sacrifice as the substance of previous shadows, the fulfilment of previous types; that, alike in the law and the prophets, intimations and hints and significant parallels of the subsequent history to which they lead on are to be discerned;—this may be reasonable, profitable, and true: but it can be neither profitable nor true to see allusions, prophecies, and parallels in every minute and trivial detail of that earlier history.

From this vital error Diodorus appears to have emancipated himself and his disciples. He perceived, as we shall see Chrysostom perceived, a gradual development in Revelation: that the knowledge, and morality, and faith of men under the Old Dispensation were less advanced than those of men who lived under the New. One instance must suffice. He remarks that the Mosaic precept, directing the brother of a man who had died childless to raise up posterity to his brother by marrying his wife, was given for the consolation of men who had as yet received no clear promise respecting a resurrection from the dead.[57] There is an approach to what some might deem rationalistic criticism, when he affirms that the speech of God to men in the Old Testament was not an external voice, but an inward spiritual intimation. When, for instance, it is said that God gave a command to Adam, it is evident, he says, that it was not made by a sound audible to the bodily ear, but that God impressed the knowledge of the command upon him according to his own proper energy, and that when Adam had received it his condition was the same as if it had come to him through the actual hearing of the ear. And this, he observes, is what God effected also in the case of the prophets.[58] A similar rationalistic tendency is observable in his explanation of the relation between the Divine and human elements in the person of our blessed Lord. His language, in fact, on this subject is Nestorian: a distinction was to be made between Him who, according to his essence, was Son of God—the Logos—and Him who through Divine decree and adoption became Son of God. He who was born as Man from Mary was Son according to grace, but God the Logos was Son according to nature. The Son of Mary became Son of God because He was selected to be the receptacle or temple of God the Word. It was only in an improper sense that God the Word was called Son of David; the appellation was given to Him merely because the human temple in which He dwelt belonged to the lineage of David.[59] It is clear that Diodorus would have objected equally with Nestorius to apply the title of “God-bearer” (Θεοτόκος) to the blessed Virgin. Sixty years later, in A.D. 429, the streets of Constantinople and Alexandria resounded with tumults excited by controversy about the subject of which this was the watchword. But Diodorus happily lived too early for these dreadful conflicts, and his scholar Theodore was not personally disturbed; though long after his death, in A.D. 553, his writings were condemned by the Fifth Œcumenical Council, because the Nestorians appealed to them in confirmation of their tenets, and revered his memory. The practical element in Diodorus, his method of literal and common-sense interpretation of Holy Scripture, was inherited chiefly by Chrysostom; the intellectual vein, his conceptions of the relation between the Godhead and Manhood in Christ, his opinions respecting the final restoration of mankind, which were almost equivalent to a denial of eternal punishment, were reproduced mainly by Theodore.

It was inevitable that those who, in an access of religious fervour, had renounced the world and subjected themselves to the sternest asceticism, should sometimes find that they had miscalculated their powers. The passionate enthusiasm which for a time carried them along the thorny path would begin to subside; a hankering after a more natural, if not more worldly, life ensued; and occasionally the reaction was so violent, the passions kept down in unnatural constraint reasserted themselves with such force, that the ascetic flew back to the pleasures and sometimes to the sins of the world, with an appetite which was in painful contrast to his previous abstinence. The youthful Theodore was for a time an instance, though far from an extreme instance, of such reaction: the strain was too great for him; he relapsed for a season into his former habits of life; he retired from the little ascetic brotherhood to which Chrysostom and Basil belonged. There is no evidence that he fell into any kind of sin; he simply returned to the occupations and amusements of ordinary life. He was in love with and desirous of marrying a young lady named Hermione. But Chrysostom was at this period such an ardent ascetic; he was so deeply impressed with the evil of the world; and regarded an austere and absolute separation from it as so indispensable to the highest standard of Christian life, that to him any divergence from that path, when once adopted, seemed a positive sin. The relapse of Theodore called forth two letters of lamentation, remonstrance, and exhortation from his friend. They are the earliest of his extant works, and exhibit a command of language which does credit to the training of Libanius as well as to his own ability, and an intimate acquaintance with Holy Scripture, which proves how much time he had already spent in diligent and patient study. Since these epistles have been justly considered among the finest of his productions, and represent his opinions at an early stage of his life respecting repentance, a future life, the advantages of asceticism and celibacy, some paraphrases from them will be presented to the reader.

He begins his first letter by quoting the words of Jeremiah: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!”

“If the prophet uttered that lamentation over a ruined city, surely I may express a like passionate sorrow over the fallen soul of a brother. That soul which was once the temple of the Holy Spirit now lies open and defenceless to become the prey of any hostile invader. The spirit of avarice, of arrogance, of lust, may now find a free passage into a heart which was once as pure and inaccessible to evil as heaven itself. Wherefore I mourn and weep, nor will I cease from my mourning until I see thee again in thy former brilliancy. For though this may seem impossible to men, yet with God it is possible, for He it is who lifteth the beggar from the earth and taketh the poor out of the dunghill, that He may set him with the princes, even with the princes of his people.” An eminent characteristic of Chrysostom is that he is always hopeful of human nature; he never doubts the capacity of man to rise, or the willingness of God to raise him. Theodore himself appears to have been stricken with remorse, and to have drooped into despondency, to rouse him from which and lead him to repose more trustfully on the goodness of God, was one main purpose of Chrysostom’s letters. “Despair was the devil’s work;” “it is he who tries to cut off that hope whereby men are saved, which is the support and anchor of the soul, which, like a long chain, let down from heaven, little by little draws those who hold tightly to it up to heavenly heights, and lifts them above the storm and tempest of these worldly ills. The devil tries to extinguish that trust which is the source and strength of prayer, which enables men to cry, ‘as the eyes of a maiden look unto the hand of her mistress, even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God until He have mercy upon us.’ Yet if man will only believe it, there is never a time at which any one, even the most abandoned sinner, may not turn and repent and be accepted by God. For God being impassible, his wrath is not a passion or an emotion; He punishes not in anger, since He is unsusceptible by nature of injury from any insult or wrong done by us, but in mercy, that He may bring men back to Himself.[60] The many instances of God’s mercy; his relenting towards the Jews, and even to Ahab, when he humbled himself; the repentance of Manasseh—of the Ninevites—of the penitent thief—all accepted, although preceded by a long course of sin, prove that the words ‘today if ye will hear his voice’ are applicable to any time:—it is always ‘to-day’ as long as a man lives; repentance is estimated not by length of time, but by the disposition of the heart.” He acutely observes that “despondency often conceals moral weakness; a secret though perhaps unconscious sympathy with the sin which the man professes to deplore and hate.” “To fall is natural, but to remain fallen argues a kind of acquiescence in evil, a feebleness of moral purpose which is more displeasing to God than the fall itself.”[61]

But although he speaks in the most hopeful, encouraging language of the efficacy of repentance, however late, if sincere, in this life, no one can assert more strongly the impossibility of restoration when the limits of this present existence have once been passed. In this respect he differs alike from Origen, Diodorus, and his fellow-student Theodore, and from believers in the later developed doctrine of purgatory. “As long as we are here, it is possible, even if we sin ten thousand times, to wash all away by repentance; but when once we have been taken to that other world, even if we manifest the greatest penitence, it will avail us naught, but however much we may gnash with our teeth, and beat our breasts, and pour forth entreaties, no one will be able even with the tip of his finger to cool us in the flame; we shall only hear the same words as the rich man: ‘between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.’”[62] Nothing is more remarkably characteristic of Chrysostom’s productions, especially the earlier, than a frequent recurrence to this truth: the existence of a great impassable chasm between the two abodes of misery and bliss. Heaven and hell were no distant dreamlands to him, but realities so nearly and vividly present to his mind that they acted as powerful motives, encouraging to holiness, deterring from vice. He paints the two pictures in glowing colours, and submits them to the contemplation of his friend. “When you hear of fire, think not that the fire in that other world is like it; for this earthly fire burns up and consumes whatever it lays hold of, but that burns continually those who are seized by it and never ceases, wherefore it is called unquenchable. For sinners must be clothed with immortality, not for honour, but merely to supply a constant material for this punishment to feed upon; and how terrible this is, a description would indeed never be able to present, but from our experience of small sufferings it is possible to form some little conception of those greater miseries. If you should ever be in a bath which has been overheated, then I pray you consider the fire of hell; or if ever you have been parched by a severe fever, transfer your thoughts to that flame, and you will be able clearly to distinguish the difference. For if a bath or a fever so distress and agitate us, what will be our condition when we fall into that river of fire which flows past the terrible Judge’s throne.”[63] “Heaven is, indeed, a subject which transcends the powers of human language, yet we can form a dim image of what it is like. It is the place ‘whence sorrow and sighing shall flee away’ (Is. xxxv. 10); where poverty and sickness are not to be dreaded; where no one injures or is injured, no one provokes or is provoked; no one is harassed by anxiety about the necessary wants, or frets over the loftier ambitions, of life; it is the place where the tempest of human passions is lulled; where there is neither night nor cold nor heat, nor changes of season, nor old age; but everything belonging to decay is taken away, and incorruptible glory reigns alone. But far above all these things, it is the place where men will continually enjoy the society of Jesus Christ, together with angels and archangels and all the powers above.”[64] “Open your eyes,” he cries in a transport of feeling, “and contemplate in imagination that heavenly theatre crowded not with men such as we see, but with those who are nobler than gold or precious stones or sunbeams, or any brilliant thing that can be seen; and not with men only, but angels, thrones, dominions, powers ranged about the King whom we dare not describe for his transcendent beauty, majesty, and splendour. If we had to suffer ten thousand deaths every day; nay, if we had to undergo hell itself, for the sake of beholding Christ coming in his glory, and being numbered among the band of saints, would it not be well to submit to all these things? ‘Master, it is a good thing for us to be here:’ if such an exclamation burst from St. Peter on witnessing a partial and veiled manifestation of Christ’s glory, what are we to say when the reality shall be displayed, when the royal palace shall be thrown open and we shall see the King Himself; no longer by means of a mirror, or as it were in a riddle, but face to face; no longer through faith, but actual sight.”[65] He passes on to some remarks upon the soul, which are Platonic in character: “Man cannot alter the shape of his body, but God has conceded to him a power, with the assistance of Divine grace, of increasing the beauty of the soul. Even that soul which has become deformed by the ugliness of sin may be restored to its pristine beauty. No lover was ever so much captivated by the beauty of the body as God loves and longs for the beauty of the human soul.[66] You who are now transported with admiration of Hermione’s beauty” (the girl whom Theodore wished to marry) “may, if you will, cultivate a beauty in your own soul as far exceeding hers as heaven surpasses earth. Beauty of the soul is the only true and permanent kind, and if you could see it with the eye, you would admire it far more than the loveliness of the rainbow and of roses, and other flowers which are evanescent and feeble representations of the soul’s beauty.”[67] He tells some curious stories of men who had relapsed from monastic life and subsequently been reclaimed to it. One, a young man of noble family and heir to great wealth, had thrown up all the splendour which he might have commanded, and exchanged his riches and his gay clothing for the poverty and mean garb of a recluse upon the mountains, and had attained an astonishing degree of holiness. But some of his relations seduced him from his retreat, and once more he might be seen riding on horseback through the forum followed by a crowd of attendants. But the holy brethren whom he had deserted ceased not to endeavour to recover him; at first he treated them with haughty indifference, when they met and saluted him, as he proudly rode through the streets. But at last, as they desisted not day by day, he would leap from his horse when they appeared, and listen with downcast eyes to their warnings; till, as time went on, he was rescued from his worldly entanglements, and restored to his desert and the study of the true philosophy, and now, when Chrysostom wrote, he bestowed his wealth upon the poor, and had attained the very pinnacle of virtue.[68] Earnestly, therefore, does he implore Theodore to recover his trust in God, to repent and return to the brotherhood which was buried in grief at his defection. “Now the unbelieving and the worldly rejoice; but return to us, and our sorrow and shame will be transferred to the adversary’s side.” “It was the beginning of penitence which was arduous; the devil met the penitent at the door of the city of refuge, but, if defeated there, the fury of his assaults would diminish.” He warned him against an idle confession of sinfulness not accompanied by any honest effort to amend. “Such was no true confession, because not joined with the tears of contrition or followed by alteration of life.”[69] But of Theodore he hoped better things; as there were different degrees of glory reserved for men, implied in our Lord’s mention of “many mansions,” and his declaring that every one should be rewarded according to his works, he trusted that Theodore might still obtain a high place; that he might be a vessel of silver, if not of gold or precious stone, in the heavenly house.[70]

In the second epistle Chrysostom expresses more distinctly his view respecting the solemn obligations of those who joined a religious fraternity. “If tears and groanings could be transmitted through a letter, this of mine would be filled with them; I weep that you have blotted yourself out of the catalogue of the brethren, and trampled on your covenant with Christ.” “The devil assaulted him with peculiar fury, because he was anxious to conquer so worthy an antagonist; one who had despised delicate fare and costly dress, who had spent whole days in the study of Holy Scripture, and whole nights in prayer, who had regarded the society of the brethren as a greater honour than any worldly dignity. What, I pray you, is there that appears blessed and enviable in the world? The prince is exposed to the wrath of the people and the irrational outbursts of popular feeling—to the fear of princes greater than himself—to anxieties about his subjects; and the ruler of to-day is to-morrow a private man: for this present life no way differs from a stage; as on that, one man plays the part of a king, another of a general, a third of a common soldier; but when evening has come the king is no king, the ruler no ruler, the general no general; so will it be in that day; each will receive his due reward, not according to the character which he has enacted, but according to the works which he has done.”[71] Theodore had clearly expressed his intention of honourably marrying Hermione; but though Chrysostom allows that marriage is an honourable estate, yet he boldly declares that for one who like Theodore had made such a solemn renunciation of the world, it was equally criminal with fornication. He had wholly dedicated himself to the service of God, and he had no right to bind himself by any other tie: to marry would be as culpable as desertion in a soldier. He points out the miseries, the anxieties, the toils, often fruitless, which accompanied secular life, especially in the married state. From all such ills the life of the brotherhood was exempt: he alone was truly free who lived for Christ; he was like one who, securely planted on an eminence, beholds other men below him buffeting with the waves of a tumultuous sea. For such a high vantage-ground Chrysostom implores Theodore to make. He begs him to pardon the length of his letter: “nothing but his ardent love for his friend could have constrained him to write this second epistle. Many indeed had discouraged what they regarded as a vain task and sowing upon a rock; but he was not so to be diverted from his efforts: he trusted that by the grace of God his letters would accomplish something; and if not, he should at least have delivered himself from the reproach of silence.”[72]

These letters are the productions of a youthful enthusiast, and as such, allowances must be made for them. They abound not only in eloquent passages, but in very fine and true observations upon human nature—on penitence—on God’s mercy and pardon. It is only the application of them to the case of Theodore which seems harsh and overstrained. At a later period Chrysostom’s views on ascetic and monastic life were modified; but in early life, though never fanatical, they were what we should call extreme. His earnest efforts for the restoration of his friend were crowned with success. Theodore abandoned the world once more and his matrimonial intentions, and retired into the seclusion of the brotherhood. Some twenty years later, in A.D. 394, he was made Bishop of Mopsuestia, which is pretty nearly all we know about him, but the extant fragments of his voluminous writings prove him to have been a man of no ordinary ability, and a powerful commentator of the same sensible and rational school as Chrysostom himself. We may be disposed to say, What of Hermione? Had she no claims to be considered? But the ascetic line of life was regarded by the earnest-minded as so indisputably the noblest which a Christian could adopt, that her disappointment would not have been allowed to weigh in the balance for a moment against what was considered the higher call.[73]

CHAPTER IV.

CHRYSOSTOM EVADES FORCIBLE ORDINATION TO A BISHOPRIC—THE TREATISE “ON THE PRIESTHOOD.” A.D. 370, 371.

We now come to a curious passage in Chrysostom’s life; one in which his conduct, from our moral standpoint, seems hardly justifiable. Yet for one reason it is not to be regretted, since it was the originating cause of his treatise “De Sacerdotio;” one of the ablest, most instructive, and most eloquent works which he ever produced.

Bishop Meletius had been banished in A.D. 370 or 371. The Arian Emperor Valens, who had expelled him, was about to take up his residence in Antioch. It was desirable therefore, without loss of time, to fill up some vacant sees in Syria. The attention of the bishops, clergy, and people was turned to Chrysostom and Basil, as men well qualified for the episcopal office.

According to a custom prevalent at that time, they might any day be seized and compelled, however reluctant, to accept the dignity. So St. Augustine was dragged, weeping, by the people before the bishop, and his immediate ordination demanded by them, regardless of his tears.[74] So St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, was torn from his cell, and conveyed under a guard to his ordination.[75] The two friends were filled with apprehension and alarm. Basil implored Chrysostom that they might act in concert at the present crisis, and together accept or together evade or resist the expected but unwelcome honour.

Chrysostom affected to consent to this proposal, but in reality determined to act otherwise. He regarded himself as totally unworthy and incompetent to fill so sacred and responsible an office; but considering Basil to be far more advanced in learning and piety, he resolved that the Church should not, through his own weakness, lose the services of his friend. Accordingly, when popular report proved correct, and some emissaries from the electing body were sent to carry off the young men (much, it would seem from Chrysostom’s account, as policemen might arrest a prisoner), Chrysostom contrived to hide himself. Basil, less wary, was captured, and imagined that Chrysostom had already submitted; for the emissaries acted with subtlety when he tried to resist them. They affected surprise that he should make so violent a resistance, when his companion, who had the reputation of a hotter temper, had yielded so mildly to the decision of the Fathers.[76] Thus Basil was led to suppose that Chrysostom had already submitted; and when he discovered too late the artifice of his friend and his captors, he bitterly remonstrated with Chrysostom upon his treacherous conduct. “The character of them both,” he complained, “was compromised by this division in their counsels.” “You should have told us where your friend was hidden,” said some, “and then we should have contrived some means of capturing him;” to which poor Basil was ashamed to reply that he had been ignorant of his friend’s concealment, lest such a confession should cast a suspicion of unreality over the whole of their supposed intimacy. “Chrysostom, on his side, was accused of haughtiness and vanity for declining so great a dignity; though others said that the electors deserved a still greater dishonour and defeat for appointing over the heads of wiser, holier, and older men, mere lads,[77] who had been but yesterday immersed in secular pursuits; that they might now for a little while knit their brows, and go arrayed in sombre robes and affect a grave countenance.”[78] Basil begged Chrysostom for an explanation of his motives in this proceeding. “After all their mutual protestations of indivisible friendship, he had been suddenly cast off and turned adrift, like a vessel without ballast, to encounter alone the angry tempests of the world. To whom should he now turn for sympathy and aid in the trials to which he would surely be exposed from slander, ribaldry, and insolence? The one who might have helped him stood coldly aloof, and would be unable even to hear his cries for assistance.”[79]

We may be strongly disposed to sympathise with the disconsolate Basil. But the conscience of Chrysostom appears to have been quite at ease from first to last in this transaction. He regarded it as a “pious fraud.” “When he beheld the mingled distress and displeasure of his friend, he could not refrain from laughing for joy, and thanking God for the successful issue of his plan.”[80] In the ensuing discussion he boldly asserted the principle that deceit claims our admiration when practised in a good cause and from a good motive. The greatest successes in war, he argues, have been achieved through stratagem, as well as by fair fighting in the open field; and, of the two, the first are most to be admired, because they are gained without bloodshed, and are triumphs of mental rather than bodily force.[81] But, retorts poor Basil, I was not an enemy, and ought not to have been dealt with as such. “True, my excellent friend,” replies Chrysostom, “but this kind of fraud may sometimes be exercised towards our dearest acquaintance.” “Physicians were often obliged to employ some artifice to make refractory patients submit to their remedies. Once a man in a raging fever resisted all the febrifugal draughts administered to him, and loudly called for wine. The physician darkened the room, steeped a warm oyster shell in wine, then filled it with water, and put it to the patient’s lips, who eagerly swallowed the draught, believing it, from the smell, to be wine.”[82] In the same category of justifiable stratagem he places, not very discriminatingly, the circumcision of Timothy by St. Paul, in order to conciliate the Jews, and St. Paul’s observance of the ceremonial law at Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 26), for the same purpose. Such contrivances he calls instances, not of treachery, but of “good management” (οἰκονομία). There is something highly Oriental, and alien to our Western moral sense, in the sophistical tone of this whole discussion. If Basil really submitted to such arguments, he was easily vanquished. He says, however, no more about the injustice of his treatment, but, apparently accepting Chrysostom’s position that for a useful purpose deceit is justifiable, he begs to be informed “what advantage Chrysostom thought he had procured for himself or his friend by this piece of management, or good policy, or whatever he pleased to call it.”

The remaining books on the Priesthood are occupied with the answer to this inquiry. The line which Chrysostom takes is to point out the pre-eminent dignity, difficulty, and danger of the priestly office, and then to enlarge upon the peculiar fitness of his friend to discharge its duties.[83] “What advantage could be greater than to be engaged in that work which Christ had declared with his own lips to be the special sign of love to Himself? For when He put the question three times to the leader of the apostles (κορυφαῖος), ‘Lovest thou me?’ and had been answered by a fervent asseveration of attachment, he added each time, ‘Feed my sheep,’ or ‘Feed my lambs.’ ‘Lovest thou me more than these?’ had been the question, and the charge which followed it had been always, ‘Feed my sheep;’ not, If thou lovest Me, practise fasting, or incessant vigils, and sleep on the bare ground, or protect the injured and be to the orphans as a father, and to their mother as a husband; no, he passes by all these things, and says, ‘Feed my sheep.’ Could his friend, therefore, complain that he had done ill in compassing, even by fraud, his dedication to so glorious an office?[84] As for himself, it was obvious that he could not have refused so great an honour out of haughty contempt or disrespect to the electors. On the contrary, it was when he considered the exceeding sanctity and magnitude of the position, and its awful responsibilities—the heavenly purity, the burning love towards God and man, the sound wisdom and judgment, and moderation of temper required in those who were dedicated to it—that his heart failed him. He felt himself utterly incompetent and unworthy for so arduous a task. If some unskilled person were suddenly to be called upon to take charge of a ship laden with a costly freight, he would immediately refuse; and in like manner he himself dared not risk by his present inexperience the safety of that vessel which was laden with the precious merchandise of souls.[85] Vain-glory, indeed, and pride would have induced him not to reject, but to covet, so transcendent a dignity. The office of priest was discharged indeed on earth, yet it held a place among heavenly ranks. And rightly; for neither man, nor angel, nor archangel, nor created power of any kind, but the Paraclete Himself, ordained this ministry. Therefore, it became one who entered the priesthood to be as pure as if he had already taken his stand in heaven itself among the powers above. ‘When thou seest the Lord lying slain, and the priest standing and praying over the sacrifice, when thou seest all sprinkled with that precious blood, dost thou deem thyself still among men, still standing upon this earth? art thou not rather transported immediately to heaven, and, every carnal imagination being cast out, dost thou not, with soul unveiled and pure mind, behold the things which are in heaven? O miracle! O the goodness of God! He who is sitting with the Father is yet at that hour held in the hands of all, and gives Himself to be embraced and grasped by those who desire it. And this all do through the eye of faith. Do these things seem to you to merit contempt? does it seem possible to you that any one should be so elated as to slight them?’[86]

“Human nature possessed in the priesthood a power which had not been committed by God to angels or archangels; for to none of them had it been said, ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth or loose on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven.’ Was it possible to conceive that any one should think lightly of such a gift? Away with such madness!—for stark madness it would be to despise so great an authority, without which it was not possible for man to obtain salvation, or the good things promised to him. For if it were impossible for any one to enter into the kingdom of heaven, except he were born again of water and the Spirit; and if he who did not eat the flesh of the Lord and drink his blood was ejected from life eternal, and if these things were administered by none but the consecrated hands of the priest, how would any one, apart from them, be able to escape the fire of hell, or obtain the crown laid up for him?”[87]

There are, perhaps, no passages elsewhere in Chrysostom expressed in such a lofty sacerdotal tone; but it must be remembered that on any supposition as to the date of this treatise, he was young when it was composed, holding therefore, as on the subject of monasticism, more enthusiastic, highly-wrought opinions than he afterwards entertained; and moreover, that the whole treatise is written in a somewhat vehement and excited style, as by one who was maintaining a position against an antagonist.

Having proved that his evasion of the episcopal office could have arisen from no spirit of pride, but from a consciousness of his infirmity and incapacity, he proceeds to point out the manifold and peculiar dangers which encompassed it. “Vain-glory was a rock more fatal than the Sirens. Many a priest was shipwrecked there, and torn to pieces by the fierce monsters which dwelt upon it—wrath, despondency, envy, strife, slander, falsehood, hypocrisy, love of praise, and a multitude more. Often he became the slave and flatterer of great people, even of women who had most improperly mixed themselves up with ecclesiastical affairs, and especially exercised great influence in the elections.”[88]

The scenes, indeed, which often took place about this period at the elections to bishoprics occasioned much scandal to the Church. In earlier times, when the Christians were less numerous, more simple in their habits, more unanimous,—when liability to persecution deterred the indifferent, or pretenders, from their ranks,—the episcopal office could be no object of worldly ambition. The clergy and the people elected their bishop; and the fairness and simplicity with which the election was usually conducted won the admiration of the Emperor Alexander Severus.[89] But when Christianity was recognised by the State, a bishopric in towns of importance became a position of high dignity; and warm debates, often fierce tumults, attended the election of candidates. Up to the time of Justinian at least, the whole Christian population of the city or region over which the bishop was to preside possessed a right to elect. Their choice was subject to the approval of the bishops, and the confirmation of the metropolitan of the province; but, on the other hand, neither the bishops nor the metropolitan could legally obtrude a candidate of their own upon the people. A charge brought against Hilary of Arles was, that he ordained several bishops against the will and consent of the people. A just and legitimate ordination, according to Cyprian, was one which had been examined by the suffrage and judgment of all, both clergy and people. Such, he observes, was the election of Cornelius to the see of Rome in A.D. 251.[90] If the people were unanimous, there were loud cries of ἄξιος, dignus, ἀνάξιος, indignus, as the case might be; but if they were divided, it was usual for the metropolitan to give the preference to the choice of the majority; or, if they appeared equally divided, the metropolitan and his synod selected a man indifferent, if possible, to both parties. Occasionally also, as in the case of Nectarius, the predecessor of Chrysostom in the see of Constantinople, the Emperor interposed, and appointed one chosen by himself. Sanguinary often were the tumults which attended contested elections. The greater the city, the greater the strife. In the celebrated contest for the see of Rome in A.D. 366, between Damasus and Ursicinus, there was much hard fighting and copious bloodshed. Damasus, with a furious and motley mob, broke into the Julian Basilica, where Ursicinus was being consecrated by Paul, Bishop of Tibur, and violently stopped the proceedings. Frays of this kind lasted for some time. On one occasion, one hundred and thirty dead bodies strewed the pavement of the Basilica of Licinius till Damasus at last won the day. It is especially mentioned that the ladies of Rome favoured his side.[91] It seems scarcely possible to doubt that as these events must have been fresh in Chrysostom’s recollection, he must be specially referring to them when, insisting on freedom from ambition as one grand qualification for the priesthood, he says “that he will pass by, lest they should seem incredible, the tales of murders perpetrated in churches, and havoc wrought in cities by contentions for bishoprics;” and when also he alludes indignantly to the interference of women in the elections. “The elections,” he says, “were generally made on public festivals, and were disgraceful scenes of party feeling and intrigue. The clergy and the people were never unanimous. The really important qualifications for the office were seldom considered. Ambitious men spared no arts of bribery or flattery by which to obtain places for themselves in the Church, and to keep them when obtained. One candidate for a bishopric was recommended to the electors because he belonged to a distinguished family; another because he was wealthy, and would not burden the funds of the Church.”[92] The provocations to ambition and worldly glory were so great, both in the acquisition and in the exercise of the episcopal office, that Chrysostom says he had “determined partly for these reasons to avoid the snare.”[93] He shrank also from many other trials incident to the office. There were always persons ready to detect and magnify the slightest mistake or transgression in a priest. One little error could not be retrieved by a multitude of successes, but darkened the man’s whole life; for a kind of immaculate purity was exacted by popular opinion of a priest, as if he were not a being of flesh and blood, or subject to human passions. Often his brethren, the clergy, were the most active in spreading mischievous reports about him, hoping to rise themselves upon his ruin; like avaricious sons waiting for their father’s death. Too often St. Paul’s description of the sympathy between the several parts of the Christian body was inverted. ‘If one member suffered, all the others rejoiced; if one member rejoiced, the others suffered pain.’ A bishop had need be as impervious to slander and envy as the three children in the burning fiery furnace.[94] What a rare and difficult combination of qualities was required for the efficient discharge of his duties in the face of such difficulties! ‘He must be dignified, yet not haughty; formidable, yet affable; commanding, yet sociable; strictly impartial, yet courteous; lowly, but not subservient; strong, yet gentle; promoting the worthy in spite of all opposition, and with equal authority rejecting the unworthy, though pushed forward by the favour of all; looking always to one thing only—the welfare of the Church; doing nothing out of animosity or partiality.’[95] The behaviour also of a priest in ordinary society was jealously criticised. The flock were not satisfied unless he was constantly paying calls. Not the sick only, but the sound desired to be ‘looked after’ (ἐπισκοπεῖσθαι),—not so much from any religious feeling, as because the reception of such visits gratified their sense of their own importance. Yet if a bishop often visited the house of a wealthy or distinguished man to interest him in some design for the advantage of the Church, he would soon be stigmatised as a parasitical flatterer. Even the manner of his greetings to acquaintance in the streets was criticised: ‘He smiled cordially on Mr. Such-an-one, and talked much with him; but to me he only threw a commonplace remark.’”[96]

It is amusing and instructive to read these observations. They prove what important personages bishops had become. The interests of the people were violently excited over their elections. They were subjected to the mingled reverence, deference, and court, criticism, scandal, and gossip, which are the inevitable lot of all persons who occupy an exalted position in the world.

In the fourth book Chrysostom speaks of some of the more mental qualifications indispensable for a priest. Foremost among these was a power of speaking: “That was the one grand instrument which enabled him to heal the diseases of the body intrusted to his care. And, in addition to this, he must be armed with a prompt and versatile wit, to encounter the various assaults of heretics. Jews, Greeks, Manichæans, Sabellians, Arians, all were narrowly watching for the smallest loophole by which to force a breach in the walls of the Church. And, unless the defender was very vigilant and skilful, while he was keeping out the one he would let in the other. While he opposed the blind deference of the Jews to their Mosaic Law, he must take care not to encourage the Manichæans, who would eliminate the Law from the Scriptures. While he asserted the Unity of the Godhead against the Arians, there was danger of slipping into the Sabellian error of confounding the Persons; and, while he divided the Persons against the Sabellians, he must be careful to avoid the Arian error of dividing the substance also. The line of orthodoxy was a narrow path hemmed in by steep rocks on either side. Therefore it was of the deepest importance that the priest should be a learned and effective speaker, that he might not fall into error himself or lead others astray. For, if he was seen to be worsted in a controversy with heretics, many became alienated from the truth, mistaking the weakness of the defender for a weakness in the cause itself.”[97]

“But there was yet another task fraught with peril—the delivery of sermons. The performances of a preacher were discussed by a curious and critical public like those of actors. Congregations attached themselves to their favourite preachers. Woe to the man who was detected in plagiarisms! He was instantly reprobated like a common thief.

“To become an effective preacher two things were necessary: first, indifference to praise; secondly, power of speech; two qualities, the one moral, the other intellectual, which were rarely found coexisting. If a man possessed the first only, he became distasteful and despicable to his congregation; for if he stood up and at first boldly uttered powerful words which stung the consciences of his hearers, but, as he proceeded, began to blush and hesitate and stumble, all the advantage of his previous remarks would be wasted. The persons, who had secretly felt annoyed by his telling reproofs would revenge themselves by laughing at his embarrassment in speaking. If, on the other hand, he was a weighty speaker, but not indifferent to applause, he would probably trim his sails to catch the popular breeze, and study to be pleasant rather than profitable, to the great detriment of himself and of his flock.”[98]

He makes some remarks eminently wise and true on the necessity of study for the preparation of sermons. “It might seem strange, but in truth study was even more indispensable for an eloquent than for an ordinary preacher. Speaking was an acquired art, and when a man had attained a high standard of excellence he was sure to decline unless he kept himself up by constant study. The man of reputation was always expected to say something new, and even in excess of the fame which he had already acquired. Men sat in judgment on him without mercy, as if he were not a human being subject to occasional despondency, or anxiety, or irritation of temper; but as if he were an angel or some infallible being, who ought always to remain at the same high level of excellence. The mediocre man, on the other hand, from whom much was not expected, would obtain a disproportionate amount of praise if he said a good thing now and then.[99] The number of persons, however, in any congregation, who were capable of appreciating a really learned and powerful preacher, was very small; therefore a man ought not to be much disheartened or annoyed by unfavourable criticisms. He should be his own critic, aiming in all his work to win the favour of God. Then, if the admiration of men followed, he would quietly accept it; or, if withheld, he would not be distressed, but seek his consolation in honest work and in a conscience void of offence.[100] But if a priest was not superior to the love of admiration, all his labour and eloquence would be wasted; either he would sacrifice truth to popularity, or, failing to obtain so much applause as he desired, he would relax his efforts. This last was a common defect in men whose powers of preaching were only second-rate. Perceiving that even the highly gifted could not sustain their reputation without incessant study and practice, while they themselves, by the most strenuous efforts, could gain but a very slender meed of praise, if any, they abandoned themselves to indolence. The trial was especially great when a man was surpassed in preaching by one who occupied an inferior rank in the hierarchy, and who perhaps took every opportunity of parading his superior powers. A kind of passion for listening to preaching possessed, he says, both Pagans and Christians at this time; hence it was very mortifying for a man to see a congregation looking forward to the termination of his discourse, while to his rival they listened with the utmost patience and attention, and were vexed only when his sermon had come to an end.”[101]

In the sixth book, Chrysostom enlarges on the dangers and trials which beset the priest as compared with the tranquillity and security of the monk—that life to which he still felt himself powerfully attracted. “‘Who watch for your souls as they that must give an account.’ The dread of the responsibility implied in that saying constantly agitated his mind. For if it were better to be drowned in the sea than to offend one of the little ones of Christ’s flock, what punishment must they undergo who destroyed not one or two but a whole multitude?”[102] “Much worldly wisdom was required in the priest; he must be conversant with secular affairs, and adapt himself with versatility to all kinds of circumstances and men; and yet he ought to keep his spirit as free, as unfettered by worldly interests and ambitions as the hermit dwelling on the mountains.”[103]

The trials, indeed, which beset the priest so far exceeded those of the monk, that Chrysostom considered the monastery, on the whole, a bad school for active clerical life. “The monk lived in a calm; there was little to oppose or thwart him. The skill of the pilot could not be known till he had taken the helm in the open sea amidst rough weather. Too many of those who had passed from the seclusion of the cloister to the active sphere of the priest or bishop proved utterly incapable of coping with the difficulties of their new situation. They lost their head (ἰλιγγιῶσιν), and, often, instead of adding to their virtue, were deprived of the good qualities which they already possessed. Monasticism often served as a screen to failings which the circumstances of active life drew out, just as the qualities of metal were tested by the action of fire.”[104]

Chrysostom concludes by saying that he was conscious of his own infirmities; the irritability of his temper, his liability to violent emotions, his susceptibility to praise and blame. All such evil passions could, with the help of God’s grace, be tamed by the severe treatment of the monastic life; like savage beasts who must be kept on low fare. But in the public life of a priest they would rage with incontrollable fury, because all would be pampered to the full—vain-glory by honour and praise, pride by authority, envy by the reputation of other men, bad temper by perpetual provocations, covetousness by the liberality of donors to the Church, intemperance by luxurious living.[105] He bids Basil picture the most implacable and deadly contest between earthly forces which his imagination could draw, and declares that this would but faintly express the conflict between the soul and evil in the spiritual warfare of the world. “Many accidents might put an end to earthly combat, at least for a time—the approach of night, the fatigue of the combatants, the necessity of taking food and sleep. But in the spiritual conflict there were no breathing spaces. A man must always have his harness on his back, or he would be surprised by the enemy.”[106]

It is not surprising that Basil, after the fearful responsibilities and perils of his new dignity had been thus powerfully set before him, should declare that his trouble now was not so much how to answer the accusers of Chrysostom as to defend himself before God. He besought his friend to promise that he would continue to support and advise him in all emergencies. Chrysostom replied that as far as it was possible he would do so; but that he doubted not Christ, who had called Basil to this good work, would enable him to discharge it with boldness. They wept, embraced, and parted. And so Basil went forth to the unwelcome honours and trials of his bishopric, while Chrysostom continued to lead that monastic kind of life which was only a preparatory step to the monastery itself. His friendship with Basil is curious and romantic. Their intercourse was brought to a singular conclusion by the stratagem of Chrysostom. Basil may have, according to his own earnest request, continued to consult his friend in any difficulty or distress; but he is never mentioned again. Although so intimately bound up with this passage in Chrysostom’s life, there is something indistinct and shadowy about his whole existence. He flits across the scene for a few moments, and then disappears totally and for ever.

The books on the Priesthood may be regarded as containing partly a real account of an actual conversation between the two friends. But, as in the dialogues of Plato, far more was probably added by the writer, so that in parts the dialogue is only a form into which the opinions of the author at the time of composition were cast. It is impossible to decide with certainty the exact time at which the treatise may have been written. It is not likely to have been later than his diaconate in 381,[107] but more probably[108] the work may be assigned to the six years of leisure spent in the seclusion of the monastery and mountains—that is, to the period between Basil’s election to the bishopric, and his own ordination as deacon. The treatise reads like the production of one who had acquired considerable experience of monastic life; who had deliberately calculated its advantages on the one hand, and, on the other, had keenly observed and seriously weighed the temptations and difficulties which attended the more secular career of priest or bishop. It is a more mature work than the Epistles to Theodore, and is free from such rapturous and excessive praise of the ascetic life as they contain.

Note to foregoing Chapter.

It may excite surprise that men so young as Chrysostom and Basil, the former at least being not more than twenty-five or twenty-six, and not as yet ordained deacon, should have been designated to the highest office in the Church. The Council of Neocæsarea (about A.D. 320—vide Hefele, vol. i., Clark’s transl. p. 222) fixed thirty as the age at which men became eligible for the priesthood. The same age, then, at least, must have been required for a bishop.

The Constitutions called Apostolical fix the age at fifty, but add a clause which really lets in all the exceptions, “unless he be a man of singular merit and worth, which may compensate for the want of years.” And, in fact, there are numerous instances of men, both before and after the time of Chrysostom, who were consecrated as bishops under the age of thirty. The Council of Nice was held not more than twenty years after the persecution of Maximian, which Athanasius (Epist. ad Solitar., p. 382, Paris edition) says he had only heard of from his father, yet in five months after that Council he was ordained Archbishop of Alexandria. Remigius of Rheims was only twenty-two when he was made bishop, in A.D. 471. In like manner, though it was enacted by the Council of Sardica, A.D. 343-344, that none should rise to the Episcopal throne per saltum, yet there are not a few examples of this rule being transgressed.

Augustine, when he created a See at Fassula, presented Antonius, a reader (the very position Chrysostom now filled) to the Primate, who ordained him without scruple on Augustine’s recommendation (Aug. Ep. 261, ad Cælest.). Cyprian, Ambrose, and Nestorius are celebrated instances of the consecration of laymen to bishoprics.

CHAPTER V.

NARROW ESCAPE FROM PERSECUTION—HIS ENTRANCE INTO A MONASTERY—THE MONASTICISM OF THE EAST, A.D. 372.

About this time, 372-373, while Chrysostom was still residing in Antioch, he narrowly escaped suffering the penalties of an imperial decree issued by Valentinian and Valens against the practisers of magical arts, or possessors even of magical books. A severe search was instituted after suspected persons; soldiers were everywhere on the watch to detect offenders. The persecution was carried on with peculiar cruelty at Antioch, where it had been provoked by the detection of a treasonable act of divination. The twenty-four letters of the alphabet were arranged at intervals round the rim of a kind of charger, which was placed on a tripod, consecrated with incantations and elaborate ceremonies. The diviner, habited as a heathen priest, in linen robes, sandals, and with a fillet wreathed about his head, chanted a hymn to Apollo, the god of prophecy, while a ring in the centre of the charger was slipped rapidly round a slender thread. The letters in front of which the ring successively stopped indicated the character of the oracle. The ring on this occasion was supposed to have pointed to the first four letters in the name of the future Emperor, Θ Ε Ο Δ. Theodorus, and probably many others who had the misfortune to own the fatal syllables, were executed. There were, of course, multitudes of eager informers, and zealous judges, who strove to allay the suspicious fears of the Emperors, and to procure favour for themselves by vigorous and wholesale prosecutions. Neither age, nor sex, nor rank was spared; women and children, senators and philosophers, were dragged to the tribunals, and committed to the prisons of Rome and Antioch from the most distant parts of Italy and Asia. Many destroyed their libraries in alarm—so many innocent books were liable to be represented as mischievous or criminal; and thus much valuable literature perished.[109] It was during this dreadful time, when suspicion was instantly followed by arrest, and arrest by imprisonment, torture, and probably death, that Chrysostom chanced to be walking with a friend to the Church of the Martyr Babylas, outside the city. As they passed through the gardens by the banks of the Orontes, they observed fragments of a book floating down the stream. Curiosity led them to fish it out; but, to their dismay, on examining it, they found that it was inscribed with magical formulæ, and, to increase their alarm, a soldier was approaching at no great distance. At first they knew not how to act; they feared the book had been cast into the river by the artifice of an informer to entrap some unwary victim. They determined, however, to throw their dangerous discovery back into the river, and happily the attention or suspicions of the soldier were not roused. Chrysostom always gratefully looked back to this escape as a signal instance of God’s mercy and protection.[110]

It must have been soon after this incident and previous to the edict of persecution against the monks issued by Valens in 373, that Chrysostom exchanged what might be called the amateur kind of monastic life passed in his own home for the monastery itself. Whether his mother was now dead or had become reconciled to the separation, or whether her son’s passionate enthusiasm for monastic retirement became irresistible, it is impossible to determine. His mother is not mentioned by him in his writings after this point, except in allusion to the past, which is a strong presumption that she was no longer living. Bishop Meletius would probably have endeavoured to detain him for some active work in the Church, but he was now in exile; and to Flavian, the successor of Meletius, Chrysostom was possibly not so intimately known.

During the first four centuries of the Christian era, the enthusiasm for monastic life prevailed with ever increasing force. We are, perhaps, naturally inclined to associate monasticism chiefly with the Western Christianity of the Middle Ages. But the original and by far the most prolific parent of monasticism was the East. There were always ascetics in the Christian Church; yet asceticism is the product not so much of Christianity as of the East; of the oriental temperament, which admires and cultivates it; of the oriental climate, which makes it tolerable even when pushed to the most rigorous extremes. Asceticism is the natural practical expression of that deeply-grounded conviction of an essential antagonism between the flesh and spirit which pervades all oriental creeds. Even the monastic form of it was known in the East before Christianity. The Essenes in Judæa, the Therapeutæ in Egypt, were prototypes of the active and contemplative communities of monks.

The primitive ascetics of the Christian Church were not monks. They were persons who raised themselves above the common level of religious life by exercises in fasting, prayer, study, alms-giving, celibacy, bodily privations of all kinds. These habits obtained for them great admiration and reverence. Such persons are frequently designated by writers of the first three centuries as “an ascetic,” “a follower of the religious ascetics.”[111] But they did not form a class distinctly marked off by dress and habitation from the rest of the world, like the monks or even the anchorites of later time. They lived in the cities or wherever their home might be, and were not subject to any rules beyond those of their own private making. Eusebius calls them σπουδαῖοι, “earnest persons;” and Clemens Alexandrinus ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκλεκτότεροι, “more elect than the elect.”[112] Midway between the primitive ascetic and the fully-developed monk must be placed the anchorite or hermit, who made a step in the direction of monasticism by withdrawing altogether from the city or populous places into the solitudes of mountain or desert. Persecution assisted the impulse of religious fervour. Paul retired to the Egyptian Thebaid during the persecution of Decius in A.D. 251, and Antony during that of Maximin in A.D. 312. They are justly named the fathers or founders of the anchorites, because, though not actually the first, they were the most distinguished; and the fame of their sanctity, their austerities, their miracles, produced a tribe of followers. The further Antony retired into the depths of the wilderness the more numerous became his disciples. They grouped their cells around the habitation of the saintly father, and out of the clusters grew in process of time the monastery. A number of cells ranged in lines like an encampment, not incorporated in one building, was called a “Laura” or street.[113] This was the earliest and simplest kind of monastic establishment. It was a community, though without much system or cohesion.

The real founder of the Cœnobia or monasteries in the East was the Egyptian Pachomius; he was the Benedict of the East. His rule was that most generally adopted, not only in Egypt but throughout the oriental portions of the Empire. He and Antony had now been dead about twenty years, and Hilarius, the pupil and imitator of Antony, had lately introduced monasticism on the Pachomian model into Syria. In about fifty years more, the nomadic Saracens will gaze with veneration and awe at the spectacle of Simeon on his pillar, forty miles from Antioch. Thousands will come to receive baptism at his hands; his image will have been placed over the entrance of the shops in Rome.[114] The spirit had been already caught in the West. The feelings of abhorrence with which the Italians first beheld the wild-looking Egyptian monks who accompanied Athanasius to Rome had soon been exchanged for veneration. The example of Marcellina, and the exhortations of her brother Ambrose of Milan, had induced multitudes of women to take vows of celibacy.[115] Most of the little islands on the coasts of the Adriatic could boast of their monasteries or cells.[116] St. Martin built his religious houses near Poitiers and Tours, and was followed to his grave by two thousand brethren.[117] But St. Jerome, perhaps, more than any one else, promoted the advance of monasticism in the West. Born on the borders of East and West,[118] he mingled with the Eastern Church at Antioch and Constantinople, and in the desert of Chalcis had inured himself to the most severe forms of oriental asceticism, and returned to Rome eager to impart to others a kindred spirit of enthusiasm for the ascetic life. A little later, early in the fifth century, John Cassianus, president of a religious establishment in Marseilles, propagated monastic institutions of an oriental type in the south of France, and made men conversant with the system by his work on the rules of the cloister. These were the scattered forces which in the West awaited the master mind and strong hand of Benedict to mould and discipline them into a mighty system. The nearest approach in the West to the Egyptian system of Pachomius was among the Benedictines of Camaldoli.

There is every reason to suppose on general grounds, and the supposition is corroborated by notices in the writings of Chrysostom, that the monasteries near Antioch, like the rest of the Syrian monasteries, were based on the Pachomian model. Pachomius was a native of the Thebaid, born in A.D. 292. He began to practise asceticism as a hermit, but, according to the legend, was visited by an angel who commanded him to promote the salvation of other men’s souls besides his own, and presented him with a brazen tablet, on which were inscribed the rules of the Order which he was to found. He established his first community on Tabennæ, an island in the Nile, which became the parent of a numerous offspring. Pachomius had the satisfaction in his lifetime of seeing eight monasteries, containing in all 3000 monks, acknowledging his rule; and after his death, in the first half of the fifth century, their numbers had swelled to 50,000.[119] Chrysostom exulted with Christian joy and pride over the spectacle of “Egypt, that land which had been the mother of pagan literature and art, which had invented and propagated every species of witchcraft, now despising all her ancient customs, and holding up the Cross, in the desert no less if not more than in the cities: ... for the sky was not more beautiful, spangled with its hosts of stars, than the desert of Egypt studded in all directions with the habitations of monks.”[120]

By the Pachomian rule no one was admitted as a full monk till after three years of probation, during which period he was tested by the most severe exercises. If willing, after that period, to continue the same exercises, he was admitted without further ceremony beyond making a solemn declaration that he would adhere to the rules of the monastery. That no irrevocable vow was taken by the members of the monastery near Antioch which Chrysostom joined seems proved by his return to the city after a residence in the monastery of several years’ duration. According to Sozomen, the several parts of the dress worn by Pachomian monks had a symbolical meaning. The tunic (a linen garment reaching as far as the knees) had short sleeves, to remind the wearers that they should be prompt to do such honest work only as needed no concealment. The hood was typical of the innocence and purity of infants, who wore the same kind of covering; the girdle and scarf, folded about the back, shoulders, and arms, were to admonish them that they should be perpetually ready to do active service for God. Each cell was inhabited by three monks. They took their chief meal in a refectory, and ate in silence,[121] with a veil so arranged over the face that they could see only what was on the table. No strangers were admitted, except travellers, to whom they were bound, by the rule of their Order, to show hospitality. The common meal or supper took place at three o’clock,[122] up to which time they usually fasted. When it was concluded, a hymn was sung, of which Chrysostom gives us a specimen, though not in metrical form:[123] “Blessed be God, who nourisheth me from my youth up, who giveth food to all flesh: fill our hearts with joy and gladness, that we, having all sufficiency at all times, may abound unto every good work, through Jesus Christ our Lord, with Whom be glory, and honour, and power to Thee, together with the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever, Amen. Glory to Thee, O Lord! Glory to Thee, Holy One! Glory to Thee, King, who hast given us food to make us glad! Fill us with the Holy Spirit, that we may be found well pleasing in thy sight, and not ashamed when Thou rewardest every man according to his works.”

The whole community in a Pachomian monastery was divided into twenty-four classes, distinguished by the letters of the Greek alphabet; the most ignorant, for instance, under class Iota, the more learned under Xi or Zeta, such letters being in shape respectively the simplest and the most complicated in the alphabet. Those hours which were not devoted to services or study were occupied by manual labour, partly to supply themselves with the necessaries of life, partly to guard against the incursion of evil thoughts. There was a proverbial saying attributed to some of the old Egyptian fathers, that “a labouring monk was assaulted by one devil only, but an idle one by an innumerable legion.” They wove baskets and mats, agriculture was not neglected, nor even, among the Egyptian monks, ship-building. Palladius, who visited the Egyptian monasteries about the close of the fourth century, found, in the monastery of Panopolis, which contained 300 members, 15 tailors, 7 smiths, 4 carpenters, 12 camel-drivers, 15 tanners. Each monastery in Egypt had its steward, and a chief steward stationed at the principal settlement had the supervision of all the rest. All the products of monkish labour were shipped under his inspection on the Nile for Alexandria. With the proceeds of their sale, stores were purchased for the monasteries, and the surplus was distributed amongst the sick and poor.[124]

A monastery founded on this model might be fairly described as a kind of village containing an industrial and religious population; and had the Eastern monks adhered to this simple and innocent way of life, such communities might have become more and more schools of learning, centres of civilisation, and homes of piety. But they were increasingly forgetful of the wholesome saying of Antony, that a monk in the city was like “a fish out of water.” Instead of attending exclusively to their pious and industrial exercises, they mixed themselves up with the theological and political contests which too often convulsed the cities of the Eastern Empire. Their influence or interference was frequently the reverse of peace-making, judicious, or Christian. They would rush with fanatical fury into the city, to rescue the orthodox, or to attack those whom they considered heretical. The evil had grown to such a height by the reign of Arcadius, that a law was passed by which monks were strictly forbidden to commit such outrages on civil order, and bishops were commanded to prosecute the authors of such attempts.[125] Eastern monasticism, in fact, partook of the character which distinguished the Eastern Church as a whole, and which we may regard as one principal cause of its corruption and decay. A certain stability, sobriety, self-control, a law-making and law-respecting spirit, as it is the peculiar merit of the Western, so the want of it is the peculiar defect of the Oriental temperament. Hence a curious co-existence of extremes; the passions, unnaturally repressed at one outlet by intense asceticism, burst forth with increased fury at another. He who had subdued his body in the wilderness or on the mountains by fastings and macerations entertained the most implacable animosity towards pagans and heretics, and fought them like a ruffian (the word is not too strong for truth), when some tumult in an adjacent city afforded him an opportunity for this robust mode of displaying and defending his orthodoxy. Western monasticism, on the other hand, is distinguished by more gravity, more of the old Roman quality, a love of stern discipline. It did not run to such lengths of fanatical asceticism, and consequently was exempt from such disastrous reactions. It never produced such a caricature of the anchorite as Simeon Stylites, or such savage zealots as the monkish bands who dealt their sturdy blows in the religious riots of Constantinople and Alexandria. From the notices scattered up and down Chrysostom’s writings of the monasteries in the neighbourhood of Antioch, it appears that they conformed in all essential respects to the Pachomian model. We might anticipate, indeed, that, where such a man as Diodorus was president or visitor, they would be conducted on a simple and rational system.

South of Antioch were the mountainous heights of Silpius and Casius, whence rose the springs which in a variety of channels found their way into the city, provided it with a constant and abundant supply of the purest water, and irrigated the gardens for which it was celebrated.[126] In this mountain region dwelt the communities of monks, in separate huts or cells (κάλυβαι[127]), but subject to an abbot, and a common rule. Chrysostom has in more passages than one furnished us with a description of their ordinary costume, fare, and way of life. He is fond of depicting their simple, frugal, and pious habits, in contrast to the artificial and luxurious manners of the gay and worldly people of the city. They were clad in coarse garments of goat’s hair or camel’s hair, sometimes of skins, over their linen tunics, which were worn both by night and day.[128] Before the first rays of sunlight, the abbot went round, and struck those monks who were still sleeping with his foot, to wake them. When all had risen,—fresh, healthy, fasting, they sang together, under the precentorship of their abbot, a hymn of praise to God. The hymn being ended, a common prayer was offered up (again under the leadership of their abbot), and then each at sunrise went to his allotted task, some to read, others to write, others to manual labour, by which they made a good deal to supply the necessities of the poor. Four hours in the day, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and some time in the evening, were appointed for prayers and psalms. When the daily work was concluded, they sat down, or rather reclined, on strewn grass, to their common meal, which was sometimes eaten out of doors by moonlight, and consisted of bread and water only, with occasionally, for invalids, a little vegetable food and oil. This frugal repast was followed by hymns, after which they betook themselves to their straw couches, and slept, as Chrysostom observes, free from those anxieties and apprehensions which beset the worldly man. There was no need of bolts and bars, for there was no fear of robbers. The monk had no possession but his body and soul, and if his life was taken he would regard it as an advantage, for he could say that to live was Christ, and to die was gain.[129] Those words “mine and thine,” those fertile causes of innumerable strifes, were unknown.[130] No lamentations were to be heard when any of the brethren died. They did not say, “such a one is dead,” but, “he has been perfected” (τετελείωται), and he was carried forth to burial amidst hymns of praise, thanksgiving for his release, and the prayers of his companions that they too might soon see the end of their labours and struggles, and be permitted to behold Jesus Christ.[131] Such was the simple and industrial kind of monastic body to which Chrysostom for a time attached himself; and to the end of his life he regarded such communities with the greatest admiration and sympathy. But he never failed to maintain also the duty of work against those who represented the perfection of the Christian life as consisting in mere contemplation and prayer. Such a doctrine of otiose Christianity he proved to be based on a too exclusive attention to certain passages in the New Testament. If, for instance, our blessed Lord said to Martha, “Thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful;” or again, “Take no thought for the morrow;” or, “Labour not for the meat that perisheth”—all such passages were to be balanced and harmonised by others, as, for example, St. Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians to be “quiet and to do their own business,” and “let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands that which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” He points out that the words of our Lord do not inculcate total abstinence from work, but only censure an undue anxiety about earthly things, to the exclusion or neglect of spiritual concerns. The contemplative form of monasticism, based on misconception of Holy Scripture, had, he observes, seriously injured the cause of Christianity, for it occasioned practical men of the world to deride it as a source of indolence.[132]

CHAPTER VI.

WORKS PRODUCED DURING HIS MONASTIC LIFE—THE LETTERS TO DEMETRIUS AND STELECHIUS—TREATISES ADDRESSED TO THE OPPONENTS OF MONASTICISM—LETTER TO STAGIRIUS.

Several treatises were composed by Chrysostom during his monastic life. Among the first must be placed two books addressed to Demetrius and Stelechius. Of these the former was evidently written soon after the commencement of his retreat, for he speaks of having recently determined to take the step, and of the petty anxieties about food and other personal comforts which had at first unsettled his purpose a little. But he had soon conquered these hankerings after the more luxurious life which he had abandoned. It seemed to him a disgrace that one to whom heaven and celestial joys were offered, such as eye had not seen nor ear heard, should be so hesitating and timorous, when those who undertook the management of public affairs did not shrink from dangers and toil, and long journeys, and separation from wife and children, and perhaps unfavourable criticism, but only inquired whether the office were honourable and lucrative.[133]

The aim of the books is to animate torpid characters to a warmer piety, first by drawing a lively picture of the depravity of the times, secondly by a glowing description of the fervent energy of apostles and apostolic saints, and insisting that those lofty heights of Christian holiness were not unattainable by the Christian of his own day, if he bent the whole energy of his will, aided by Divine grace, to the attempt.

“So great,” he observes, “was the depravity of the times that if a stranger were to compare the precepts of the Gospel with the actual practice of society, he would infer that men were not the disciples, but the enemies of Christ. And the most fatal symptom was their total unconsciousness of this deep corruption. Society was like a body which was outwardly vigorous, but concealed a wasting fever within; or like an insane person who says and does all manner of shocking things, but, instead of being ashamed, glories in the fancied possession of superior wisdom.”[134] Chrysostom applies the test of the principal precepts of morality in the Sermon on the Mount to the existing state of Christian morals. Every one of them was shamelessly violated. A kind of regard, superstitious or hypocritical, was paid to the command in the letter, which was broken in the spirit. Persons, for instance, who scrupled to use the actual expressions “fool” or “Raca,” heaped all kinds of opprobrious epithets on their neighbours.[135] So the command to be reconciled with a brother before approaching the altar was really broken though formally kept. Men gave the kiss of peace at the celebration of Holy Communion when admonished by the deacon so to do, but continued to nourish resentful feelings in the heart all the same.[136] Vainglory and ostentation robbed prayer, fasting and almsgiving of their merit; and as for the precept “Judge not,” a most uncharitable spirit of censoriousness pervaded every class of society, including monks and ecclesiastics.[137] Contrast with this false and hollow religion of the world the condition of one in whom a deep compunction for sin, and a genuine love of Jesus Christ, was awakened. The whole multitude of vain frivolous passions was dispersed like dust before the wind. So it was with St. Paul. Having once turned the eye of his soul towards heaven, and being entranced by the beauty of that other world, he could not stoop to earth again. As a beggar, in some gloomy hovel, if he saw a monarch glittering with gold and radiant with jewels, might altogether for a time forget the squalor of his dwelling-place in his eagerness to get inside the palace of the king, so St. Paul forgot and despised the poverty and hardship of this present world because the whole energy of his being was directed to the attainment of that heavenly city.[138] But men objected to the citation of apostolic examples. Paul and Peter, they said, were superhuman characters; models beyond our limited powers. “Nay,” Chrysostom replies, “these are feeble excuses. The Apostles were in all essential points like ourselves. Did they not breathe the same kind of air? eat the same kind of food? were not some of them married men? did they not follow mechanical trades? nay more, had not some of them deeply sinned? Men at the present day did not indeed receive grace at baptism to work miracles, but they received enough to enable them to lead a good and holy Christian life.[139] And the highest blessing of Christ—his invitation to those who were called ‘blessed children’ to inherit the kingdom prepared for them—was addressed, not to those who had wrought miracles, but to those who had ministered to himself through feeding the hungry, entertaining the stranger, visiting the sick and the prisoners, who were his brethren. But grace, though undoubtedly given by God, required man’s own co-operation to become effectual. Otherwise, since God is no respecter of persons, it would have resided in equal measure in all men; whereas we see that with one man it remains, from another it departs; a third is never affected by it at all.”[140] The second book on the same subject, addressed to another friend, named Stelechius, is an expression of more rapturous and highly-wrought feeling, and is more rhetorical in style. His description in the beginning of the blessed freedom of the monk’s life from secular vanities and cares, his remarks on David and St. Paul,[141] two of his most favourite characters, and still more his masterly enumeration of the manifold ways in which God manifests his providential care for man,[142] well deserve to be read. They are too long to be translated here in full, and a paraphrase would very inadequately represent such passages, of which the peculiar beauty consists in the language more even than in the ideas. One special interest of these books, written immediately after his retirement from the world, is that they put clearly before us what it was which drove him and many another to the monastic life. It was a sense of the glaring and hideous contrast between the Christianity of the Gospel and the Christianity of ordinary society. A kind of implacable warfare,[143] as he expresses it, seemed to be waged in the world against the commands of Christ; and he had therefore determined, by seclusion from the world, to seek that kind of life which he saw exhibited in the Gospels, but nowhere else.[144]

But the largest and most powerful work which Chrysostom produced during this period was occasioned by the decree of the Emperor Valens in A.D. 373—a decree which struck at the roots of monasticism. It directed that monks should be dragged from their retreats, and compelled to discharge their obligations as citizens, either by serving in the army, or performing the functions of any civil office to which they might be appointed.[145] The edict is said to have been enforced with considerable rigour, and in Egypt this seems to have been the case. But it was evidently far from complete or universal in its operation. None of Chrysostom’s brethren appear to have been compelled to return to the city; certainly he himself was not. But they were liable, of course, to the persecution which, under the shelter of the decree, all the enemies of their order directed against them. These enemies of monasticism were of several kinds. There were the zealous adherents of the old paganism; men like Libanius, who were opposed to Christianity on principle, and especially to the monastic form of it, as encouraging idleness, and the dereliction of the duties of good citizens. There were also the more worldly-minded Christians who had adopted Christianity more from impulse or conformity than from conviction, and who disliked the standing protest of monastic life against their own frivolity. They were irritated also by the influence which the monks often acquired over their wives and children, sometimes alluring the latter from that lucrative line of worldly life which their fathers had marked out for them. And lastly, there were those who regretted that some men should have taken up a position of direct antagonism to the world, instead of mingling with it, and infusing good leaven into the mass of evil. The treatise of Chrysostom addressed “to the assailants of monastic life” was intended to meet most of these objections.

A friend had brought the terrible tidings to his retreat of the authorised persecution which had just broken out. He heard it with indescribable horror. It was a sacrilege far worse than the destruction of the Jewish Temple. That an Emperor (an Arian, indeed, yet professing himself Christian) should organise the persecution, and that some actually baptized persons should take, as his friend informed him, a part in it, was an intolerable aggravation of the infliction. He would rather die than witness such a calamity, and was ready to exclaim with Elijah, “Now, O Lord, take away my life!” His friend roused him from this state of despondency by suggesting that, instead of giving way to useless lamentations, he should write an admonitory treatise to the originators and abettors of this horrible persecution. At first Chrysostom refused, partly from a feeling of incompetency, partly from a dread of exposing to the pagans by his writings some of the internal corruptions, dissensions, and weaknesses of the Church. His friend replies that these were already but too notorious; and as for the sufferings of the monks, they formed the topic of public conversation, too often of public jest. In the market-place and in the doctors’ shops the subject was freely canvassed, and many boasted of the part which they had taken against the victims. “I was the first to lay hands on such a monk,” one would cry, “and to give him a blow;” or, “I was the first to discover his cell;” or, “I stimulated the judge against him more than any one.” Such was the spirit of cruelty and profanity by which even Christians were animated; and, as for the pagans, they derided both parties. Roused by these dreadful communications, the indignation of Chrysostom no longer hesitated to set about the task.[146]

His pity, he says, was excited chiefly for the persecutors; they were purchasing eternal misery for themselves, while the future reward of their victims would be in proportion to the magnitude of their present sufferings, since “Blessed were those whom men should hate, persecute, and revile for Christ’s sake, and great was to be their reward in heaven.”[147]

To persecute monks was to hinder that purity of life to which Christ attached so deep an importance. It might be objected, Cannot men lead lives uncontaminated at home? to which Chrysostom replies that he heartily wishes they could, and that such good order and morality might be established in cities as to make monasteries unnecessary. But at present such gross iniquity prevailed in large towns, that men of pious aspirations were compelled to fly to the mountain or the desert. The blame should fall, not on those who escaped from the city, but on those who made life there intolerable to virtuous men. He trusted the time might come when these refugees would be able to return with safety to the world.[148]

If it was objected that on this principle of reasoning the mass of mankind was condemned, he could only reply, in the words of Christ himself, “Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” We must not honour a multitude before truth. If all flesh was once destroyed except eight persons, we cannot be surprised if the number of men eventually saved shall be few. “I see,” he says, “a constant perpetration of crimes which are all condemned by Christ as meriting the punishment of hell—adultery, fornication, envy, anger, evil speaking, and many more. The multitude which is engaged in this wickedness is unmolested, but the monks who fly from it themselves, and persuade others to take flight also, are persecuted without mercy.” So much for the Christianity of the world.[149]

In Book II. he expresses his astonishment that fathers should so little understand what was best for their sons as to deter them from studying “the true philosophy.” But in combating this error he will put forward all that can be urged on their side. He imagines the case of a pagan father, possessed of great worldly distinction and wealth. He has an only son, in whom all his pride and hopes are centred; one whom he expects to surpass himself in riches and honour. Suddenly this son becomes converted to monasticism; this rich heir flies to the mountains, puts on a dress coarser than that of the meanest servant, toils at the menial occupations of gardening and drawing water, becomes lean and pale. All the schemes of his father for the future are frustrated, all past efforts for his education seem to have been squandered. The little vessel which was his pride and pleasure is wrecked at the very mouth of the harbour from which it was setting out on the voyage of life. The parent has no longer any pleasure in life; he mourns for his son as for one already dead.[150]

Having thus stated the case on his adversary’s side as strongly as possible, Chrysostom begins his own defence by asking which would be best: that a man should be subject to thirst all his life, or wholly exempt from it? Surely to be exempt from it. Apply this to the moral appetites—love, avarice, and the rest. The monk is exempt from them; the man of the world is distracted by them, if not overwhelmed. Again, if the monk has no wealth of his own, he exercises a powerful influence in directing the wealth of others. Religious men will part with much of their riches according to his suggestions; if one refuses, another will give. The resources, in fact, of the monk are quite inexhaustible; many will subscribe to supply his wants or to execute his wishes, as Crito said that he and his friends would subscribe for Socrates. It is impossible to deprive the monk of his wealth or of his home; if you strip him of everything he has, he rejoices, and thanks you for helping him to live the life which he desires; and as for his home, the world is his home; one place is the same as another to him; he needs nothing but the pure air of heaven, wholesome streams, and herbs. As for high place and rank, history suffices to teach us that the desert does not destroy, and the palace does not give, true nobility. Plato—planting, watering, and eating olives—was a far nobler personage than Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily, amidst all the wealth and splendour of a monarch. Socrates—clad in a single garment, with his bare feet and his meagre fare of bread, and dependent upon others for the mere necessaries of life—was a far more illustrious character than Archelaus, who often invited him, but in vain, to court. Real splendour and distinction consisted not in fine raiment, or in positions of dignity and power, but only in excellence of the soul and in philosophy.[151]

He then proceeds to maintain that the influence of the monk was more powerful than that of the man of the world, however distinguished he might be. If he descended from his mountain solitude, and entered the city, the people flocked round him, and pointed him out with reverence and admiration, as if he were a messenger from heaven. His mean dress commanded more respect than the purple robe and diadem of the monarch. If he was required to interfere in matters of public interest, his influence was greater than that of the powerful or wealthy; for he could speak before an emperor with boldness and freedom, and without incurring the suspicion of self-interested or ambitious motives. He was a more effectual comforter of the mourners than any one in a prosperous worldly condition was likely to be. If a father had lost his only son, the sight of other men’s domestic happiness only revived his grief; but the society of the monk, who disdained the ties of home and family, and who talked to him of death as only a sleep, soothed his grief. Thus the man who wished his son to possess real honour and power would permit him to become a monk; for monks who were once mere peasants had been visited in their cells and consulted by kings and ministers of state.

Chrysostom concludes this book by relating the history of one of his own brethren in the monastery, who, when first he desired to become a monk, had been disowned by his father, a wealthy and distinguished pagan, who threatened him with imprisonment, turned him out of doors, and allowed him almost to perish with hunger. But, finding him inflexible in his purpose, the father at last relented, and, at the time when Chrysostom wrote, honoured, he might say venerated, that son, considering the others, who occupied distinguished positions in the world, scarcely worthy to be his servant.[152]

As the second book was intended to meet the objections of a pagan father, so the third contains admonitions to one who was professedly Christian, but worldly-minded, on the duty of parents in regard to the moral and religious education of their children.

It appeared to him that the fathers of that day gave their sons none but worldly counsel, inculcated none but worldly industry and prudence, and encouraged to the emulation of none but worldly examples.[153] The force of habit was intensely strong, especially when pleasure co-operated with it, and parents, instead of counteracting habits of worldliness, promoted them by their own example. God led the Israelites through the wilderness as a kind of monastic training, to wean them from the luxurious and sensual habits of an Egyptian life; yet even then they hankered after the land of their bondage. How, then, could the children of parents who left them in the midst of the Egypt of vice, escape damnation? If they achieved anything good of themselves, it was speedily crushed by the flood of worldly conversation which issued from the parent. All those things which were condemned by Christ—as wealth, popularity, strife, an evil eye, divorce—were approved by parents of that day, and they threw a veil over the ugliness of these vices, by giving them specious names. Devotion to the hippodrome and theatre was called fashionable refinement; wealth was called freedom; love of glory, high spirit; folly, boldness; prodigality, benevolence; injustice, manliness. Virtues, on the contrary, were depreciated by opprobrious names: temperance was called rusticity; equity, cowardice; justice, unmanliness; modesty, meanness; endurance of injury, feebleness. He truly remarks, that nothing contributes so much to deter men from vice as calling vices plainly by their proper names.[154]

“How can children escape moral ruin, when all the labour of their fathers is bestowed on the provision of superfluous things—fine houses, dress, horses, beautiful statues, gilded ceilings—while they take no pains about the soul, which is far more precious than any ornament of gold?”[155] And there were worse evils behind: vice too monstrous and unnatural to be named, but to which he was constrained to allude, because he felt that it was poisoning with deadly venom the very vitals of the social body. “Well,” but worldly men reply, “Would you have us all turn philosophers, and let our worldly affairs go to ruin? Nay,” says Chrysostom, “it is the want of the philosophic spirit and rule which ruins everything now; it is your rich men—with troops of slaves and swarms of parasites, eager for wealth and ambitious of distinction, building fine houses, adding field to field, lending money at a usurious rate of interest—who propagate the strife and litigation, and envy, and murder, and general confusion, by which life is distracted. These are they who bring down the vengeance of Heaven, in the shape of droughts, and famines, and inundations, and earthquakes, and submersion of cities, and pestilences. It is not the simple monk, or the philosophic Christian, who is contented with a humble dwelling, a mean dress, a little plot of ground. These last, shining like bright beacons in a dark place, hold up the lamp of philosophy on high, and endeavour to guide those who are tossing on the open sea in a dark night into the haven of safety and repose.”[156]

“In spite of law, disorder prevailed to such an extent, that the very idea of God’s providence was lost. Men assigned the course of events to fate, or to the stars, or to chance, or to spontaneous force. God did, indeed, still rule; but He was like a pilot in a storm, whose skill in managing and conducting the vessel in safety was not perceived or appreciated by the passengers, owing to the confusion and fright caused by the raging of the elements. In the monastery, on the other hand, all was tranquillity and peace as in a community of angels. He strenuously combated the error of supposing that sin was more pardonable in a man of the world than in a monk. Anger, uncleanness, swearing, and the like, were equally sinful in all. Christ made no distinctions, but propounded one standard of morality for all alike. Nothing had inflicted more injury on the moral tone of society than the supposition that strictness of life was demanded of the monk only.”[157] He strongly urges the advantage of sending youths for education to monasteries, even for so long a period as ten or twenty years. Men consented, he says, to part with their children, for the purpose of learning some art or trade, or even so low an accomplishment as rope-dancing; but when the object was to train their souls for heaven, all kinds of impediments were raised. To object that few attained through residence in a monastery that perfection of spiritual life which some expected of them, was a mere excuse. In the case of worldly things, on which men’s hearts were set, they thought of getting as much as they could, not of reaching absolute perfection. A man did not prevent his son from entering military service because the chances of his becoming a prefect were small; why, then, hesitate to send your son to a monastery because all monks do not become angels?[158]

These treatises are remarkable productions, and deserve to be read, not only because they exhibit Chrysostom’s best powers of argument and style, but also because they throw light upon the character of the man and the times in which he lived. He pleads his cause with the ingenuity, as well as eloquence, of a man who had been trained for the law courts. We find, indeed, that his opinions on the advantages of the monastic life were modified as he grew older; but his bold condemnation of worldliness, his denunciation of a cold secularised Christianity, as contrasted with the purity of the Gospel standard, the deep aspirations after personal holiness, the desire to be filled with a fervent and overflowing love of Christ, the firm hold on the idea of a superintending Providence, amidst social confusion and corruption; these we find, as here, so always, conspicuous characteristics of the man, and principal sources of his influence.

From the frightful picture here drawn of social depravity, we perceive the value—we might say, the necessity—of monasteries, as havens of refuge for those who recoiled in horror from the surrounding pollution. It is clear also that the influence of the monks was considerable. Monasteries were recognised places of education, where pious parents could depend on their children being virtuously brought up. The Christian wife of a pagan or worldly husband could here find a safe home for her boy, where he could escape the contamination of his father’s influence or example. Chrysostom relates, in chapter 12, how a Christian lady in Antioch, being afraid of the wrath of a harsh and worldly-minded husband if she sent away her son to school at the monastery, induced one of the monks, a friend of Chrysostom’s, to reside for a time in the city, in the character of pedagogue. The boy, thus subjected to his training, afterwards joined the society of the monks; but Chrysostom, fearing the consequences both to the youth and to the monastic body, should his father detect his secession, persuaded him to return to the city, where he led an ascetic life, though not habited in monkish dress. Out of these monastic schools, after years of discipline and prayer, and study of the Word, there issued many a pastor and preacher, well-armed champions of the truth, strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might; like Chrysostom himself, instant in season and out of season; stern denouncers of evil, even in kings’ courts; holding out the light of the Gospel in the midst of a dark and crooked generation.

The foregoing extracts and paraphrases from these treatises prove also that as philosophy was considered the highest flight in the intellectual culture of the pagan, so was asceticism regarded as the highest standard of Christian life; it was to the education of the soul what philosophy was to the education of the mind, and hence it was called by the same name. Possessed by this idea, Chrysostom threw himself at this period of his life into the system with all the ardour of his nature. If asceticism was good, it was right to carry it as far as nature could bear it. He adopted the habits of an old member of the brotherhood named Syrus, notorious for the severity of his self-inflicted discipline. The day and greater part of the night were spent in study, fastings and vigils. Bread and water were his only habitual food. At the end of four years he proceeded a step further. He withdrew from the community to one of those solitary caves with which the mountains overhanging Antioch on its southern side abounded. In fact, he exchanged the life of a monk for that of an anchorite. His frame endured this additional strain for nearly two years, and then gave way. His health was so much shattered that he was obliged to abandon monastic life, and to return to the greater comfort of his home in Antioch.[159]

Meanwhile a friend of his, Stagirius by name—a person of noble birth, who, in spite of his father’s opposition, had embraced monasticism—was reduced to a more deplorable condition. While Chrysostom was confined to his house by illness, a friend common to him and Stagirius brought him the sad intelligence that Stagirius was affected with all the symptoms of demoniacal possession—wringing of the hands, squinting of the eyes, foaming at the mouth, strange inarticulate cries, shiverings, and frightful visions at night.[160] We shall perhaps find little difficulty in accounting for these distressing affections, as the consequence of excessive austerities. The young man, who formerly lived a gay life in the world, and in the midst of affluence, had in the monastery fared on bread and water only, often kept vigil all night long, spent his days in prayer and tears of penitence, preserved an absolute silence, and read so many hours continuously, that his friends and brother monks feared that his brain would become disordered.[161] Very probably it was, and hence his visions and convulsions; but those were not days in which men readily attributed any strange phenomena, mental or bodily, to physical causes. We may believe in the action of a spirit-world on the inhabitants of this earth; but we require good evidence that any violent or strange affection of mind or body is due to a directly spiritual agency, rather than to the operation of God according to natural law. The cases of demoniacs in the Gospel stand apart. Our Lord uses language which amounts to a distinct affirmation that those men were actually possessed by evil spirits. To use such expressions as “come out of him,” “enter no more into him,” and the like, if there was no spirit concerned in the case at all, would have been, to say the least, a mere unmeaning piece of acting, of which it would be shocking to suppose our Lord capable. But to admit the direct agency of spirit, when confirmed by such authoritative testimony, is widely different from the hasty ascription to spiritual agency, by an uncritical and unscientific age, of everything which cannot be accounted for by the most superficial knowledge and observation. Chrysostom, of course, not being beyond his age in such matters, did not for a moment dispute the supposition that Stagirius was actually possessed by a demon, but he displays a great deal of good sense in dealing with the case. As the state of his own health did not permit him to pay Stagirius a visit in person, he wrote his advice instead. He perceived the fatal temptation to despair in a man who imagined that the devil had got a firm hold upon him, and that every evil inclination proceeded directly from this demoniacal invader. He will not allow that the suggestion to suicide, of which Stagirius complained, came direct from the demon, but rather from his own despondency,[162] with which the devil had endeavoured to oppress him, that he might, under cover of that, work his own purposes more effectually, just as robbers attack houses in the dark. But this was to be shaken off by trust in God; for the devil did not exercise a compulsory power over the hearts of men; there must be a co-operation of the man’s own will. Eve fell partly through her own inclination to sin: “When she saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat;” and if Adam was so easily persuaded to participate in her sin, he would have fallen even had no devil existed.

Chrysostom endeavours also to console his friend by going through the histories of saints in all times who have been afflicted. His sufferings were not to be compared to those of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and St. Paul. “These afflictions were sent for remedial, purgatorial purposes—that the soul might be saved in the day of the Lord. It was not easy to say why such a person was tried by this or that form of suffering, but if we knew exactly God’s motives, there would be no test of faith. The indispensable thing was to be firmly convinced that whatever God sent was right. Some men were disturbed because the good were often troubled, and the wicked prosperous; but such inequality in the distribution of reward and punishment in this life suggested a future state where they would be finally adjusted. The wicked who had here received his good things would there receive his evil.[163] Stagirius had not been attacked by any demon when he was living in carelessness and worldly pleasure, but when he had buckled on his armour and appeared as an antagonist, then the devil descended to the assault. Hence he had no need to be ashamed of his affliction; the only thing to be ashamed of was sin, and it was owing to his renunciation of sin that the devil assailed him. The real demoniacs were those who were carried away by the impulses of unregulated passions.” His summaries of the lives of the Old Testament saints, which fill the rest of the second book and most of the third, are very masterly, and display most intimate acquaintance with Holy Scripture in all its parts. A powerful mind and retentive memory had profited by six years of retirement largely devoted to study.

CHAPTER VII.

ORDINATION AS DEACON—DESCRIPTION OF ANTIOCH—WORKS COMPOSED DURING HIS DIACONATE. A.D. 381-386.

Probably one of the last acts of Bishop Meletius before he left Antioch to attend the Council of Constantinople in 381, was to ordain Chrysostom a deacon. The bishop never returned. He died during the session of the council of which he was president, leaving both that and the see of Antioch distracted by the most deplorable factions. It will be remembered[164] that the Catholics of Antioch had, ever since the ill-judged mission of Lucifer of Cagliari, been divided between allegiance to Paulinus, a priest of the old Eustathian party, who had been consecrated bishop by Lucifer, and Meletius, bishop of the more moderate party. With the laudable purpose of healing this schism, it is said that several of the clergy at Antioch, who were considered most likely to succeed to a vacancy, bound themselves under an oath, that in the event of either bishop dying, they would decline the offer of the see, if made, and acknowledge the survivor. But on the death of Meletius, their plan was frustrated. Either the Asiatics, who generally favoured Meletius, refused to submit to the authority of Paulinus, because he had been ordained by a Western prelate, or the Eustathians who acknowledged Paulinus were unwilling on their side to admit Meletians into their fold. In any case, the earnest endeavours of Gregory of Nazianzum, now President of the Council, to unite the two factions under one prelate were unsuccessful.[165] The Meletians elected Flavian to be their bishop, one of the very priests who had, under oath, renounced their pretensions to the see. This appointment of course exposed Flavian to the imputation of perjury, but we may hope that, like Gregory, he yielded to a pressing necessity only, and to a conviction that the dissension would have been aggravated and protracted if he had obdurately refused.[166] At any rate, as will hereafter appear, his conduct, wherever it comes before us, is worthy of all admiration, and Chrysostom must have filled the office of deacon with happiness under his administration. A greater contrast than the initiation of Chrysostom into clerical life, and that of a young deacon in modern times, can scarcely be imagined. He was in his thirty-seventh year, and had supplemented the good liberal education of his youth by several years of devotion to close study of Scripture, to rigorous mortification of the body, to prayer and meditation, and to every means of promoting the culture of the soul. After this long and careful training, he enters the subordinate ranks of the clergy, not to discharge, like a modern deacon, duties as laborious, and often as responsible, as those which pertained to the priest, but such light and irresponsible tasks as were suitable to men who might be young, and were necessarily inexperienced in pastoral work. The deacons were sometimes called the Levites of the Christian Church.[167] It was their office to take care of the holy table and its furniture, to administer the cup to the laity, but not to a priest or a bishop, and occasionally to read the Gospel.[168] They were in most churches permitted to baptize.[169] But their peculiar duty in the services of the Church was to call the attention of the people to every fresh movement, to use a musical expression, in the progress of the service. Thus at the close of the sermon, the deacon’s voice was heard crying: “Let the hearers [i.e. the second order of catechumens who were permitted to hear the sermon, but not the conclusion of the Eucharistic service] and the unbelievers depart!”[170] Then he bid the remaining orders of the catechumens, i.e. the energumens, the competentes, and the penitents to pray for one another, and the people also to pray for them; ἐκτενῶς δεηθῶμεν, “let us ardently pray for them”—such was the form. Again when they were dismissed by the command ἀπολύεσθε, “disperse,” the faithful were invited by the deacon to pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church.[171] Thus the deacons were the sacred criers or heralds of the Church; they “proclaimed or bid prayer,” they announced each part as it was unfolded in the sacred drama of the Liturgy. The frequent recurrence in our own Liturgy, without much apparent significance, of the form “Let us pray,” is a remnant of these old diaconal invitations. The deacons were not permitted to preach except by a special direction of the bishop. Their duty in part corresponded to that of our churchwardens; they were to reprove any improper behaviour during divine service,[172] to bring cases of poverty and sickness before the notice of the bishop, to distribute the alms under his direction, and also to report to him grave moral offences.[173] They were essentially, as the name implies, ministers to the bishops and priests, and were often styled, in symbolical language, “the bishop’s eyes,” or “ears,” or “right hand.” The attitude of respect, which they were bound to maintain in church towards bishops and priests was in keeping with the servitorial character of their office as a whole. While the priests had their chairs ranged on either side of the central chair of the bishop in the choir, the deacons stood humbly by, as if ready to receive and execute the directions of their superiors.[174] Even the Roman deacons, who rose rather above the natural lowliness of their office, did not presume to sit in the church.[175]

The duties of the diaconate must have brought Chrysostom into constant intercourse with the Christian population of Antioch, and especially with the poorer portion of it. The whole population of the city amounted, according to Chrysostom’s statement, to 200,000,[176] and the Christians to 100,000,[177] of whom 3000 were indigent, and mainly supported by the bounty of the Church.[178] The deacon’s function of searching out and relieving the necessitous by distribution of alms must have been peculiarly congenial to him. There is no Christian duty on which he more constantly and earnestly insists than that of almsgiving, not only in order to alleviate the sufferings of poverty, but as a means of counteracting the inordinate avarice and selfish luxury which were the prevailing vices in the higher ranks of society, both in Antioch and Constantinople. His hold upon the affections of the common people, partly no doubt through his sympathy with their needs, partly by his bold denunciation of the vices of the wealthy, partly by his affectionate and earnest plain-speaking of Christian truth, was remarkably strong throughout his life. As during the secluded leisure of his monastic life he had acquired a profound intimacy with Holy Scripture, so in the more active labours of his diaconate he enlarged his knowledge of human nature, and stored up observations on the character and manners of the people among whom he moved; qualifications no less important for the formation of a great and effective preacher.

It may not be uninteresting to take a brief glance at the character of the city and its inhabitants among whom he was destined to labour for the next seventeen years of his life.

Both nature and art combined to make Antioch one of the most delectable and luxurious residences in the world. The advantages of its situation, in some most important respects, could scarcely be exceeded. The river Orontes, connecting it with the sea about three miles distant, was the throat through which the city was fed with merchandise from all parts of the world. The wooded shores of the large lake of Antioch some miles above the city, supplied the inhabitants with fuel, and its waters yielded fish in great abundance. The hills which impended over the town on the southern side sent down numerous and copious streams, whose water, unsurpassed in purity, bubbled up through the fountains which stood in the court of every house. Northwards extended a fertile plain between the Orontes and Mount Coryphæus. The northern winds were occasionally keen and searching, but the prevailing western breezes coming up from the sea were so delicately soft, yet refreshing, that the citizens delighted in summer to sleep upon the flat roofs of their dwellings. These advantages, however, were in some degree balanced by a liability to inundations and earthquakes. Those hill-streams, the blessing and delight of the inhabitants in summer, were sometimes swollen in winter by excessive rains into torrents of incontrollable fury, and caused much damage to the buildings which were situated near their course. But far more destructive were the earthquakes. More than once, indeed, especially in the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Trajan, the whole city was almost shattered to pieces; but on each occasion, through public and private exertions, it arose from its ruins in new and, if possible, increased magnificence. The peculiar glories of Antioch were its gardens, and baths, and colonnaded streets. As in its population, and religion, and customs, so also in its architecture, it presented, as time went on, a remarkable mixture of Asiatic, Greek, and Roman elements. The aim of each Greek king and Roman emperor was to leave it more beautiful than he had received it from the hands of his predecessor. Each marked his reign by the erection of a temple or basilica, or bath, or aqueduct, or theatre, or column. The church in which Chrysostom officiated, usually called “the great Church,” to distinguish it from the smaller and older church, called the Church of the Apostles, was begun by Constantine and finished by Constantius. In the main principles of structure, we may find some parallel to it in St. Vitale at Ravenna. It stood in the centre of a large court, and was octangular in shape; chambers, some of them subterranean, were clustered round it; the domed roof, of an amazing height, was gilded on the inside; the floor was paved with polished marbles; the walls and columns were adorned with images, and glistened with precious stones; every part, indeed, was richly embellished with bronze and golden ornament.[179] Among the principal wonders of Antioch was the great street constructed by Antiochus Epiphanes, nearly four miles in length, which traversed the city from east to west; the natural inequalities of the ground were filled up, so that the thoroughfare was a perfect level from end to end; the spacious colonnades on either side were paved with red granite. From the centre of this magnificent street, where stood a statue of Apollo, another street, similar in character, but much shorter, was drawn at right angles, leading northwards in the direction of the Orontes. Many of the other streets were also colonnaded, so that the inhabitants, as they pursued their errands of business or pleasure, were sheltered alike from the scorching sun of summer and the rains of winter. Innumerable lanterns at night illuminated the main thoroughfares with a brilliancy which almost rivalled the light of day, and much of the business, as well as the festivity, of the inhabitants was carried on by night.[180]

The character of the inhabitants partook of the various elements—Asiatic, Syrian, Greek, Jewish, Roman—which composed the whole population. But the impulsive oriental temperament, subject at times to fits of gloomy despondency, and to outbursts of wild ferocity, was undoubtedly the most dominant. When not driven under the pressure of excitement to either of these extremes, they abandoned themselves very freely to those voluptuous recreations for which the character of their city and climate afforded every facility and inducement. The bath, the circus, the theatre, were the daily amusements of the citizen; the Olympic games (instituted in the time of Commodus), which were celebrated in the grove of Daphne, and the festivities held at particular seasons in honour of different deities, were the greater occasions to which he looked forward with all the eagerness of a pleasure-loving nature.

These main characteristics of the people are abundantly illustrated in detail, as will be seen hereafter, in the homilies of Chrysostom. He is ever, in them, labouring with indefatigable industry and earnestness to lift the Christians above the frivolity and vices of the rest of the population. His opportunities for investigating the condition of the Christian community were great during his diaconate. He did not as yet preach; but by observations on life and manners, he laid up copious materials for preaching. And he was not idle in the use of his pen, for to this period may be assigned the treatise on Virginity; a letter addressed to a young widow; a book on the martyr Babylas; and, perhaps, though this cannot certainly be determined, the six books on the Priesthood.[181]

The letter to a young widow must have been written soon after the destruction of the Emperor Valens and his army by the Goths in A.D. 378, since it contains a reference to that event as a recent occurrence,[182] yet it must have been antecedent to the crushing defeats inflicted on them by Theodosius in A.D. 382, because the writer implies that at the time of composition the Goths were overrunning large tracts of the empire with impunity, and mocking the helplessness and timidity of the imperial troops.[183] The whole book is penetrated with that profound sense of the misery and instability of things human, which the corruption of society and recent calamities of the empire impressed with peculiar force on the minds of reflecting persons; which produced among pagans either melancholy or careless indifference, but made Christians cling with a more earnest and tenacious trust to the hopes and consolations of the Gospel.

Therasius, the husband of the young widow, had died after five years of married life. He is described by Chrysostom as having been distinguished in rank, in ability, and, above all, in virtue; as having held a high position in the army, with a reasonable expectation of soon becoming a prefect. But these very excellencies and brilliant prospects, which seemed to aggravate the sense of his loss, “ought,” Chrysostom observes, “to be regarded as sources of consolation. If death were a final and total destruction, then indeed it would have been reasonable to lament the extinction of one so benevolent, so gentle, so humble, prudent, and devout, as her late husband. But if death was only the landing of the soul in a tranquil haven, only a transition from the worse to better, from earth to heaven, from men to angels and archangels, and to Him who is the Lord of angels, then there was no place left for tears. It was better that he should depart and be with Christ, his true King, serving Whom in that other world, he would not be exposed to the dangers and animosities which attended the service of an earthly monarch. They were, indeed, separated in body, but neither length of time nor remoteness of place could sunder the friendship of the soul. Endure patiently for a little time, and you will behold again the face of your desire; perhaps even now, in visions, his form will be permitted to visit you.”[184] If it was the loss of the prefecture that she specially deplored, let her think from what dangerous ambitions her husband had been preserved; think of the fate of Theodorus, who was tempted by his high station to lay a plot against the Emperor, and suffered capital punishment for his treason.[185] The loftier a man’s ambitions in life, the more probable a disastrous fall. Look at the tragical fate of the Emperors in the course of the past fifty years. Two only, out of nine, had died natural deaths; of the other seven, one had been killed by a usurper,[186] one in battle,[187] one by a sedition of his domestic guards,[188] one by the man who had invested him with the purple.[189] Julian had fallen in battle in the Persian expedition. Valentinian I. died in a fit of rage, and Valens had been burnt, together with his retinue, in a house to which the Goths set fire. And of the widows of these Emperors, some had perished by poison, others had died of despair and broken hearts. Of those who yet survived, one was trembling for the safety of an orphan son,[190] another had with difficulty obtained permission to return from exile.[191] Of the wives of the present Emperors, one was racked by constant anxiety on account of the youth and inexperience of her husband,[192] the other was subject to no less anxiety for her husband’s safety, who ever since his elevation to the throne had been engaged in incessant warfare with the Goths.[193] Human ambition was a hard taskmistress, who employed arrogance and avarice as her agents; “do not then, mourn that your husband has been emancipated from her tyranny.” Most of the wisest and noblest characters even of the pagan world had resisted the allurements of ambition—Socrates, Epaminondas, Aristides, Diogenes, Crates. Shall the Christian then complain, if God takes one away from these temptations? He who cared least about glory, who was natural and modest, and unambitious, often acquired most glory, whereas he who was most eager and anxious to secure it, often obtained nothing but derision and reproach. She believed that her husband might have obtained the prefecture; it was a reasonable hope, but there was many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, and he who was king to-day was dead to-morrow. “Strive, then, to equal and even surpass your husband in piety and goodness, that you may be admitted into the same home, and reunited to him in a bond far more lovely and enduring than that of earthly wedlock.”

In the long treatise “De Virginitate,” Chrysostom boldly declares his preference for celibacy, but at the same time he exposes and denounces the mischievous error of Marcionites and Manichæans, who condemned marriage altogether as positive sin. “They were mistaken in supposing that abstinence from marriage would procure them a high place in heaven, because, even if it were granted that marriage was a positive sin, it must be remembered that not those who abstained from sin, but those who did positive good, would receive the highest rewards; not one who abstained from calling his brother ‘Raca,’ but he who loved his enemies. The celibacy of heretics, such as the Manichæans, was based on the false conception that all created matter was evil, and that the Creator Himself was an inferior being to the Supreme Deity. Hence their celibacy was the work of the devil; they belonged to those mentioned only to be condemned in 1 Tim. iv. 1-3 ‘as forbidding to marry.’[194] Chastity of body was worthless, if the soul within was depraved; but celibacy rightly cultivated, to preserve the purity of the soul towards God, was better than marriage, better as heaven was better than earth, and angels better than men.” He confronts the common objection: if all men embraced celibacy, how would the race be propagated? “Myriads of angels inhabit heaven, yet we believe they are not propagated by matrimony, and it was only by the special provision and will of God, that matrimony itself produced offspring. Sarah was barren till God vouchsafed her Isaac. Marriage was the inferior state to conduct us to the higher; it was to celibacy as the Law to the Gospel, it was a crutch to support those who would otherwise fall into sin, but to be dispensed with when possible. Let those, then, who reproached and derided celibacy, put a restraint upon their lips, lest like Miriam, or the children who mocked Elisha, they should be severely punished for pouring contempt on so holy a state.”[195]

We are enabled to understand from this work why the best Christianity in the East was so disparaging of the married state. The woman had not attained her proper place in society. She seems to have been ill-educated, to have been kept, especially before marriage, in a state of unnatural seclusion, which she broke when she could, and was too often treated by the husband like a slave, with severity and distrust. This degrading position was partly a remnant of a pagan state of society, partly the offspring of oriental character and habits of life. Christianity perceived the evil, but had not effected much towards a remedy. Instead of endeavouring to elevate, to soften, and refine the relation of one sex to the other, it encouraged rather a total separation. The treatise now under notice presents curious pictures of domestic life, if such it can be called, in that age. Matrimonial matches were arranged entirely by the parents, the attentions of the suitors were paid to the parents, not to the maiden herself. She suffered an agony of suspense, while the favourite of yesterday was supplanted by the superior charms of some rival of to-day, who in his turn was superseded by a third. Sometimes, on the very eve of marriage, the suitor whom she herself preferred was dismissed, and she was finally handed over to another whom she disliked. The suitors also, on their side, were racked by anxiety; for it was difficult to ascertain what the real character, personal appearance, and manners were of the maiden, who was always kept in the strictest seclusion. Then there was often great difficulty in getting the dowry paid by the father-in-law, which was an annoyance to each of the newly-married pair.[196]

He draws a highly-wrought picture, with some caustic humour, of the miseries of jealous wives and husbands. When a man constantly suspects “his dearest love,”[197] for whom he would willingly sacrifice life itself, what can console him? By day and night he has no peace, and is irritable to all. Some men have even slain their wives, without succeeding in cooling their own jealous rage. The trials of the wife were more severe; her words, her very looks and sighs, were watched by slaves, and reported to her husband, who was too jealous to distinguish false tales from the true. The poor woman was reduced to the wretched alternative of keeping her own apartment, or, if she went out, of rendering an exact account of her proceedings. Untold wealth, sumptuous fare, troops of servants, distinguished birth, amounted to nothing when placed in the balance against such miseries as these. If it was the woman who was jealous, she suffered more than the man, for she could not keep him at home, or set the servants to watch him. If she remonstrated with him, she would be told that she had better hold her tongue, and keep her suspicions to herself. If the husband instituted a suit against the wife, the laws were favourable to him, and he could procure her condemnation, and even death; but if she were the petitioner, he would escape.[198]

It was very natural that the woman, who, before marriage, was cooped up like a child in the parental home, should break out afterwards into extravagance, dissipation, and frivolity, if not worse. An inordinate amount of time and money was bestowed upon dress, though perhaps not more than by the fashionable ladies of modern times. Women loaded themselves with ornaments, under the delusion that these added to their charms, whereas, Chrysostom observes, if the woman was naturally beautiful, the ornaments only concealed and detracted from her charms. If she was ugly, they only set off her ugliness by the glaring contrast, and the effect on the spectator was ludicrous or painful. But the adornment of the virgin who had dedicated herself to God was altogether spiritual. She arrayed herself in gentleness, modesty, poverty, humility, fasting, vigils. Incorporeal graces and incorporeal beauty were the objects of her love and contemplation. She treated enemies with such perfect courtesy and forbearance, that even the depraved were put to shame in her presence. The goodness of the soul within overflowed into all her outer actions.[199] From this rapturous description of a highly spiritual kind of life, Chrysostom passes, with versatile quickness, to a somewhat ludicrous picture of the petty cares of life in the world. “The worldly lady thinks it a fine thing to drive round the Forum; how much better to be independent, and use her feet for the purpose for which God gave them! There was always some difficulty about the mules: she and her husband wanted them at the same time; one or both were lame or turned out to grass. A quiet and modestly-dressed woman needed no carriage and attendants to protect her in her passage through the streets, but might walk through the Forum, free from any annoyance. Some might say it was pleasant to be waited on by a troop of handmaids; but, on the contrary, such a charge was attended with much anxiety. Not only had the sick to be taken care of, but the indolent to be chastised, mischief, quarrels, and all kinds of evil doings to be corrected; and if there happened to be one distinguished by personal beauty, jealousy was added to all these other cares, lest the husband should be so captivated by her charms as to pay more attention to her than to her mistress.[200] If it was replied to all these objections against married life, that Abraham and other saints in the Old Testament were all married men, it must be remembered that a much higher standard was required under the New Dispensation. There were degrees of perfection. When Noah was said to be ‘perfect in his generation,’ it meant relatively to that age in which he lived, for what is perfect in relation to one era becomes imperfect for another. Murder was forbidden by the Old Law, but hatred and wrath under the New. A larger effusion of the Holy Spirit rendered Christian men fully grown as compared with the children of the Old Dispensation. Degrees of virtue, impossible then, were attainable now; and as the moral standard under the Old Dispensation was lower, so the rewards of obedience were less exalted. The Jews were encouraged to obedience by the promise of an earthly country, Christians by the prospect of heaven. The Jews were deterred from sin by menaces of temporal calamity; the Christian, of eternal punishment. Let us, therefore, not spend our care upon money-getting and wives and luxurious living, else how shall we ever become men rather than children, and live in the spirit? for when we have taken our journey to that other world, the time for contest will have passed; then those who have not oil in their lamps will be unable to borrow it from their neighbours, or he who has a soiled garment to exchange it for another robe. When the Judge’s throne has been placed, and He is seated upon it, and the fiery stream is ‘coming forth from before Him’ (Dan. vii. 10), and the scrutiny of past life has begun: though Noah, Daniel, and Job were to implore an alteration of the sentence passed upon their own sons and daughters, their intercession would not avail.”[201]

The long treatise “De S. Babyla contra Julianum et Gentiles” presents several interesting subjects for consideration. In the history of the grove of Daphne we have a singular instance of the way in which Grecian legend was transplanted into foreign soil. Daphne, the daughter of the Grecian river-god Ladon, was, according to the Syrian version of the myth, overtaken by Apollo near Antioch. Here it was, on the banks, not of the Peneus, but of the Orontes, that the maiden prayed to her mother earth to open her arms and shelter her from the pursuit of the amorous god, and that the laurel plant sprang out of the spot where she disappeared from the eyes of her disappointed lover. The horse of Seleucus Nicator, founder of the Syrian monarchy, was said to have struck his hoof upon one of the arrows which Apollo had dropped in the hurry of his chase; in consequence of which the king dedicated the place to the god. A temple was erected in his honour, ample in proportions, and sumptuous in its adornments; the interior walls were resplendent with polished marbles, the lofty ceiling was of cypress wood. The colossal image of the god, enriched with gold and gems, nearly reached the top of the roof; the draped portions were of wood, the nude portions of marble. The fingers of the deity lightly touched the lyre which hung from his shoulders, and in the other hand he held a golden dish, as if about to pour a libation on the earth, “and supplicate the venerable mother to give to his arms the cold and beauteous Daphne.”[202] The whole grove became consecrated to pleasure, under the guise of festivity in honour of the god. A more beautiful combination of delights cannot well be conceived. The grove was situated five miles to the south-west of Antioch, among the outskirts of the hills, where many of the limpid streams, rushing down towards the valley of the Orontes, mingled their waters. The road which connected the city with this spot was lined on the left hand with large gardens and groves, baths, fountains, and resting-places; on the right were villas with vineyards and rose-gardens irrigated by rivulets. Daphne itself was, according to Strabo,[203] eighty stadia, or about ten miles, in circumference. It contained everything which could gratify and charm the senses; the deep impenetrable shade of cypress trees, the delicious sound and coolness of falling waters, the fragrance of aromatic shrubs. Such a combination of all that was voluptuous told with fatal and enervating effect upon the morals of a people who were at all times disposed to an immoderate indulgence in luxurious pleasures. Roman troops, and even Roman emperors, fell victims to the allurements of the spot.[204] The annual celebration of the Olympian games instituted here by Commodus was especially the occasion of shocking excesses of every kind. But by the order of Gallus Cæsar an attempt was made to introduce a pure association into the spot hitherto abandoned to the licentiousness of pagan rites. The remains of Babylas, the Bishop of Antioch, who had suffered martyrdom in the reign of Decius, were transferred from their resting-place in the city to the grove of Daphne. The chapel or martyry erected over the bones of the Christian saint stood hard by the temple of the pagan deity. Here it confronted the Christian visitor, as a warning to him not to take part in pagan and licentious rites, abhorrent to the faith for which the Bishop had died. But the remains of the martyr were not permitted to rest in peace. When Julian visited Antioch, he consulted the oracle of Apollo at Daphne respecting the issue of the expedition which he was about to make into Persia. But the oracle was dumb. At length the god yielded to the importunity of repeated prayers and sacrifices so far as to explain the cause of his silence. He was disturbed by the proximity of a dead body: “Break open the sepulchres, take up the bones, and remove them hence.” The demand was interpreted as referring to the remains of Babylas, and the wishes of the crestfallen oracle were complied with.[205] But the insult done to the Christian martyr was speedily avenged. Soon after the accomplishment of the impious act, a violent thunderstorm broke over the temple, and the lightning consumed both the roof of the building and the statue of the deity. At the time when Chrysostom wrote, some twenty years after the occurrence, the mournful wreck was yet standing; but the chapel again contained the relics of the saint and martyr, and conferred blessings on the pilgrims who resorted thither in crowds. The ruined and deserted temple, side by side with the carefully-preserved church of the martyr, thronged by devotees, presented a striking emblem of the fate of paganism, crumbling and vanishing away before the presence of the new faith, blasted by the lightning flash of a mightier force. A great portion of the treatise of Chrysostom is occupied by an analysis of his old master Libanius’s elegy over the fate of the stricken shrine of pagan worship. The affected and inflated tone of the sophist’s composition deserves the sarcasm and scorn which his pupil unsparingly pours upon it.

CHAPTER VIII.

ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD BY FLAVIAN—INAUGURAL DISCOURSE IN THE CATHEDRAL—HOMILIES AGAINST THE ARIANS—ANIMADVERSIONS ON THE CHARIOT RACES. A.D. 386.

Chrysostom had used the office of a deacon well. The lofty tone of Christian piety, the boldness, the ability, the command of language manifested in his writings, marked him out as eminently qualified for a preacher. His treatises, indeed, are distinguished by a vehemence and energy which belong more to the fervour of the orator than to the calmness of the writer. No doubt also men had not forgotten the talent for speaking which he had displayed when he began to practise, nearly twenty years before, as a lawyer. The Bishop Flavian ordained him a priest in 386, and immediately appointed him to be one of the most frequent preachers in the church. The bishop of a see like Antioch at that time rather resembled the rector of a large town parish than the bishop of modern times. He resided in Antioch, and discharged the duties of a chief pastor, assisted by his staff of priests and deacons. Where the whole Christian population amounted to not more than 100,000 souls, as in Antioch,[206] that division into distinct districts, such as were formed in Alexandria,[207] Rome, and Constantinople, with separate churches, served by members of the central staff in rotation, or by pastors especially appropriated to them, does not seem to have been made. Chrysostom officiated and preached in the great church, where the bishop also officiated. The less learned and less able priests were appointed to the less responsible duties of visiting the sick and the poor, and administering the sacraments. The vocation of Chrysostom, however, was especially that of a teacher. It will be readily acknowledged how difficult, how delicate an office preaching was, in an age when Christianity and Paganism were still existing side by side, and when the opinions of many men were floating in suspense between the old faith and the new, and were liable to be distracted from a firm hold upon the truth by Judaism and heresies of every shade.

Either on the occasion of his ordination, or very soon after it, Chrysostom preached an inaugural discourse, in the presence of the bishop. It is distinguished by that flowery and exaggerated kind of rhetoric which he occasionally displays in all its native oriental luxuriance, and which is due to the school in which he was brought up, rather than to the man. On such a public and formal occasion he appears less as the Christian teacher than as the scholar of Libanius the Rhetorician. His self-disparagement at the opening of his discourse, and his flattering encomiums on Flavian and Meletius at the close, would to modern, certainly at least to English, ears sound intolerably affected. No doubt, however, they were acceptable to the taste of his audience at Antioch; and, indeed, the whole discourse contains nothing more overstrained or ornate than is to be found in some of the most celebrated performances of the great French preachers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A few paraphrases will suffice to illustrate the character of his discourse.

“He could scarcely believe what had befallen him, that he, an insignificant and abject youth,[208] should find himself elevated to such a height of dignity. The spectacle of so vast a multitude hanging in expectation on his lips quite unnerved him, and would have dried up fountains of eloquence, had he possessed such. How, then, could he hope that his little trickling stream of words would not fail, and that the feeble thoughts which he had put together with so much labour would not vanish from his mind?

“Wherefore he besought them to pray earnestly that he might be inspired with courage to open his mouth boldly in this hitherto unattempted work.[209] He wished to offer the first-fruits of his speech in praise to God. As the tiller of the ground gave of his wheat, grapes, or olives, so he would fain make an offering in kind; he would ‘praise the name of God with a song, and magnify it with thanksgiving.’ But the consciousness of sin made him shrink from the task, for as in a wreath not only must the flowers be clean, but also the hands which wove it, so in sacred hymns not only must the words be holy, but also the soul of him who composed them. The words of the wise man who said, ‘praise is not becoming in the mouth of a sinner,’[210] sealed up his lips, and when David invited all creation, animate and inanimate, visible and invisible, to ‘praise the Lord of Heaven, to praise him in the height,’ he did not include the sinner in the invitation. He would rather therefore dilate on the merits of some of his fellow-men who were worthier than himself. The mention of their Christian virtues would be an indirect way, legitimate for a sinner, of paying glory and honour to God himself. And to whom should he address his praises first but to their bishop, whom he might call the teacher of their country, and through their country of the world at large? To enter fully, however, into his manifold virtues was to dive into so deep a sea that he feared he should lose himself in its profundities. To do justice to the task would require an inspired and apostolic tongue. He must confine himself to a few points. Although reared in the midst of affluence, Flavian had surmounted the difficulties which impeded the entrance of a rich man into the kingdom of heaven. He had been distinguished from youth by perfect temperance and control over the bodily appetites, by contempt of luxury and a costly table. Though untimely deprived of parental care, and exposed to the temptations incident to wealth, youth, and good birth, yet had he triumphed over them all. He had assiduously cultivated his mind, and had put the bridle of fasting on his body sufficient to curb excess, without impairing its strength and usefulness; and though he had now glided into the haven of a calm old age, yet he did not relax the severity of this personal discipline. The death of their beloved father Meletius had caused great distress and perplexity to the Church, but the appearance of his successor had dispersed it, as clouds vanished before the sun. When Flavian mounted the episcopal throne, Meletius himself seemed to have risen from his tomb.”

All that can be collected from history respecting Flavian’s character confirms and justifies these eulogiums, though English taste would prefer them to have been uttered after his death rather than in his actual presence. Chrysostom concludes by saying that he had prolonged his address beyond the bounds which became his position, but the flowery field of praise had tempted him to linger. “He would conclude his task by asking their prayers: prayers that their common mother the Church might remain undisturbed and steadfast, and that the life of their father, teacher, spiritual shepherd, and pilot, might be prolonged; prayers finally that he, the preacher, might be strengthened to bear the yoke which was laid upon him, might in the great day restore safely the deposit which his Master had committed to his trust, and obtain mercy for his sins through the grace and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, and power, and worship for ever and ever.”

We now enter on a period of ten years, during which Chrysostom constantly resided in Antioch, and was occupied in the almost incessant labour of preaching. The main bulk of those voluminous works which have been preserved to our times belongs to this period; yet there can be no doubt that, numerous as are the extant works, they represent but a fraction of the discourses which he actually delivered. For we know, on his own authority, that he frequently preached twice, occasionally oftener, in the course of a week.[211]

It does not fall within the scope of this essay to determine how many of the homilies which we possess were delivered in each year, or to enter into a critical examination of every set. But an attempt will be made to extract from them whatever seems to throw light upon the life and times of their author, upon events in which he played a conspicuous part, or which were of great public importance; whatever also illustrates the special condition of the Church,—her general practice, her merits and defects, the dangers and difficulties with which, from dissension within or heresy without, she had at this era to contend.

The field of subjects on which the preacher was called to exercise his powers was varied and extensive. Christianity was imperilled by corruption of morals and corruption of faith. Not the laity only, but the clergy also, at least in the great towns, had become deeply infected by the prevalent follies and vices of the age. Again, between the orthodox Christian and the Pagan every variety of heresy intervened. The Arian, the Manichæan, the Marcionite, the Sabellian, the Jew,—all were, so to say, touching and fraying the edge of pure Christianity; the danger was, lest they should gradually so wear it away as to injure the very vitals of the faith. Such were the evils which Chrysostom bent his energies to redress, such the enemies whom he manfully endeavoured to repel. He is alternately the champion of a pure morality and of a sound faith.

Among the discourses which belong to the first year of his priesthood falls one delivered in commemoration of Bishop Meletius, the predecessor of Flavian.[212] He had died at Constantinople about the end of May A.D. 381, and Chrysostom in the commencement of his homily remarks, that five years had now elapsed since the bishop had taken his journey to the “Saviour of his longings.” The tone of the discourse illustrates a characteristic of the times; a passionate devotion to the memory of departed saints which was rapidly passing into actual adoration; a subject on which more will be said hereafter. The shrine which contained the reliques of Meletius was placed in the sight of the preacher and the congregation, who swarmed round it like bees.[213] When Chrysostom looked at the great multitude assembled he congratulated the holy Meletius on enjoying such honour after his death, and he congratulated the people also on the endurance of their affection to their late spiritual father. Meletius was like the sound root which though invisible proved its strength by the vigour of its fruit. When he had returned from his first banishment the whole Christian population had streamed forth to meet him. Happy those who succeeded in clasping his feet, kissing his hand, hearing his voice. Others who beheld him only at a distance felt that they too had obtained a blessing from the mere sight. A kind of spiritual glory emanated from his holy person, even as the shadows of St. Peter and St. John had healed the sick on whom they fell. “Let us all, rulers and ruled, men and women, old and young, free men and slaves, offer prayer, taking the blessed Meletius into partnership with this our prayer (since he has more confidence now in offering prayer, and entertains a warmer affection towards us), that our love may be increased and that as now we stand beside his shrine, so one day we may all be permitted to approach his resting-place in the other world.”

The discourses of Chrysostom against Arians and Jews fall within the first year of his priesthood.[214] They are among the finest of his productions, and deserve perusal on account of their intrinsic merit no less than of the important points of doctrine with which they are concerned. Antioch, indeed, may in some sort be regarded as the cradle of Arianism. Paul of Samosata, who was deposed from the see of Antioch in A.D. 272, advocated doctrines of a Sabellian character, but that sophistical dialectical school of thought of which the Arians were the most conspicuous representatives may be traced to him. His original calling had been that of a sophist, and he was therefore by training more fitted to attack established doctrines than to build up a definite system of his own. Hence it is not surprising that, though his own tendency was to Sabellian opinions, Lucian, his intimate friend and fellow-countryman, held doctrines diametrically opposite, or what were afterwards called Arian.[215] Lucian, when presbyter at Antioch, was the teacher of Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, of Leontius, the Arian Bishop of Antioch, and perhaps also of Arius himself.[216] Aëtius, and his pupil Eunomius, originators of the most extreme and undisguised form of Arianism, resided in the beginning of their career at Antioch. Eunomius, in fact, was the founder of a sect which was called Eunomian after him; or sometimes Anomœan, because it denied not only equality but even similarity (ὁμοιότης) between the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity. It was the most materialistic phase which Arianism developed. Mystery was to be eliminated from revelation as much as possible, sacramental grace was little recognised, asceticism disparaged. Adherents of this school seem to have existed still in some force at Antioch. A system marked by so much of cold intellectual pride was especially repugnant to the fervid and humble faith of Chrysostom. Yet in his assaults upon it he was neither precipitate nor harsh. In his first homily “On the incomprehensible Nature of God,” he says that, having observed several persons who were infected by this heresy listening to his discourses, he had abstained from attacking their errors, wishing to gain a firmer hold upon their interest before engaging with them in controversy. But having been invited by them to undertake the contest, he could not decline it, but would endeavour to conduct it in a spirit of gentleness and love, since “the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle towards” all, as well as “apt to teach.” He urges all disputants to remember our Lord’s answer when He was buffeted, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?”[217]

He dilates on the arrogance of the Anomœans in pretending to understand and to define the exact nature of God. “Professing themselves wise they only discovered their folly. Imperfect knowledge on so profound a subject was an inevitable part of the imperfection of our human state. The condition of our present knowledge was this: we know many things about God, but we do not know how they are or take place. For example, we may know that He is everywhere and without beginning or end, but how He is thus, we know not. We know that He begat the Son, and that the Holy Spirit proceeded from Him, but how these things can be we are unable to tell. This is analogous to our knowledge of many things which are called natural. We eat various kinds of food, but how they nourish us and are transmuted into the several humours of the body we do not understand.”[218]

“Again, if the wisest and holiest men have confessed themselves incompetent to fathom the purposes and dispensations of God, how far more inscrutable must His essence be! If David exclaims ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me, I cannot attain unto it;’ and St. Paul, ‘Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, how untraceable His ways!’ if the very angels do not presume to discuss the nature of God, but humbly adore Him with veiled faces, crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ how monstrous is the conceit and irreverence of those who curiously investigate and pretend to define the exact nature of the Godhead!”[219]

He proceeds to dwell upon the littleness and feebleness of man, as contrasted with the amazing and boundless power of God. The Eunomians maintained that man could know the nature of God as much as God Himself knew it. “What mad presumption was this! The Prophets exhaust all available metaphors to express the insignificance of man as compared with God. Men are ‘dust and ashes,’ ‘grass,’ and the ‘flower of grass,’ ‘a vapour,’ ‘a shadow.’ Inanimate creation acknowledges the irresistible supremacy of His power; ‘if He do but touch the hills they shall smoke,’ ‘He shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble’ (Job ix. 6).” “Seest thou not yon sky, how beautiful it is, how vast, spangled with what a choir of stars? Five thousand years and more has it stood, yet length of time has left no mark of old age upon it: like a youthful vigorous body it retains the beauty with which it was endowed at the beginning. This beautiful, this vast, this starry, this ancient firmament, was made by that God into whose nature you curiously pry, was made with as much ease as a man might for pastime construct a hovel: ‘He established the sky like a roof, and stretched it out like a tent over the earth’ (Isa. xl. 22). The solid, durable earth He made, and all the nations of the world, even as far as the British Isles, are but as a drop in a bucket; and shall man, who is but an infinitesimal part of this drop, presume to inquire into the nature of Him who made all these forces and whom they obey?”[220] “God dwells in the light which no man can approach unto. If the light which surrounds Him be inaccessible, how much more God Himself who is within it? St. Paul rebukes those who presume to question the dispensation of God. ‘Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?’ How much more, then, would he have reproved dogmatic assumptions respecting the nature of the great Dispenser?[221] The declaration of St. John, that no man had seen God at any time, might appear at variance with the descriptions in the prophets of visions of the Deity. As: ‘I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, high and lifted up’ (Isa. vi. 1). ‘I saw the Lord standing above the altar’ (Amos ix. 1). ‘I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow,’ etc. (Dan. vii. 9). But the very variety of forms under which God is said to have appeared proves that these manifestations were merely condescensions to the weakness of human nature, which requires something that the eye can see and the ear can hear. They were only manifestations of the Deity adapted to man’s capacity; not the Divine Nature itself, which is simple, incomposite, devoid of shape. So also, when it is said of God the Son that He is ‘in the bosom of the Father,’ when He is described as standing, or sitting, on the right hand of God, these expressions must not be interpreted in too material a sense; they are expressions accommodated to our understandings, to convey an idea of such an intimate union and equality between the two Persons as is in itself incomprehensible.”[222]

And this leads him on to consider the second error of the Arians—their denial of absolute equality between the three Persons in the Godhead. His arguments are based, as usual, entirely on an appeal to Holy Scripture. He makes a skilful selection and combination of texts to prove his point: that the titles “God” and “Lord” are common to the first two Persons in the Trinity—the names Father and Son being added merely to distinguish the Personality. Had the Father alone been God, then it would have been superfluous to add the name Father at all: “there is one God” would have been sufficient. But, as it was, the titles “God” and “Lord” were applied to both Persons to prove their equality in respect of Godhead. That the appellation of Lord no way indicated inferiority was plain, because it was frequently applied to the Father. “The Lord our God is one Lord,” Exod. xx. 2. “Great is our Lord, and great is his power,” Ps. cxlvii. 5. On the other hand, Christ is frequently entitled God, e.g. “Immanuel—God with us.” “Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.” In some instances the Father and the Son are both called Lord, or both God, in the same passage; as, for example, “The Lord said unto my Lord, ... Thy throne, O God (the Son), is for ever and ever; ... wherefore God (the Father), even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness,” etc.[223]

The reason why Christ sometimes acted and spoke in a manner which implied human infirmity and inferiority to the Father was twofold: First, that men might be convinced that He did really, substantially, exist in the truth of our human nature; that He was not a mere phantom—the error of Marcion, Manes, and Valentinus—an error which would have been still more prevalent had He not so clearly manifested the reality of his humanity. On the other hand, He was reserved and cautious in declaring the highest mystery—his divine union and equality with the Father—out of condescension to the weakness of man’s intellect, which recoiled from the more recondite mysteries. When He told them that “Abraham rejoiced to see his day,” that “before Abraham was He was,” “that the bread from heaven was his flesh, which He would give for the life of the world,” that “hereafter they should see the Son of Man coming in the clouds,” they were invariably offended. But, on the contrary, He was chiefly accepted when He spoke words implying more humiliation—for example, “I can of my own self do nothing, but as my Father taught me, even so I speak.” “As He spake these words,” we are told, “many believed on Him.”[224]

Two other reasons might be assigned for this language of self-abasement. One was, that He came to teach us humility,—“Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” He “came not to be ministered unto but to minister.” He who bids others be lowly must first and pre-eminently be lowly himself. Therefore He performed such acts as washing his disciples’ feet; and the Incarnation itself was no sign, as the Arian maintained, of inferiority, but only the highest expression of that great principle of self-sacrificing love which He came to teach. Lastly, by such language He directs our minds to the apprehension of a clear distinction between the Persons in the Godhead. If his sayings about Himself had all been of the same type as “I and my Father are one,” the Sabellian error of confounding the Persons would have become yet more prevalent than it was. Thus, we find throughout our Lord’s life, in his acts and language, a careful mixture and variation of character in order to present the two elements—the human and divine—in equal proportions. He predicts his own sufferings and death, yet quickly afterwards He prays the Father that He might be, if possible, spared undergoing them. In the first act is pure divinity; in the second, humanity shrinking from that pain which is abhorrent to human nature.[225]

This very fact, however, of our Lord’s praying, was laid hold of by the Arians to prove the inferiority of his nature. This argument Chrysostom meets in Homilies IX. and X. The raising of Lazarus had been read in the Gospel for the day. “I perceive,” he says, “that many of the Jews and heretics will find an excuse, in the prayer offered by Christ before performing this miracle, to impugn his power, and say He could not have done it without the Father’s assistance.” But this fell to the ground, because on most other occasions our Lord wrought his miracles without any prayer at all. To the dead maiden he simply said, “Talitha cumi,” and she arose; the woman with an issue of blood was healed without any word or touch from Him. In the case of Lazarus He prayed, as He Himself declared, for the sake of the people, that they might perceive that God heard his prayers—that there was a perfect unanimity between the Father and the Son. Martha, in fact, had asked for a prayer—“I know whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give it thee;” therefore He prayed; just as, when the centurion said, “Speak the word only,” He spake the word and the servant was healed. If He had needed help He would have invoked it before all his miracles. In fact there was no kind of sovereign power which He hesitated to exercise. “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee” ... “the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins;”—to an evil spirit, “I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him;” ... “to them of old it was said, Thou shalt not kill; but I say, whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause,” etc. He represents Himself as saying on the final day, “Come, ye blessed;” or “Depart, ye cursed.” Thus He claims authority to absolve, to judge, to legislate.

Homilies XI. and XII., against the Anomœans, were delivered some ten years later at Constantinople, but as they contain no special references to the events of that time, the continuity of this subject may be maintained by extracting from them the argument there employed to prove the equality of the Son with the Father. It is based on the passage, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (St. John v. 17); by which our Saviour justified Himself from the accusation of breaking the Sabbath when He healed the paralytic. The words “My Father worketh,” Chrysostom observes, refer to the daily operations of God’s providence, by which he sustains in being those things which he commanded into existence.

This upholding energy, our Lord declares, is active at all times and on all days alike; and if it were not, the fabric of the universe would fall to pieces. He claims a similar right to providential rule, which implies equality with the Father. “My Father worketh, and I work.” If the Son had been inferior, such a method of justifying Himself would only have added force to the charges of his enemies. If a subject of the Emperor were to put on the imperial diadem and purple, it would be no excuse to say that he wore them because the Emperor wore them—“the Emperor wears them, and I wear them;”—on the contrary, it would augment the offensiveness of his presumption and arrogance. If Christ were not equal with the Father, it was the height of presumption to use those words, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

In dealing with such lengthy homilies, it has been impossible to do more than give specimens in a very condensed form of the main lines of argument which Chrysostom adopts. They vary greatly in value; but two points cannot fail to arrest the notice of any one who reads these homilies through:—First, the profound acquaintance of their author with Holy Scripture; extending apparently with equal force to every part of the sacred volume. Old and New Testament and Apocrypha are almost equally employed for argument, illustration, adornment; he is at home everywhere. Secondly, upon Scripture all his arguments are based: in none of his controversial homilies does Chrysostom take his stand upon the platform of existing tradition, or rely on the authority of the Church alone; “to the law and to the testimony” is always the way with him. And this was a test at that time universally accepted. The dispute with the most rationalistic and critical Arians seems never to have turned on the authority, but only on the interpretation of Scripture. Scripture is appealed to as the supreme court for trying all their differences; the only question was, as to the exact meaning of its decisions.

Again, we cannot fail to be struck by the ease and rapidity with which he glances off from the most controversial and theological parts of his discourse to practical reproof and exhortation. Nothing provoked him more than to see the bulk of that large concourse of people, who had been listening with profound attention to his address, leave the church just as the celebration of the Eucharist was about to commence. “Deeply do I groan to perceive that when your fellow-servant is speaking, great is your earnestness, strained your attention, you crowd one upon another, and stay till the very end; but that, when Christ is about to appear in the holy mysteries, the church is empty and deserted.... If my words had been laid up in your hearts they would have kept you here, and brought you to the celebration of these most solemn mysteries with greater piety; but as it is, my speech seems as fruitless as the performance of a lute-player, for as soon as I have finished you depart. Away with the frigid excuse of many: I can say prayers at home, but I cannot at home hear homilies and doctrine. Thou deceivest thyself, O man; you may indeed pray at home, but it is impossible to pray in the same manner as at church, where there is so large an assembly of your spiritual fathers, and the cry of the worshippers is sent up with one accord; where there is unanimity and concert in prayer; and where the priests preside, that the weaker supplications of the multitude being supported by theirs, which are more powerful, may ascend together with these to heaven. First prayer, then discourse; so say the Apostles—“But we will give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”[226]

Again, as frequently in other discourses, he reproves the congregation for testifying their admiration of his words by applause. “You praise what I have said, you receive my exhortation with tumults of applause; but show your approbation by obedience; that is the praise which I seek, the applause which comes through deeds.”[227]

His hearers, in fact, were so closely packed, and so much absorbed in listening to his discourse, that pickpockets often practised on them with some success. Chrysostom advises them, therefore, to bring no money or ornaments about their persons to church. It was a device of the devil, who hoped by means of this annoyance to chill their zeal in attending the services, just as he stripped Job of everything, not merely to make him poor but to rob him if possible of his piety.[228]

But the most inveterate enemy with which Chrysostom had to contend was the circus. Against this he declaims with all the vehemence of Evangelical invectives against horse-racing in modern times. The indomitable passion for the chariot-races, and the silly eagerness displayed about them by the inhabitants of Rome, Constantinople, and Antioch, are among the most remarkable symptoms of the depraved state of society under the later Empire. The whole populace was divided into factions distinguished by the different colours adopted by the charioteers, of which green and blue were the two chief favourites. The animosity, the sanguinary tumults, the superstitions,[229] folly, violence of every kind, which were mixed up with these popular amusements, well deserved the unsparing severity with which they were lashed by the great preacher.

A few specimens shall be collected here from other homilies, as well as from those immediately under consideration.

“Again we have the horse-races; again our assembly is thinned. There were many indeed whose absence he little regretted: they were to the faithful amongst the congregation only as leaves to fruit.[230] Sometimes, however, the church was deserted by those of whom he had expected more fidelity. He felt disheartened, like a sower who had scattered good seed plentifully, but with no adequate result. Gladly and eagerly would he continue his exertions could he see any fruit of his labours; but when, forgetful of all his exhortations and warnings, and solemn remindings of the terrible doom, the unquenchable fire, the undying worm, they again abandoned themselves to the diabolical exhibitions of the race-course, with what heart could he return to the unthankful task? They manifested, indeed, by applause, the pleasure with which they heard his words, and then they hurried off to the circus, and, sitting side by side with Jew or Pagan, they applauded with a kind of frenzied eagerness the efforts of the several charioteers; they rushed tumultuously along, jostling one another, and shouting, ‘that horse didn’t run fairly,’ ‘that was tripped up and fell,’ and the like.[231] Various excuses were pleaded for absence from church—the exigencies of business, poverty, ill health, lameness; but these impediments never prevented attendance at the Hippodrome. In the church the chief places even were not always all occupied, but there old and young, rich and poor, crowded every available space for standing or sitting; pushing, and squeezing, and trampling on one another’s feet, while the sun poured down on their heads: yet they appeared thoroughly to enjoy themselves, in spite of all these discomforts; while in the church the length of the sermon, or the heat, or the crowd, were perpetual subjects of complaint.”[232]

Such are a few illustrations of one, but perhaps the most notable, form among many in which the impulsiveness and frivolity of the people of Antioch were displayed. “The building which the preacher had so laboriously and industriously reared in the hearts of his disciples was thus cruelly dashed down and levelled to the very ground by a few hours of dissolving pleasure and iniquitous frivolity.”[233]

Truly indeed might the lamentation of the prophet over the evanescent piety of Ephraim and Judah have been applied to these people: “Your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away” (Hos. vi. 4).

CHAPTER IX.

HOMILIES AGAINST PAGANS AND JEWS—CONDITION OF THE JEWS IN ANTIOCH—JUDAISING CHRISTIANS—HOMILIES ON CHRISTMAS DAY AND NEW YEAR’S DAY—CENSURE OF PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS. A.D. 386, 387.

In dealing with the Arians, the contest mainly turned, as has been pointed out in the previous chapter, on the interpretation of Scripture; but in doing battle with Pagans and Jews, with the former especially, Chrysostom had of course to take up a different attitude. The method which he adopts towards the Jew is to demonstrate the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and to insist on the consequent abrogation of the Jewish dispensation. The ground on which he mainly relies against the Pagan is the miraculous establishment and progress of Christianity in the face of unprecedented opposition, as an evidence of its divine origin.

The treatise addressed to Jews and Gentiles combined exhibits a powerful application of both these methods.[234] “He would first of all enter the lists against the Pagan. And here caution was requisite. He would not say, when the Pagan asked how the divinity of Christ was to be proved, that Christ created the world, raised the dead, healed the sick, expelled demons, promised a resurrection and a heavenly kingdom, because these were the very questions upon which they joined issue. But he would start from a ground which even the Pagan would accept: no one would venture to deny that the Christian religion was founded by Jesus Christ, and from this simple fact he would undertake to prove that Christ could be no less than God. No mere man could, in so short a time, with such feeble instruments, and in the face of such opposition arising from inveterate custom and forms of faith, have subdued so many and such various races of mankind.[235] How contrary to the common course of events, that He who was despised, weak, and put to an ignominious death, should now be honoured and adored in all regions of the earth! Emperors who have made laws, and altered the constitution of states, who have ruled nations by their nod, in whose hands was the power of life and death, pass away; their images are in time destroyed, their actions forgotten, their adherents despised, their very names buried in oblivion:—present grandeur is succeeded by nothingness. In the case of Jesus Christ all is reversed. During his lifetime, all seemed failure and degradation, but a career of glory and triumph succeeded his death.[236] Before his death Judas betrayed him, St. Peter denied him; after his death, St. Peter and the rest of the Apostles traversed the world to bear witness to his truth, and thousands of people have died rather than utter what the chief of the Apostles once uttered from fear of a maid-servant’s taunts. ‘His rest shall be glorious:’—this was true, not only of the Master, but also of his disciples. In that most royal city of Rome, monarchs, prefects, generals, flocked to the sepulchres of the fisherman and the tent-maker; and in Constantinople they who wore the diadem were content to lay their bones in the porch of the Apostles’ Church, and to become as it were the door-keepers of humble fishermen.[237] Christ had made the most ignominious death, and the instrument of it, glorious. It was written, ‘Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree,’ yet the cross had become the object of desire and love; it was more honourable than the whole world, for the imperial crown itself was not such an ornament to the head: princes and subjects, men and women, bond and free, all delighted to wear it imprinted on the brow. It was conspicuous on the Holy Table, and in the ceremony of ordaining priests; in houses, in market-places, by the wayside, and on mountain sides, on couches and on garments, on ships, on drinking vessels, in mural decorations, the cross was depicted. Whence all this extraordinary honour to a piece of wood, unless the power of him who died upon it was divine?”[238]

Christ had declared that the gates of hell should not prevail against his Rock-founded Church. How far had this prediction been verified? In a short space of time Christianity had abolished ancestral customs, plucked up deeply-rooted habits, overturned altars and temples, caused unclean rites and ceremonials to vanish away. Christian altars had been erected in Italy, in Persia, in Scythia, in Africa. “What say I? even the British Isles, which lie outside the boundaries of our world and our sea, in the midst of the ocean itself, have experienced the power of the Word, for even there churches and altars have been set up.” Thus the world had been, so to say, cleared of thorns, and purified to receive the seed of godliness. What a proof of superhuman power! The progress of the Church had been encountered by customs which were not only venerated but pleasant; yet these traditions, handed down through long lines of ancestors, were abandoned for a religion far more severe and laborious, a religion which substituted fasting for enjoyment, poverty for money-getting, temperance for lasciviousness, meekness for wrath, benevolence for ill-will. Men who had long been enervated by luxury, and accustomed to the broad way, had been converted into the narrow, rugged path, not by tens or twenties, but by multitudes under the whole heaven. By whose agency had these mighty results been wrought? By a few unlearned obscure men, without illustrious ancestors, without money, without eloquence.[239] And all this in the teeth of opposition of the most varied kind. For where the new doctrine penetrated, it excited divisions and strife; children were set at variance with parents, brother with brother, husband with wife, master with servant. Yet, in spite of persecution and disruption of social ties, the new faith grew and flourished. How could such unprecedented marvels have come to pass but through the divine power, and in obedience to that Word of God which is creative of actual results? Just as, when He said “Let the earth bring forth grass,” the wilderness became a garden, so when the expression of His purpose had gone forth, “I will build my Church,” straightway the process began, and though tyrants and people, sophists and orators, custom and religion, had been arrayed against it, yet the Word, going forth like fire, consumed the thorns, and scattered the good seed over the purified soil.[240]

In attempting to convince the Jews of the divinity of Jesus Christ by proving the exact fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in his person and work, Chrysostom displays that intimate familiarity with every part of Scripture which is his eminent characteristic.

The passages are, on the whole, most judiciously selected; some corresponding passage from the New Testament being placed, if possible, against each, with a careful attention even to verbal parallelism. For instance, against the passage in Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,” he places the verse from St. John i. 32, “I beheld the Spirit descending like a dove, and it abode upon him.”[241] He refers each event in Christ’s life, his Incarnation, his rejection by the Jews, his betrayal, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, the descent of the Holy Ghost, and the beginning of the Apostolic labours to some corresponding prediction.[242] He sometimes, however, falls into the error, less common in him than in other patristic interpreters, of seeing direct references to the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom, to the almost total exclusion of any other meaning. For instance, such passages as “Their sound is gone out into all lands,” “That thou mayest make princes in all lands,” are cited as if exclusively predictive of the propagation of Christianity. In such words as “The virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company,” he sees a distinct foreshadowing of the honour to be paid to virginity under Christianity.[243] In other passages, again, he is misled by ignorance of the Hebrew, and a too literal adherence to the Septuagint translation. In the passage, “I will make thy officers peace,” thine “exactors” being rendered in the Septuagint bishops or overseers, he extracts from this word a direct reference to the Christian priesthood.[244] “He shall descend like rain into a fleece of wool” is interpreted as significant of the extreme secrecy of Christ’s birth, and the noiseless gentleness with which his kingdom was founded.[245] Whereas, the strict translation being “like rain upon new-mown grass,” it is rather illustrative of the fruitful results of Christ’s advent.[246]

Such occasional defects, however, will not prevent us from according the praise due to the great skill with which, on the whole, he has worked out this method of argument, and the noble vindication of Christianity in this treatise has seldom if ever been surpassed by Chrysostom elsewhere. The several parts of his argument are unfolded in orderly procession, and expressed with an eloquence at once luminous and earnest, and which, though at times copious and ornate, does not degenerate into the mere redundancy, still less into the affectations and flowery artifices, of rhetoric; he is always real and earnest, he is sometimes sublime.

Closely connected with this treatise in subject, and not far distant in time of composition, are the Homilies directed against Jews and Judaising Christians. The Jews, ever since the time of Antiochus the Great, were a considerable body in Antioch, and over the Christian population exerted a seriously pernicious influence. Their position, indeed, in the Empire at large had been increasingly favourable from the reign of Hadrian to Constantine. Though they were not permitted to approach Jerusalem, yet the worship in their synagogues was freely tolerated; they were permitted to circumcise their own children though not the children of proselytes; and their religious organisation in the Empire was held together under the sway of the Patriarch of Tiberias.[247] After the recognition of Christianity by the Empire, the Jews, as a natural consequence, were less favourably treated. The statutes of Constantine and Constantius were severe. Those Jews who attempted the life of a Christian were to be burned. No Christians were to become Jews, under pain of punishment. Jews were forbidden to marry Christian women or to possess Christian slaves. The national character of the Jew seems to have deteriorated, as the race became more widely dispersed, and as their wealth and importance increased. They were no longer indeed so morosely and sullenly proud as when they gloried in the possession of a holy city and distinct religious ordinances, and a geographical position which isolated them from the rest of mankind, but neither were their faith or morals so pure. Self-indulgence, sensualism, and low cunning corrupted their life; a superstitious and material cast of thought depraved their faith. Their habits harmonised too well with that propensity to luxury and licentiousness which was the besetting vice of the people of Antioch; their materialism worked hand in hand with the prevailing Arianism, if, indeed, Arianism may not be regarded as in some sort its product. Certainly, whenever popular insurrections caused by religious dissensions occurred either in Antioch or in Alexandria, the Jews ranged themselves on the Arian side, as if the spirit and character of the Arian sect were the most congenial to their own.[248]

Allowing for some exaggerations in the preacher, carried away by the impulse of the moment, the invectives of Chrysostom must be permitted to prove that the Jewish residents in Antioch were of a low and vicious order. They seem to have been regarded by the common people with a mixture of dislike and awe; the age was superstitious, and the Jews availed themselves of superstitious terrors to make a livelihood, especially through a kind of quackery in medicine. Their quarters are denounced by Chrysostom as dens of robbers and habitations of demons.[249] A whole day would not suffice to tell the tale of their extortions, their thefts, their deceptions, their base methods of traffic, such as the sale of amulets and charms.[250] Their priests were no better than counterfeits, because they had not gone through all the elaborate rites of consecration. They had no sacred ephod, no Urim and Thummim, no altar, no sacrifice, no prophecy.

The Festival of Trumpets was a scene of great debauchery, more iniquitous than the proceedings in the theatre. Any catechumen who was detected attending that festival was to be excluded from the porch of the church; any communicant so detected was to be denied access to the Holy Table. The booths erected at the Feast of Tabernacles were like taverns, crowded with flute-players and ill-conditioned women. The synagogues were frequented by the most abandoned characters of both sexes, and dancers, actors, and charioteers were largely drawn from the Jewish population. In spite of this, many Christians were seduced to attend the Jewish festivals and fasts, and even to swear Jewish oaths in the synagogues, under the superstitious impression that such were more solemn and binding than any Christian forms. He had himself, only three days ago, rescued a woman being dragged off, against her will, to take an oath of this kind, by a man who professed himself a Christian. On stopping to rebuke him in the sternest language, Chrysostom was shocked to learn that the practice was extremely common among Christians. He passionately exhorts the faithful to reclaim their deluded brethren from these pernicious ways:—If twelve Apostles had converted the larger part of the world, it would be a shame that the Christians, who were the majority in the population of Antioch, should fail to allay the plague of Judaism. What treason! what inconsistency, that they, who worshipped the Crucified One, should associate with the race which crucified Him.[251] The synagogue ought not to be an object of reverence because it contained the Books of the Law and the Prophets, but rather of abhorrence, because those who possessed the Prophets refused to recognise Him of whom their writings spoke. Was the temple of Serapis holy because it contained the Septuagint, deposited there by Ptolemy Philadelphus?[252]

Christians seem to have attended Jewish services much in that spirit of curiosity with which Protestants sometimes go to Roman Catholic churches, to be entertained by music, incense, and a grand ritual. They maintained that the effect was solemnising; but, observes Chrysostom, the value of the offering to God depends not on the nature of the offering, but on the heart of the offerers. The worshippers sanctify the temple, not the temple the worshippers. You would not touch or address the murderer of your own son, and will you court the society of those who slew the Son of God?[253] Let them consider that cry uttered by the deacon from time to time in the celebration of the holy mysteries: “Discern one another.”[254] So let them do. “If you discern any one Judaising, hold him fast and expose him, that you may not yourself participate in the danger.”

“In military camps, if any soldier be detected sympathising with the barbarian or the Persian, not only does he himself run a risk of his life, but also any of his comrades who were conscious of his defection, but did not represent it to the general. Since, then, you are the army of Christ, search diligently whether any stranger has intruded into your camp, and expose him, not that we may put him to death, but that we may punish him, deliver him from his error and impiety, and render him wholly our own; but if you willingly conceal him, be well assured that you will sustain the same punishment with him.” This homily is concluded by a solemn adjuration: “In the words of Moses, I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that if any of you now present or absent attend the Feast of Trumpets, or enter a synagogue, or observe a fast, or a sabbath, or any Jewish rite whatever, I am guiltless of your blood. These discourses will rise up for both of us in the great day of our Lord: if you shall have obeyed them, they will give you confidence; but if otherwise, they will stand as severe accusers against you.” Therefore he implored them to institute the most rigorous search after the Judaising brethren. When their mother the Church had lost a child, it was criminal to conceal either the captor or the captured; let the men seek out the men, the women the women, the slave his fellow-servant, and present the culprit to him before the next assembly.

Another Judaising practice, which he condemns in the severest language, was the custom of keeping Easter on the 14th day of the month, according to Jewish calculation, irrespective of the week-day on which it might fall; thus sometimes feasting when the rest of the Church was fasting, or fasting when the rest was feasting. The existence of such a practice at this time was a remarkable instance of the increasing influence of the Jews in Antioch and the neighbouring regions. For up to the year A.D. 276, the Antiochene patriarchate had observed Easter in conformity with the Catholic usage; the adoption of the Jewish calculation was made after that date, when most of the rest of Christendom had dropped it, and was therefore the subject of special condemnation at the Council of Nice.[255] Such a discrepancy in practice was regarded as a most serious rent in the unity of the Church. Chrysostom denounces it especially as a contumacious disregard of the Council of Nice, which had distinctly ordained by the mouths of three hundred bishops that Easter should be kept at one and the same time throughout Christendom. He implores the Judaisers to desist from the idle inquiry into the exact dates of seasons; to follow the Church, and to place harmony and charitable peace before all things. It was impossible, in fact, to fix the actual day on which Christ rose; therefore let them observe that day which the Church through her bishops had prescribed. It was a less offence to fast on the wrong day than to rend the unity of the Church. “How long halt ye between two opinions?” if Judaism be true, embrace it altogether, and “cease to annoy the Church; if Christianity be true, abide in it, and follow it.”[256]

The Jews themselves could not, in Chrysostom’s opinion, legally perform sacrifices, or observe festivals of any kind. Jerusalem was the only place in which such observances were commanded; and Jerusalem being destroyed they became void.[257] They had been suspended during the Captivity, to be resumed when the people returned to the holy soil. If the Jews of the present day also expected restoration, let them likewise suspend their rites; but, in fact, this never would occur. The Temple never would be rebuilt, and restoration was a vain hope. Jerusalem was to be trodden down of Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled; and by the fulfilment of those times Chrysostom understood the end of the world.[258] All four Captivities of the Jews—their subjection to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Antiochus, and the Romans—had been distinctly foretold. To each of the first three prophecy had assigned a limit; but to the last none—it reached into all time; there was no sign or intimation of any probable cessation.[259] The revolt of the Jews under Hadrian, and under Constantine,[260] had ignominiously failed; the attempt of Julian to rebuild the Temple had been frustrated by portents: fire issuing from the foundations had consumed some of the workmen, and scared the spectators; the naked substructions, left just as they were when the work was abandoned, presented a visible monument of the divinely-arrested work.[261]

The eager exhortation reiterated in his last homily, that the faithful should seek out their brethren who had been caught in the Jewish snare, is a powerful rush of indignant eloquence, and a wholesome admonition on the responsibility of all for the spiritual welfare of their fellow-men. “Say not within thyself, I am a man of the world; I have a wife and children; these matters belong to the priests and the monks. The Samaritan in the parable did not say, Where are the priests? where are the Pharisees? where are the Jewish authorities? but seized the opportunity of doing a good deed, as if it was a great advantage. In like manner, when you see any one requiring bodily or spiritual care, say not within thyself, Why did not this or that man attend to him?—but deliver him from his infirmity. If you find a piece of gold in your path, you do not say, Why did not some other person pick it up? but you eagerly anticipate others by seizing it yourself. Even so, in the case of your fallen brethren, consider that you have found a treasure in them and give the attention necessary for their wants.” He besought them not to proclaim the calamity of the Church by idly gossiping about the numbers of those who had observed some Jewish custom, but to search them out; and, if necessary, to enter their houses, tax them with their guilt, and solemnly warn them against the iniquity of consorting with the enemies of Jesus Christ. “Listen not to any excuses which they may plead on the ground of cures effected by the Jews; expose their impostures, their incantations, their amulets, their charms, their drugs.” Even if they really effected cures, it would be better to die and save the soul, than resort to the enemies of Christ to heal the body. Let them rather appeal to the assistance of the martyrs and saints who were His friends, and had great confidence in addressing Him. “Why did the Son of Man Himself enter the world? Was it not to seek and to save wandering sheep? This do thou, according to thy ability. I will not cease to speak, whether you hear or whether you forbear. If you heed not, I shall do it, but with grief; if you listen and obey, I shall do it, but with joy.”[262]

It is difficult for us, in our altered position towards Jews and heretics of all kinds, to sympathise with the vehemence of Chrysostom’s feelings and language. Yet there can be no doubt that such dabbling, if the word may be used, in the customs, the observances, the ritual of an obsolete dispensation, and a debased people, did seriously imperil purity of faith and morals, and unity of discipline, in the Christian Church.

Towards dissentient Christians, not infected by Judaism, Chrysostom adopts a milder tone, and indeed restrains the immoderation of party feeling in others with wholesome censure. He laments[263] the distracted state of the Church in Antioch, which was now divided into the three sections of Meletians, Eustathians, and Arians; but he denounces the practice of anathematising. It was uncharitable and presumptuous. St. Paul anathematised once only; the casting off of a heretic ought to be as painful as plucking out an eye or cutting off a limb. A holy man before their times, one of the successors of the Apostles, and judged worthy of the honour of martyrdom, used to say, that to assume the right to anathematise was as great a usurpation of Christ’s authority as for a subject to put on the Imperial purple. In dealing with erring brethren, the Christian should “in meekness instruct those that oppose themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” “If a man accepts your counsel and confesses his error, you have saved him, and delivered your own soul also; but if he will not, do you nevertheless continue to testify with long-suffering and kindness, that the Judge may not require his soul at thy hand. Hate him not; turn not from him; persecute him not, but catch him in the net of sincere and genuine charity. The person whom you anathematise is either living or dead; if living, you do wrong to cut off one who may still be converted; if dead, much more you do wrong; ‘to his own master he standeth or falleth;’ and ‘who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?’ You may anathematise heretical dogmas, but towards the persons who hold them show the greatest possible forbearance, and pray for their salvation.”

In the winter of 386, Chrysostom preached a sermon on Christmas Day, which, though not distinguished by any unusual merit, possesses an interest of its own. We learn from it, that this festival was not originally celebrated in the Eastern Church; it had been adopted from the West, and, in Antioch at least, less than ten years before the year of Chrysostom’s discourse. It had gradually increased in popularity, and this year Chrysostom rejoiced to observe that the church was crowded to overflowing. Rome had fixed the observance of the 25th of December, and this was the day kept throughout Christendom from Thrace to Gades; but the propriety of the date was much debated in the Eastern Churches, and the observance of the festival at all was considered by some as a questionable innovation. Chrysostom energetically vindicates the dignity of the festival and the correctness of the date.[264] It was the metropolis, so to say, of all other festivals, and as such it was the most solemn and awful. For the incarnation of Christ was the necessary condition of all the succeeding events of His career on earth, and in the profundity of its mystery it exceeded them all. That Christ should die was a natural consequence of human nature once assumed; but that He, being God, should have stooped so low as to assume that nature, was a mystery unfathomable to the mind of man! “Wherefore I specially welcome and belove this day, and desire to make you partakers in my affection. I pray and implore you all to come with zeal and alacrity, every man first purging his own house, to behold our Lord wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger; for if we come with faith, we shall indeed behold Him lying in the manger; for this Table supplies the place of the manger, and here also the body of the Lord will lie, not wrapped in swaddling clothes, but invested on all sides by the Holy Spirit. The initiated (or the baptized) understand what I mean.”[265] But he warns his hearers against crowding in a tumultuous and disorderly manner to partake of the holy feast. “Approach with fear and trembling, with fasting and prayer, not making an uproar, hustling and jostling one another: consider, O man, what kind of sacrifice thou art about to handle; consider that thou, who art dust and ashes, dost receive the body and blood of Christ.”[266] This irreverent conduct at the reception of the Eucharist frequently provoked the indignation and censure of Chrysostom. It occurred especially at the greater festivals, because on those days multitudes received the Eucharist who did not enter the church at other times. “How,” he cries in the homily on the Epiphany, “shall we teach you what is necessary concerning your soul, immortality, the kingdom of heaven, the long-suffering and mercy of God, and a future judgment, when you come to us only once or twice in the year?” Many of those who pushed and kicked one another in the eagerness of each to get foremost to the holy Table, withdrew from the church before the final thanksgiving. “What,” Chrysostom cries, “when Christ is present, and the angels are standing by, and this awe-inspiring Table is spread before you, and your brethren are still partaking of the mysteries, will you hurry away?” Too often they who thronged the church on these great occasions led worldly and even vicious lives; they hurried away before the sacred feast was ended, like Judas, to do the devil’s work.[267] Such is one among many examples which may be elicited from Chrysostom’s works of that Pagan grossness and superstition which was mingled with the faith and the most solemn observances of Christianity. The vitality of superstitious customs, the subtlety with which they have grafted themselves upon Christianity, the tenacity with which they have clung to men in spite of it late into modern times, is indeed extraordinary; but for centuries their existence and influence were not appreciably if at all affected by Christianity. A half Oriental, half Greek, partly Jewish population, like that of Antioch, whose purer feelings and nobler reason were seriously impaired by habits of licentiousness and luxury, was naturally liable to superstitious terrors, and addicted to superstitious practices of all kinds. Chrysostom is frequently reproving his people for being anxious and afraid where there was no cause, while they abandoned themselves to vice, the only worthy cause for fear, without scruple or alarm. If Christmas Day was observed as a Christian festival, though without becoming reverence, New Year’s Day was given up to riotous festivity, thoroughly Pagan in character. The houses were festooned with flowers, the inns were scenes of the most disgraceful intemperance; men and women drinking undiluted wine there from an early hour in the morning; auguries and omens were consulted by which the horoscope of the year was cast. Good luck in the coming year was supposed to depend (how is not clearly stated) on the manner in which the first day was spent. This is the theme of the preacher’s righteous indignation. The real happiness of the year was determined, not by the observation of particular feasts, but by the amount of goodness which we put into it. Sin was the only real evil, virtue the only real good; therefore, if a man practised justice, almsgiving, and prayer, his year could not fail to be propitious; for he who had a clean conscience carried about with him a perpetual holy day, and without this, the most brilliant and joyous festival was obscured by darkness. “When thou seest the year completed, thank God that He has brought thee safely to the conclusion of the cycle: prick thine heart, reckon up the time of thy life, and say to thyself, The days are hurrying along, the years are being fulfilled, I have advanced far on the road, the judgment is at the doors, my life is pressing on towards old age: well! what good have I done? shall I depart hence destitute and empty of all righteousness?”[268]

There is a fuller notice, in some of his homilies on the Epistle to the Ephesians, of the many gross and senseless forms of superstition which prevailed even among the communicants in the Christian Church. He laments the decay of discipline, by which a more rigorous scrutiny was once instituted into the characters of those who came to the holy feast. If any one were to examine the lives of all those who partake of the mysteries on Easter Day, he would find amongst them persons who consulted auguries, who used drugs, and omens, and incantations; even the adulterer, curser, and drunkard, dared to partake. Iniquitous men had crept into the Church, the highest places of command were bought and sold, till the pure livers had betaken themselves to the mountains to escape from the contamination.[269] Some of the vulgar superstitions of the day were ludicrously puerile. “This or that man was the first to meet me as I walked out; consequently innumerable ills will certainly befall me: that confounded servant of mine, in giving me my shoes, handed me the left shoe first; this indicates dire calamities and insults: as I stepped out, I started with the left foot foremost; this too is a sign of misfortune: my right eye twitched upwards as I went out; this portends tears.”[270] To strike the woof with the comb in a particular way, the braying of a donkey, the crowing of a cock, a sudden sneeze,—all these were indications of something or other. “They suspect everything, and are more in bondage than if they were slaves many times over. But let not us, brethren, fear such things, but laughing them to scorn as men who live in the light, and whose citizenship is in heaven, and who have nothing in common with this earth, let us regard one thing only as terrible,—and that is, sin.”[271]

CHAPTER X.

SURVEY OF THE FIRST DECADE OF THE REIGN OF THEODOSIUS—HIS CHARACTER—HIS EFFORTS FOR THE EXTIRPATION OF PAGANISM AND HERESY—THE APOLOGIES OF SYMMACHUS AND LIBANIUS. A.D. 379-389.

Before Chrysostom had laboured two full years in “confirming the souls of the disciples” at Antioch, that city became the scene of events memorable in history; and events in which the great preacher played an honourable and distinguished part.

The foremost man of the age, not only by position but also to a great extent in character, was Theodosius the Emperor; Theodosius the Great, deservedly so called in spite of one prominent defect in character, and a few glaring misdeeds which tarnish his reputation. The military exploits of his father, Theodosius the elder, had provoked the jealousy of the court[272] and cost him his life, and the son, who had manifested ability almost equal, in serving under him both by land and sea against Scots and Saxons, Moors and Goths, was glad to escape a similar ungrateful return for his services, by retiring to the obscurity of his native village in Spain. He was disgraced when the Empire had been liberated from danger by the exertions of his father and himself; but in the hour of its utmost jeopardy, and direst distress, he was recalled to more than his former position. The total defeat and death of Valens, and the almost extermination of his army before Hadrianople in A.D. 378, placed the Empire at the mercy of victorious barbarians within the frontier, and on the edge of the horizon more storm-clouds of Gothic or Hunnish invasion were lowering. There was but one person to whom the mind of Gratian, the young Emperor of the West, and his advisers, overwhelmed by the prospect of impending calamity, instinctively turned as capable of saving the State in this crisis. For three years Theodosius had been quietly cultivating his farm between Valladolid and Segovia, when he was summoned to accept the title of Augustus, together with all the responsibilities and perils which attended the possessor, at such a time, of that venerable name. He was equal to the situation; handsome with a manly beauty, courageous and determined of purpose, just and politic in intention if not always in act, he was endowed with some of the noblest qualities of a soldier and a statesman, by which to rescue and reorganise a panic-stricken and crumbling State. This is not the place to narrate the military achievements of Theodosius. The original materials for information respecting them are scanty; but they have been collected and arranged by that historian whose indefatigable industry brings order out of confusion, and whose luminous style lights up with interest even the darkest and most meagre annals.[273] It is sufficient to remind the reader of Gibbon, that Theodosius subdued the Goths, not in any one or two great battles, but by frequent and skilfully contrived engagements on a smaller scale. He thus gradually revived the drooping courage and discipline of the imperial troops, and wore out the enemy. The several tribes, on their submission, were settled in the waste tracts of country, which they were to occupy free of taxation, on the wise condition that they kept the land in a state of cultivation. So a numerous colony of Visigoths was established in Thrace, and of Ostrogoths in Phrygia and Lydia. The ability of Theodosius is proved more by the results of his energy than by anything that we know of the manner in which he accomplished them. He not only vanquished the Goths, but arrested the progress of the usurper Maximus in the West, who was leading his victorious legions to Italy, flushed with success after the ignominious flight and assassination of Gratian. Theodosius was not in a position, surrounded as he was by half-vanquished barbarians, to dispute the passage of the conqueror; but by assuming a firm tone in negotiations, he secured for Valentinian, Gratian’s brother and successor, the sovereignty of Italy, Africa, and Western Illyricum, surrendering for the present to the usurper the regions north of the Alps.

Theodosius was a Christian; as a Spaniard he was a Trinitarian, and as a soldier he was anxious to establish one uniform type of religious faith and ecclesiastical discipline throughout the Empire. But such a task proved more impracticable than the reduction of military foes. Neither Paganism nor Arianism could be extinguished in a few years by suppressive edicts. Theodosius himself had been baptized in the first year of his reign, A.D. 380, when his life was threatened by a severe illness, and he had then announced his will and pleasure that his own solemn declaration of faith should be accepted by his subjects also. That faith which was “professed by the Pontiff Damasus, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria” was to be the faith of the Empire. “Let us believe the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, under an equal majesty and a pious Trinity. We authorise the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians, and as we judge that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the infamous name of heretics.”[274] Their places of assembly were not to enjoy the title of churches, and they themselves were to expect severe civil penalties as well as the Divine condemnation. Damophilus, the Arian Bishop of Constantinople, preferred exile to signing the creed of Nice; and Gregory of Nazianzus was conducted by the Emperor in person through the streets of Constantinople (though not without a strong guard) to occupy the episcopal throne. A project for another general council (after the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381) was entertained but abandoned, for the factious demeanour of the several prelates and their partisans on their arrival did not augur a very successful settlement of differences by that method. The Emperor fell back, for the accomplishment of his object, on his own authority. On July 25, A.D. 383, an edict was posted in Constantinople, prohibiting all the heretics therein named, Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, and Manichæans, from holding any kind of assembly, public or private, either in the cities or in the country. Any ground or building used for such illegal purpose was to be confiscated to the State; and the penalty of banishment was pronounced against those who allowed themselves to be ordained priests or bishops of the heretical sects. Historians concur in the opinion that few of these penalties were actually enforced. The heretical sects were not animated by a spirit of martyrdom; the intimidation was generally sufficient.[275] The hypocrite or the indifferent conformed, the more conscientious retired into obscurity. There seem to have been few if any Arian prelates of great and commanding ability. All the leading ecclesiastics of the day—Chrysostom, Jerome, Basil, the two Gregories, and Ambrose—were by conviction on the side of the Emperor, and added all the weight of their influence to his decrees.

When measures had been taken for the suppression of heresy, it was the Pagan’s turn to suffer. The spectacle of temples standing open for worship side by side with Christian churches was a painful incongruity in the eyes of Theodosius, with his soldier-like ideas of uniformity and discipline. The first blow was directed against those disloyal sons of the Church who had seceded to Paganism. They were deprived of the power to make wills or to receive bequests.[276] The second step was absolutely to prohibit all sacrifices in those temples which were still open. Nearly twenty years before, the sacrifice of animals had been forbidden by Valentinian and Valens, owing to their connection with arts of divination, which were used for political purposes. As long as such sacrifices were permitted, the priests could not refrain from consulting the entrails of the victims, and pretending to read therein future events: the death of this Emperor, the elevation of that, the success or failure of expeditions, and the like, were intimated to the people, always eager to know what is beyond the limits of human knowledge. Such divinations encouraged a restless spirit in the subjects, and often disaffected them towards the ruling power. That these laws of Valentinian were renewed by Theodosius in 381, and again in A.D. 385, proves that they had been imperfectly obeyed.[277]

They were followed up by a yet more decisive step in A.D. 392. Cynegius, the Prætorian Prefect of the East, the Counts Jovinus and Gaudentius in the West, were commissioned to shut up the temples, to destroy their contents, images, and vessels, and to confiscate their property. In many instances the executors of the edict, aided by the fanatical fury of monks, seem to have exceeded their instructions. The great temple of Jupiter, at Apamea, in Syria, of which the roof was supported on sixty massive columns, fell, but not unavenged; for the Bishop Marcellus, who headed the assailants, fell a victim to the rage of the exasperated rustics who defended it.[278] The safety of the universe was represented by Pagans to depend on the preservation of the colossal gold and silver image of Serapis at Alexandria. Even Christians beheld with some trepidation an audacious soldier deal a blow with a battle-axe on the cheek of this awful deity; but as the only result of the gash was the issue of a swarm of rats who had harboured in the sacred head, instead of the avenging thunders which had been expected, a revulsion of feeling was experienced. The huge idol was hewn to pieces, the limbs were dragged through the streets, and the remains of the carcase burned in the amphitheatre, amidst the derision of the populace.

These were shattering blows to Paganism. But the religion of sentiment and custom long survives the extinction of more solid if not reasonable convictions. Chrysostom’s homily on New Year’s Day is only one among many illustrations of the way in which Pagan rites and superstitions lingered, especially in connection with public festivals. All the Pagan concomitants of these festivals in the country districts—hymns, libations, garlands, incense, lights—were strictly prohibited, under heavy penalties, by Theodosius in A.D. 392, but, in the West especially, the extirpation was very incomplete. The Bishops of Verona and of Brescia protested, but in vain, against the proprietors of land indulging their tenantry in these practices. Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, were strongholds of Paganism as late as A.D. 600. Sacrifices were offered to Apollo on Monte Casino till the establishment of St. Benedict’s monastery in A.D. 529.

The riotous populace of towns, and the simple country folk attached to old customs, thus evinced some spirit in their resistance to repressive enactments. But the hold which Paganism retained upon intellectual people was feeble indeed. Two apologists only, with any pretensions to ability, stepped forward to plead for the sinking cause: Symmachus[279] in the West, and Libanius in the East; and their intercessions are addressed to sentiments of affection for antiquity, and compassion for oppressed weakness, rather than to the reason. Symmachus, as is well known, pleaded twice for the retention of the altar and statue of Victory in the senate-house at Rome. Eloquent and touching, his appeal is directed to patriotic feeling and a sense of political expediency, not to religious conviction. He does not profess to believe in the Pagan deities, but regards with a philosophic eye the various kinds of faith in the world as so many forms of homage to the great unknown Being who presides over the universe. “It is right to recognise that what all adore can be at bottom but one Being only. We contemplate the same stars; the same sky covers us; the same universe encloses us. What matters it by what reasonings each seeks the truth? a single path cannot conduct us to the grand secret of nature. As an individual, a man may be a worshipper of Mithras, or of Christ, but as a citizen it is his duty to conform to that worship which is bound up with the history and glory of his country; to part from it is heartless and disloyal.”[280]

The memorial of Symmachus got into the hands of Ambrose, and was rather rudely treated by him. He subjects it to a stern test of facts. Had the national gods indeed protected the Romans from disaster? It was maintained that by their aid the conquest of Italy by Hannibal had been averted. Why then did they permit the invader to inflict such ravages as he had done? Would not the Gauls also have captured the Capitol, but for the timely cry of the goose? Where was Jupiter then? but perhaps he was speaking through the goose. The Carthaginians worshipped some of the same deities as the Romans. If then the gods conquered with the Romans they yielded with the Carthaginians. Paganism declined, notwithstanding support; the Church flourished, in spite of opposition. As to the abandonment of ancient customs, was not progress the law of improvement? The glimmering dawn gradually brightened into the full and perfect day; the riches of harvest and vintage came in the maturity of the year; even so the faith of Christ had gradually planted itself on the ruins of a worn-out creed, and was now reaping an abundant harvest among all nations of the earth.[281] The whole reply of Ambrose is pitched in the positive, confident, authoritative tone of one who speaks from a conviction that he stands on the platform of absolute truth, and that his cause is therefore inevitably destined to win.

If the appeal of Symmachus was addressed to the sentiment of reverence for national antiquity, that of Libanius was directed to a sentiment of attachment to classical antiquity. The citizen mourns over the suppression of a worship which was bound up with the history and the glory of his country; the scholar sighs over the degradation of that which was connected with all that was most beautiful in the literature and life of the olden time—with the poetry of Homer and the tragedians—with the festive song and dance—with the hills, and fountains, and groves of Greece. He clings to the past with the love of the antiquarian. Though his actual belief in the myths of the classical era may not have been very deep or earnest, there is no doubt that he entertained a genuine animosity towards the new faith which was usurping their place. A flowery description of the origin and antiquity of the honour paid to the gods is followed by a vehement invective against the monks, “those black-robed creatures, more voracious than elephants, who rush upon the temples, armed with stones, wood, and fire; who break up the roofs, destroy the walls, throw down the statues, raze the altars.” They glaringly exceeded the edicts of the Emperor, which had forbidden the offering of sacrifice in the temples, but had not commanded the actual destruction of the buildings.[282] There is real feeling also in his description of the distress caused in country districts by the demolition of the temples. “They were the centres round which human habitations and civilisation grew; in them the labourer placed all his hopes; to them he commended his wife, his children, his plantation, his crops. Deprived of the gods, from whom he expected the rewards of toil, he felt as if henceforth his labours would be vain. Sometimes the very land was wrested from them on the pretext that it had been consecrated to gods; if the poor despoiled owners sought redress from the pastor (i.e. the bishop) of the neighbouring town (falsely called pastor, since there was no gentleness in his nature), he praised the robber and dismissed the complainers.” No doubt to a great extent this was a true picture, and such harshness and injustice must have retarded (as always happens when an attempt is made to coerce opinion) the cause of Christianity, which the law was intended to promote.

Theodosius, however, was in principle far too upright to treat the Church with a blind partiality. Cynegius, the Prefect, was ordered to enforce the law at Alexandria with full rigour against those despicable beings who sought to make traffic by informing against Pagans. Constantine had exempted the clergy from serving in curial offices; Theodosius compelled them to pay for substitutes, and renounce their claims to patrimony. They were to enjoy immunity from torture when brought to trial, but if detected in falsehood were to be visited with penalties of peculiar severity, because they had abused the shelter of the law which favoured them.[283]

Such was Theodosius—a prudent and skilful general, a firm and upright ruler; a sincere and simple-minded believer in Christianity, who did his best, as head at once of the army, the civil government, and the Church, to consolidate the fabric of the Empire. The barbarians were repelled, or held down; taxes were collected with honesty and firmness,—some of the most burdensome were taken off; Paganism and heresy languished, however far from being extinguished, and the Emperor fondly hoped that uniformity in faith and discipline would soon be established throughout Christendom.

The good genius of his life was the Empress Flacilla; she was a Christian of a pure and noble type; imperial state had not corrupted the simplicity or hardened the tenderness of her disposition. She was accustomed to visit the hospitals in Constantinople, not attended by a single slave or waiting-woman; administered food and medicine to the patients, and dressed their wounds with her own hands. She was wont to remind her husband of the great change in their worldly position, as a motive to humility and gratitude to God. “It behoves thee to consider what thou wert and what thou hast become; by constantly reflecting on this thou wilt not be ungrateful to thy benefactor, but wilt guide the kingdom which thou hast received with a due regard to law, and by so doing wilt pay homage to Him who gave it thee.”

She, we may well believe, restrained the impulses of that choleric temper which was the principal defect in the Emperor’s character, and which occasionally after her death burst forth into acts of deplorable violence. This wise and pious monitress was taken from him in A.D. 385. She died at a watering-place in Thrace, whither she had gone to recover her health after the shock caused by the death of the infant Princess Pulcheria. Her body was brought back to Constantinople on a melancholy day in autumn, when the skies poured down a gentle rain, as if mingling their tears with those of the disconsolate people.[284]

This condensed survey of the character and work of Theodosius, during the first ten years of his reign, will assist us in forming a proper estimate of his conduct in that memorable occurrence which brings his life into contact with the life of Chrysostom.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SEDITION AT ANTIOCH—THE HOMILIES ON THE STATUES—THE RESULTS OF THE SEDITION. A.D. 387.

The wise counsel and softening influence of the Empress were removed from her husband at an inopportune season. Political storms were approaching, and the passionate temper of Theodosius was soon to be subjected to a most severe trial.

The year 388 would have completed the first decade of his reign. The year 387 was the fifth of the reign of his son Arcadius, whom he had nominally associated with himself in the government. The celebration of these two events Theodosius, from motives of prudent economy and convenience, resolved to combine. The army on such occasions claimed a liberal donative, five gold pieces to each man. It was obviously desirable, therefore, to avoid, if possible, the repetition of such a donative within a short space of time. It was always a strain on the royal treasury, and at the present juncture the strain was increased, for the Goths were assuming a menacing attitude on the Danubian frontier. It was necessary to mass troops in that direction, and, with a view to provide for these expenses, it was proposed to raise a special subsidy from the opulent cities of the Eastern empire. But the inhabitants of Alexandria and Antioch were loath to part with any of the wealth which they had accumulated during nearly ten years of peace and exemption from onerous taxation. Large meetings were held by the citizens of Alexandria in the theatres and other public places; inflammatory and seditious speeches were made. “If we are to be treated thus,” they cried, “a simple remedy is open: we will appeal to Maximus in the West; he knows how to shake off a troublesome tyrant.” Fortunately the Prefect Cynegius was a man of firmness and promptitude; he made some arrests of the most conspicuous leaders of the mutinous faction, and enforced an immediate payment of the tribute, and by these decisive measures public order was restored. Either the people of Antioch were more deeply disaffected, or no such energetic officer was in that city to nip the spirit of rebellion in the bud. It is said that the inhabitants entertained a grudge against the Emperor, because he had never visited their city, which had been frequently graced by the royal presence of his predecessors.[285]

The edict which enjoined the levying of the tribute was proclaimed by a herald on February 26. Large numbers of the people assembled on the spot, collected chiefly into groups, amongst which were some persons of distinction, senators and other civic functionaries, noble ladies, and retired soldiers. An ominous silence succeeded the announcement of the edict. The crowd then dispersed, but reassembled about the prætorium, where the governor resided.[286] There they stood in gloomy silence, save that the women, from time to time, raised a wailing lamentation, crying that the ruin of the city was determined, and that since the Emperor had abandoned them, God alone from henceforth could come to their succour. At last a little band detached itself from the mass, shouting that they must go and seek the Bishop Flavian, and constrain him to intercede with the Emperor on their behalf. Flavian, by accident or design, was absent from the episcopal residence, and the mob returned to the prætorium, crying that the governor must do them justice. The people appear to have been excited to violence chiefly by those turbulent foreign adventurers who abounded in Antioch, sordid venal creatures, often hired by actors to get up applause in the theatres, or by great men not over popular to raise cheers when they appeared in public places. But however stimulated, the passions of the mob were thoroughly roused, and their fury vented itself in a tumultuous rush into one of the great public baths, where they soon tore everything to pieces. Having completed this work of destruction, they hurried back once more to the hall of the unfortunate governor. Here they were kept at bay by a guard for a sufficient time to enable the governor to escape by a back-door, and when they at last succeeded in bursting in, the vacancy of the place aggravated their rage. The governor was not seated in the judicial chair, but they found themselves face to face with the statues of the imperial family, which as emblems of authority were ranged above it. They paused for a few moments; highly excited as they were, imperial majesty, even so represented, had some deterrent influence upon their fury.

But, unfortunately, there were boys in the crowd; the love of stone-throwing without respect of persons was as ardent in boy nature fifteen hundred years ago as it is now. A stone was cast by one of these juvenile hands, which hit one of the sacred statues. The momentary feelings of reverence which had arrested the people were dissipated. The images were mutilated, almost battered to pieces, and the fragments dragged through the streets. Other images of the imperial family with which the city was adorned were treated in the same manner; the equestrian statue of Count Theodosius, father of the Emperor, was dislodged from its pedestal and hacked about, amidst derisive shouts of “Defend thyself, grand cavalier!”[287]

The unrestrained fury of the people was inflamed by success; they began to bring up torches and actually set fire to one of the principal buildings of the city, when the governor, who had escaped their hands, returned at the head of a company of archers. As usual with disorderly mobs, however furious, they were unable to face the discipline of military force; the soldiers were no sooner drawn up and preparing to fix their weapons than rage turned to panic, and the mob, lately so formidable, melted away.

The whole tumult had not lasted more than three hours; before noon, every one had returned to his home, the streets and squares were empty, and a death-like stillness pervaded the city. Remorse was mingled with great terror respecting the consequences of the outrage which had been perpetrated. The Emperor, indeed, was humane and forgiving of wrongs which concerned himself alone, but how would he brook the insults done to the memory of his father and his tenderly beloved Empress? One hope remained: Flavian, the bishop, was a favourite at court; his intercessions might avail; the people besought him with tears to stand their friend in this distress. From Antioch to Constantinople was a long and perilous journey of 800 miles, and the winter was not yet ended. Flavian was old, his only sister was seriously ill, and the approaching season of Lent required his presence at Antioch, but a sense of the emergency prevailed over all these obstacles. Animated by the spirit of the Good Shepherd the intrepid old man was ready to lay down his life for his flock, and set out upon his errand of mercy with all possible speed, in the hope of overtaking the messengers who had started before him, but had been detained at the foot of Mount Taurus by a fall of snow.[288]

During the absence of Flavian all the powers of Chrysostom as an orator, a pastor, and a citizen, were called forth in attempting to calm the fears and revive the deeply-dejected spirits of the people. Perseveringly did he discharge this anxious and laborious task; almost every day, for twenty-two days, that small figure was to be seen either sitting in the Ambo, from which he sometimes preached on account of his diminutive stature, or standing on the steps of the altar, the preacher’s usual place;[289] and day after day, the crowds increased which came to listen to the stream of golden eloquence which he poured forth. With all the versatility of a consummate artist, he moved from point to point. Sometimes a picture of the city’s agony melted his hearers to tears, and then again he struck the note of encouragement and revived their spirits by bidding them take comfort from the well-known clemency of the Emperor, the probable success of the mission of Flavian, and, above all, from trust in God.

“The gay and noisy city, where once the busy people hummed like bees around their hive, was petrified by fear into the most dismal silence and desolation; the wealthier inhabitants had fled into the country, those who remained shut themselves up in their houses, as if the town had been in a state of siege. If any one ventured into the market-place, where once the multitude poured along like the stream of a mighty river, the pitiable sight of two or three cowering dejected creatures in the midst of solitude soon drove him home again. The sun itself seemed to veil its rays as if in mourning. The words of the prophet were fulfilled, ‘Their sun shall go down at noon, and their earth shall be darkened in a clear day’ (Amos viii. 9). Now they might cry, ‘Send to the mourning women, and let them come, and send for cunning women that they may come’ (Jer. ix. 17). Ye hills and mountains, take up a wailing, let us invite all creation to commiserate our woes, for this great city, this capital of Eastern cities, is in danger of being destroyed out of the midst of the earth, and there is no man to help her, for the Emperor, who has no equal among men, has been insulted; therefore let us take refuge with the King who is above, and summon Him to our aid.”[290]

The chief reason of the people’s extreme dejection was, that the governor and magistrates, probably to disarm any suspicion at court of their own complicity in the sedition, were daily seizing real or supposed culprits, and punishing them with the utmost rigour. Even those who might have been pardoned on account of their tender age were mercilessly handed over to the executioner. Chrysostom speaks of some even having been burnt, and others thrown to wild beasts. The weeping parents followed their unhappy offspring at a distance, powerless to help but fearing to plead, like men on shore beholding with grief shipwrecked sailors struggling in the water, but unable to rescue them.[291]

But the object of Chrysostom was, not to utter ineffectual lamentations. He aimed at rousing the people from their profound dejection, and printing, if possible, on their hearts, humbled and softened by distress, deep and lasting impressions of good. He told them that there was everything to be hoped for from the embassy of Flavian. “The Emperor was pious, the bishop courageous, yet prudent and adroit; God would not suffer his errand to be fruitless. The very sight of that venerable man would dispose the royal mind to clemency. Flavian would not fail to urge how especially suitable an act of forgiveness was to that holy season, in which was commemorated the Death of Christ for the sins of the whole world. He would remind the Emperor of the parable of the two debtors, and warn him not to incur the risk of being one day addressed by the words, ‘Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt; shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servants?’ He would represent that the outrages had not been committed by the whole community, but chiefly by some lawless strangers. He would plead that the inhabitants, even had they all offended, had already undergone sufficient punishment in the anxiety and alarm which they endured. It would be unreasonable to visit the crime of a few by the extirpation of a whole city, a city which was the most populous capital of the East, and dear to Christians as the place where they had first received that sweet and lovely name.”[292]

Meanwhile he earnestly calls upon the people to improve this season of humiliation by a thorough repentance and reformation in respect of the prevailing vices and follies. The words of St. Paul in writing to the Philippians, “To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, and for you it is safe,” might be aptly applied to Chrysostom. He is never tired of denouncing special sins and exhorting to the renunciation of them in every variety of language. Ostentatious luxury, sordid avarice, religious formalism, a profane custom of taking rash oaths, were the fashionable sins against which he waged an incessant and implacable warfare.

His exhortations are generally based on some passage read in the lesson of the day. “What have we heard today? ‘Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded.’ He who says ‘the rich in this world’ proves thereby that there are others rich in regard to a future world, like Lazarus in the parable.” Wealth of this world was a thankless runaway slave, which, if bound with thousands of fetters, made off, fetters and all. Not that he would quarrel with wealth; it was good in itself, but became evil when inordinately desired and paraded, just as the evil of intoxication lay not in wine itself, but in the abuse of it. The Apostle did not charge those who were rich to become poor, but only not to be high-minded. “Let us adorn our own souls before we embellish our houses. Is it not disgraceful to overlay our walls with marbles and to neglect Christ, who is going about unclothed? What profit is there, O man, in thy house? Wilt thou carry it away with thee? Nay, thou must leave thy house; but thy soul thou wilt certainly take with thee. Lo! how great the danger which has now overtaken us: let our houses, then, be our defenders; let them rescue us from the impending peril;—but they will not be able. Be those witnesses to my words who have now deserted their houses, and hurried away to the wilderness as if afraid of nets and snares. Do you wish to build large and splendid houses? I forbid you not, only build them not upon the earth; build yourselves tabernacles in heaven—tabernacles which never decay. Nothing is more slippery than wealth, which to-day is with thee and to-morrow is against thee; which sharpens the eyes of the envious on all sides; which is a foe in your own camp, an enemy in your own household. Wealth makes the present danger more intolerable; you see the poor man unencumbered and prepared for whatever may happen, but the rich in a state of great embarrassment, and going about seeking some place in which to bury his gold, or some person with whom to deposit it. Why seek thy fellow-servants, O man? Christ stands ready to receive and guard thy deposits—yea, not only to guard, but also to multiply and to return with rich interest. No man plucks out of His hand; men, when they receive a deposit from another, deem that they have conferred a favour upon him; but Christ, on the contrary, declares that He receives a favour, and, instead of demanding a reward, bestows one upon you.”[293]

He entreated them to make the present Lent a season of spiritual renovation. Lent fell in the spring, when the stream of industry which the winter had frozen began to flow again. The sailor launched his vessel, the soldier furbished his sword, the farmer whetted his scythe, the traveller set out confidently on his long journey, the athlete stripped for the contest. “Even so let this fast be to us a spiritual spring-tide; let us polish our spiritual armour, let us breast the waves of evil passions, set out like travellers on our journey heavenwards, and prepare like athletes for the combat. For the Christian is both husbandman, and pilot, and soldier, and athlete, and traveller. Hast thou seen the athlete? hast thou seen the soldier? if thou art an athlete thou must strip to enter the lists; if thou art a soldier thou must put on armour before taking thy place in the ranks. How then to the same man can both these things be possible? How, dost thou ask? I will tell thee. Strip thyself of thy worldly business, and thou hast become an athlete; clothe thyself with spiritual armour, and thou hast become a soldier. Strip thyself, for it is a season of wrestling; clothe thyself, for we are engaged in a fierce warfare with devils. Till thy soul, and cut away the thorns; sow the seed of piety, plant the good plants of philosophy, and tend them with much care, and thou hast become a husbandman, and St. Paul will say to thee, ‘The husbandman which laboureth must first be a partaker of the fruits.’ Whet thy sickle which thou hast blunted by surfeiting; sharpen it, I say, by fasting. Enter on the road which leads to heaven, the rugged and narrow road, and travel along it. And how shalt thou be able to set out and travel? By buffeting thy body and bringing it into subjection; for where the road is narrow, obesity, which comes from surfeiting, is a great impediment. Repress the waves of foolish passions, repulse the storm of wicked imaginations, preserve the vessel, display all thy skill, and thou hast become a pilot.”[294] The originator and instructor of all these arts was abstinence; not the vulgar kind of abstinence, not abstinence from food only, but also from sins. “If thou fastest, show me the results by thy deeds. What deeds, do you ask? If you see a poor man, have pity on him; if an enemy, be reconciled; if a friend in good reputation, regard him without envy. Fast not only by thy mouth, but with thine eyes, thine ears, thy hands, thy feet; avert thine eyes from unlawful sights, restrain thy hands from deeds of violence, keep thy feet from entering places of pernicious amusement, bridle thy mouth from uttering, and stop thine ears from listening to tales of slander.” This kind of fast would be acceptable to God, only it should be co-extensive with life. To spend a few days in penance and then to relapse into the former course of life was only an idle mockery.[295] He disparaged that rigorous kind of fasting which some had carried to the extent of taking no food but bread and water. Many boasted of the number of weeks they had fasted; this excessive abstinence was likely to be followed by a reaction. Let them seek rather to subdue evil passions and habits; let one week be devoted to the suppression of swearing, another of anger, a third of slander, and so gradually advancing they might at last attain the consummation of virtue, and propitiate the displeasure of God.[296] “Let us not do now what we have so often done, for frequently when earthquakes, or famine, or drought have overtaken us, we have become temperate for three or four days, and then have returned to our former ways of life. But, if never before, now at least let us remain steadfast in the same state of piety, that we may not again require to be chastised by another scourge.”[297]

Almost all the homilies are concluded by an admonition against the sin of swearing, and the greater portion of some is devoted to this topic. The passionate impetuous people of Antioch seem to have been constantly betrayed into the folly of binding themselves by rash oaths. The master, for instance, would take an oath to deprive his slave of food, or the tutor his scholar, till a certain task was accomplished, a threat which it was of course often impossible to enforce. Hence perjury on the part of a superior, and loss of respect on the side of the subordinate. Chrysostom himself had often dined at a house where the mistress swore that she would beat a slave who had made some mistake, while the husband would with another oath forbid the punishment. Thus one of the two would be inevitably involved in perjury.[298] He frequently exhorted his hearers to form a kind of Christian club amongst themselves for the suppression of this vice. In one place he suggests a stern remedy: “When you detect your wife or any of your household yielding to this evil habit, order them supperless to bed, and if you are guilty impose the same penalty on yourself.”[299] Near the close of Lent he declares that he will repel from the holy Table at Easter those whom he detects still addicted to this vice.[300]

On the whole, the eager and earnest pastor may be said to have rejoiced at the grand opportunity afforded by the humiliation of the city, to effect a reformation in the moral life of the people. He observed with great satisfaction, that if the forum was deserted the church was thronged, just as in stormy weather the harbour is crowded with vessels.[301] Many an intemperate man had been sobered, the headstrong softened, or the indolent quickened into zeal. Many who once assiduously frequented the theatre now spent their day in the church. Meanwhile they must abide God’s pleasure for the removal of their affliction. He had sent it for the purpose of purifying and chastening them; He was waiting till He saw a genuine, an unshakeable repentance, like a refiner watching a piece of precious metal in a crucible, and waiting the proper moment for taking it out.[302] As for those who said what they feared was not so much death, as ignominious death by the hand of the executioner, he protested that the only death really miserable was a death in sin. Abel was murdered and was happy, Cain lived and was miserable. John the Baptist was beheaded, St. Stephen was stoned, yet their deaths were happy. To the Christian there was nothing formidable in death itself. To dread death but not to be afraid of sin was to act like children who are frightened by masks whilst they were not afraid of fire. “What, I pray you, is death? It is like the putting off of a garment, for the soul is invested with a body[303] as it were with a garment, and this we shall put off for a little while by death, only to receive it again in a more brilliant form. What, I pray you, is death? It is but to go a journey for a season, or to take a longer sleep than usual.” Death was but a release from toil, a tranquil haven. “Mourn not over him who dies, but over him who, living in sin, is dead while he liveth.”[304]

Chrysostom’s own calmness, and his skill in diverting the thoughts of his flock from present alarm, are manifested by the power and ease with which he dilates on such grand topics as the creation, Divine Providence, the nature of man, and his place in the scale of created beings. His best thoughts, expressed in his best style on these subjects, are to be found in the homilies now under consideration.

The size and beauty of the universe, but still more the perfect regularity with which the system worked, proclaimed a designing power. The succession of day and night, the series of the seasons, like a band of maidens dancing in a circle, the four elements of which the world was composed, mingling in such exquisite proportions that they exactly balanced one another, the sun tempering the action of water, the water that of the sun, the sea unable to break its bounds or reduce the earth to a mass of clay; who could contemplate all these forces at work and suppose that they moved spontaneously, instead of adoring Him who had arranged them all with a wisdom commensurate with the results? As the health of the body depended on the due balance of those humours of which it was composed, if the bile increased fever was produced, or if the phlegmatic element prevailed many diseases were engendered, so was it in the case of the universe: each element observed its proper limits, restrained, as it were, with a bridle by the will of the Maker; and the struggle between these elements was the source of peace for the whole system. As the body failed, languished, died, in proportion as the soul was withdrawn from it, so if the regulating and life-giving power of God’s providence were removed from the earth, all would go to rack and ruin, like a vessel deserted by her pilot.[305]

In treating this subject, he manifests a keen appreciation of natural beauties. The infinite varieties of flowers and herbs, trees, animals, insects, and birds—the flowery fields below, the starry fields above—the never-failing fountains—the sea receiving countless streams into its bosom, yet never overflowing,—all proclaimed a Creator and an Upholder, and drew from man the exclamation, “How manifold are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all!” Yet, lest they should be worshipped instead of the Maker, conditions of change, as decay or death, were imposed upon all.[306] His observation of nature appears in some of his similes. The poor female relatives hovering about the courts of justice, when the culprits of the outrage on the statues were being tried, he compares to parent birds, which wildly flutter round the hunter who has stolen the young from their nest, in an agony of grief, but impotent from weakness and fear.[307] He perceives in some of the lower animals characteristics to be imitated or avoided, and describes them with a kind of humour. The bee especially was a pattern for imitation, not merely because it was industrious, but because it toiled with an unconscious kind of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others as well as itself. It was the most honourable of insects; the spider, on the contrary, was the most ignoble, because it spread its fine web for its own selfish gratification only. The innocence of the dove, the docility of the ox, the light-heartedness of birds, were all examples for imitation. The ferocity, or the cunning of other animals or insects, were examples for avoidance. The good which brutes had by nature man might acquire by force of moral purpose; and the sovereign of the lower animals ought to comprise in his nature all the best qualities of his subjects.[308] The plumage of the peacock, excelling in variety and beauty all possible art of the dyer, evinced the superhuman power of the Maker of all things.[309]

His ethical doctrine bears singular resemblance to that of Butler. God has bestowed on man a faculty of discerning right from wrong; He has impressed upon him a natural law, the law of conscience. Hence some commands are delivered without explanation: for instance, the prohibition to kill, or to commit adultery, because these merely enjoin what is already evident by the light of the natural law. On the other hand, for the command to observe the Sabbath a reason is assigned, because this was a special and temporary enactment. The obligation of the law of conscience was universal and eternal. As soon as Adam had sinned, he hid himself, a clear evidence of his consciousness of guilt, although no written law existed at that time.

The Greeks might attempt to deny the universality of this inherent law, but to what other origin could they ascribe the laws which had been made by their own ancestors concerning respect for life, the marriage bond, covenants, trusts, and the like? They had indeed been handed down from generation to generation; but whence did the first promulgators derive the idea of them, if not from this moral sense? To the law of conscience was added the energy of a moral purpose, προαίρεσις, which enabled man to practise what conscience prescribed: conscience informs man that temperance is right; moral purpose enables him to become temperate. God had also endowed man with some natural virtues: indignation at injustice, compassion for the injured, sympathy with the joys and sorrows of our fellow-men.[310] At the same time Chrysostom fully allows the value of training and teaching as supplementary to and co-operating with all these natural gifts.[311] If conscience grew languid, the admonition of parent and friend, and, in the case of public offences, the law, stepped in, to effect what conscience failed to do; and frequently God sent afflictions for the same remedial purpose.[312]

Thus day after day the indefatigable preacher sounded the note of encouragement, or warning, or instruction. He not only held the Christian flock together, but largely increased its numbers. His eloquence frequently excited rapturous applause, which was invariably repressed with sternness. On one occasion the congregation yielded to a panic; a false rumour was circulated that a body of troops was entering the city, to take vengeance on the inhabitants. The Prefect entered the church to allay the fears of the affrighted people who had fled thither, but Chrysostom was overwhelmed with shame, and sharply upbraided them that a Christian congregation should owe the restoration of calmness to a Pagan, whom they ought to have impressed, like Paul before Agrippa, by a display of Christian firmness and fortitude.[313]

About the middle of Lent, two commissioners, Hellebicus and Cæsarius, arrived at Antioch, invested with full powers to inquire into the late outrage. Their authority was backed by a considerable military force. They were men not only of intelligence and humanity, but Christians in faith; and they had many friends in Antioch. They entered the city, surrounded by a large multitude, who turned weeping faces and held out supplicating hands towards them. The commissioners were moved, and in deep silence entered the lodging provided for them; but it was necessary for them to perform their duty, which was in the first place to announce that Antioch was degraded from the rank of capital of Syria, and its metropolitan honours were transferred to the neighbouring city of Laodicea. Secondly, all the public baths, circuses, theatres, and other places of recreation, were to be closed for an indefinite time. Thirdly, the commissioners were to revise the trials already held by the local governor, and to inflict rigorous sentences upon all the guilty, especially any persons of distinction. These judicial proceedings were to begin on the following day.

The scene at the entrance of the court was a melancholy spectacle; the wives and daughters of the accused hung around it in mean garments sprinkled with ashes, and in attitudes of supplication or despair.

There were no lawyers to plead for the prisoners; they had run away or concealed themselves, to evade the perilous duty. Libanius alone, towards evening, crept timidly into the court. Cæsarius, to whom he was known, observed him, beckoned him to approach, and placed him by his side. In a low voice he bade him take courage; he and his colleague would endeavour as much as possible to spare life. Libanius earnestly thanked him, and promised if he kept his word to immortalise him by an oration in his honour.[314]

An appeal, however, more effectual, was made to the mercy of the commissioners, by persons widely different from Libanius. As they were riding in state to the hall of justice on the second day, they saw amongst the people a group of strange half-wild-looking beings, in rough coarse garments, with long unkempt hair. These were hermits, who had descended from their solitudes in the neighbouring mountains—some who for years had not been seen in the streets of the city, but now appeared to plead on behalf of the offending people. An old man, diminutive in stature, whose clothing was in tatters, started forward from the group as the commissioners passed by, seized the bridle of one, and commanded them in a tone of authority to dismount. “Who is this mad fellow?” inquired the commissioners. They were informed that he was the revered hermit Macedonius, surnamed Crithophagus, or the barley-eater, because barley was his only sustenance. Hellebicus and Cæsarius immediately alighted, and, falling on their knees before him, craved his pardon for having received him so rudely. “My friends,” replied the solitary, “go to the Emperor and say, ‘You are an emperor, but also a man, and you rule over beings who are of like nature with yourself. Man was created after a Divine image and likeness; do not, then, mercilessly command the image of God to be destroyed, for you will provoke the Maker if you punish his image. For, consider that you are doing this from displeasure at the injury inflicted on a statue of bronze; and how far does a living rational creature exceed the value of such an inanimate object! Let him consider that it is easy to manufacture many statues in the place of those destroyed, but it is wholly impossible for him to make a single hair again of those men who have been put to death.’”[315] The other hermits declared that they were all prepared to shed their blood and lay down their lives for the culprits; that they would not withdraw from the city until they were sent as ambassadors to the Emperor, or until the city itself had been acquitted. The joy of Chrysostom at the courage displayed by these hermits was extreme; their noble conduct compensated for the sad pusillanimity lately exhibited by the congregation in the church. He triumphantly contrasts them with the so-called philosophers of Antioch, who appear to have displayed anything but philosophic calmness in the hour of danger. “Where now are those long-bearded, cloak-wearing, staff-bearing fellows—cynic refuse, more degraded than dogs licking up the crumbs under the table, doing everything for their belly? Why, they have all hurried out of the city and hidden themselves in caves and dens, whilst those who inhabited the caves have entered the city, and boldly walk about the forum as if no calamity had happened. Their conduct illustrates what I have never ceased to maintain, that even the furnace cannot injure one who lives in virtue. Such is the power of philosophy introduced to man by Christ.”[316] The result of this singular intercession was, that the commissioners consented to suspend the execution of their sentence on those pronounced guilty, until an appeal had been made to the Emperor. Meanwhile the prisoners were to remain in confinement, and their property to be held by the State.

The hermits were anxious to repair to the court of Theodosius, but the commissioners wisely refused, making the length of the journey an objection, but perhaps really because they feared such excitable zealots might frustrate the object of their embassy by imprudent behaviour. It was finally decided that Hellebicus should remain to preserve order in Antioch, while his colleague went to Constantinople, carrying with him an intercessory letter signed by the hermits, and declaring that they were ready to give their own lives in ransom for the city.

Cæsarius departed amidst the blessings and acclamations of the people.[317]

What had the energetic preacher, who had sustained the spirits of the people so long, been doing, since the arrival of the Emperor’s legates? It had been, indeed, a relief to find that the city was not to be surrendered to the sword; but to a proud and luxurious people the loss of metropolitan rank, and the closing of the public baths, theatres, and public places of amusement, were severe blows. Loud and general was the lamentation over their fallen grandeur and their lost enjoyments. Chrysostom expostulated with them on their discontent. The real dignity of a city did not consist in pre-eminence of rank or vastness of population, but in the virtue of its citizens. What constituted the noblest distinction of Antioch?—the fact that the disciples there were the first to be called Christians—that they had sent relief to the distressed brethren in Judæa in the time of the famine (Acts xi. 28, 29)—that they had sent Paul and Barnabas to that Council at Jerusalem which had emancipated the Gentile Christians from Judaic bondage. These were honourable distinctions, which no other city, not even Rome itself, could rival. They enabled Antioch to look the whole Christian world in the face, for they proved how great had been her Christian courage and her Christian love. These were her true metropolitan honours; and, if these were in aught diminished, not by the size or beauty of her buildings, not by her airy colonnades or her spacious porticos and promenades,[318] not by the sacred Grove of Daphne, not by the number and loftiness of her cypresses, not by her fountains or her multitudinous population, or her genial climate,—not by these could she recover her tarnished reputation, but by equity, almsgiving, vigils, prayers, temperance. External size and beauty did not constitute real greatness. David was little of stature, yet he prostrated by a single blow a very tower of flesh. Away with these womanish complaints! “I have heard many in the forum saying, ‘Woe to thee, Antioch! what has become of thee? how art thou dishonoured!’ and when I heard I laughed at the childish understanding of those who say such things. It behoves you not to speak thus now; but, when you see dancing, and drunkenness, and singing, and blaspheming, and swearing, then utter the cry, ‘Woe to thee, O city! what has become of thee?’ but when you see only a few equitable, temperate, and moderate men in the forum, then call the city happy.”[319]

He remonstrates indignantly with them for their querulous complaints of the prohibition to use the public baths. Bathing, indeed, was a luxury so indispensable to the bodily health and comfort of the people, that they now resorted to the river in large numbers, with very little regard to decency. He reminds those who murmured over this deprivation of their favourite indulgence, that a short time ago, when they were daily expecting an incursion of soldiers, and were flying to the desert and mountains, they would have been too thankful to escape with so cheap a penalty. He urges the duty of reconciliation with enemies as specially incumbent on them when such great efforts were being made to obtain mercy for themselves. They should have one enemy alone, the devil, with whom they should wage an implacable warfare.[320]

Thus the prophet, ever vigilant for the true welfare and honour of his people, ceased not to lift up his voice.

Cæsarius travelled day and night, and in the course of a week accomplished the eight hundred miles which separated Antioch from Constantinople. But his arrival and his errand had been anticipated. Flavian had reached the court a week before, and the pardon of Antioch was already secured. The aged bishop returned to Antioch just in time to celebrate Easter, and to augment the natural joyfulness of the festival by the tidings which he brought. He had, however, been preceded a few days by an express courier, who delivered the imperial rescript to Hellebicus. When the contents were publicly proclaimed, the pent-up feelings of the people burst forth into demonstrations of almost frantic joy. Hellebicus was received with ovation wherever he went. Libanius walked by his side, reciting passages from his orations, in honour of Theodosius and praise of the two commissioners.[321] On Holy Saturday, Flavian himself entered the city, partly attended, partly borne along, by vast crowds of grateful people. On that night the forum was decorated with garlands and illuminated by lanterns. On the next morning, Easter Day, a vast concourse thronged the church, and once more the well-known voice, which had exhorted and encouraged and warned, during the days of their gloom, now poured forth in the sunshine of their joy a pæan of thanksgiving and praise.

“Blessed be God, who hath vouchsafed us to celebrate this holy feast with great joy and gladness, who has restored the Head to the body, the Shepherd to the sheep, the Master to his disciples, the Pontiff to the priests. Blessed be God, who hath done exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, for it seemed to us sufficient to be for a time released from the impending calamities; but the merciful God, ever exceeding in His gifts our petitions, has restored to us our father sooner than all our expectation. And not only has our beloved prelate escaped all the perils incident to so long a journey in the winter season, but has found his sister, whom he left on the point of death, still living to welcome his return.”[322]

He then proceeds to describe the interview of Flavian with Theodosius, as it had been related to him by an eye-witness. The bishop, when introduced into the royal presence, stood at a distance, silently weeping, bending low, and covering his face, as if he himself had been the author of all the late offences. By this attitude he hoped to expel emotions of anger, and introduce the emotion of pity into the Emperor’s breast, before he undertook the actual defence of the city.

Theodosius was moved; he advanced to the bishop, and used no harsh or indignant language, but only mildly reproached with ingratitude a city which he had always treated with lenity, and had long desired and intended to visit. Even had the people been able to accuse him of any injury done to them, they might at least have respected the dead, who could do them no harm (alluding to the destruction of his wife’s and father’s images).

The aged prelate no longer remained silent. With a fresh flood of tears, he poured forth his pathetic appeal to the Christian clemency and forbearance of the Emperor. “He would not attempt to extenuate the offence, the sense of their ingratitude caused them the deepest distress, and they frankly confessed that it deserved the severest chastisement which could be inflicted. Yet the noblest kind of revenge which he could take was freely to forgive the insult; thereby he would defeat the malice of those demons who had tried to work the ruin of the people by seducing them from their allegiance. In like manner, the devil had tried to compass the death of the human race, but his malevolence had been frustrated by God, who offered even heaven to those who had been excluded from paradise. A free pardon would secure for him a station in the hearts of all his subjects, far more enduring than those statues which had been broken down. He reminded him, how once his great predecessor, Constantine, when urged to revenge some insult done to one of his statues, passed his hand over his face, and observed, with a quiet smile, that he did not feel the blow;—a saying which had endeared him to his people more than his military exploits. But why need he refer to Constantine? Theodosius himself, on a previous Easter, had commanded a general release of prisoners, and had nobly exclaimed, ‘Would that it were possible also for me to recall the dead to life!’[323] Now he might in some sort realise that wish, by restoring to life a whole city, which lay, as it were, dead under remorse and fear. Such an act of clemency would both strengthen his own throne and the cause of Christianity. Greeks, Jews, and barbarians were waiting to hear his decision. If it was on the side of mercy, all would applaud it, saying, ‘Heavens! how mighty is the power of Christianity, which has restrained the wrath of a monarch who has not his peer in the world.’ How noble a tale for posterity to hear, that what the governor and magistrates of a great city dared not ask, had been granted to the prayer of an old man, because he was the priest of God, and from reverence to the Divine laws. He would solemnly remind him of the words, ‘If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive you your trespasses.’ He begged him to remember that there was a day coming in which all men would render an account of their actions, and to imitate the example of God, who, though daily sustaining insults from man, did not cease to bestow blessings upon him. He concluded by declaring that he would never return to Antioch unless he could take back the imperial pardon, but would enrol himself in another city.”[324]