In such a crisis Gregory came most unwillingly to the Capital. At first he lodged in the house of a relation of his own, part of which he arranged as a Chapel, and dedicated under the title Anastasia, as the place where the Catholic faith was to rise again. There he began at once to carry out the rule of the Church as to daily service, to which he added his own splendid preaching.
His constant theme was the worship of the Trinity. After two Sermons in deprecation of religious contentiousness, he preached those famous Five Orations which have won for him the title of the Theologian. To analyse these belongs to another portion of this work; it will be enough in this place to say, that after warning his audience against the frivolity with which the Arians were dragging religious subjects of the most solemn kind into the most unsuitable places and occasions, he proceeds in four magnificent discourses to set forth the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, shewing carefully the difference between Sabellian confusion of Persons and Tritheistic division of Substance. The Arians, however, persecuted him bitterly; even, on one occasion at least, hiring an assassin to murder him; and their persecution was all the more bitter because of the wonderful success which attended Gregory's preaching. S. Jerome, who came to Constantinople at this time, has left on record the pleasure with which he listened to and conversed with the great Defender of the Faith.
Unfortunately Gregory now let himself be taken in by a plausible adventurer named Maximus, who had come to Constantinople in the hope of obtaining the Bishopric for himself. He attached himself to Gregory and won his confidence, the latter even going so far as to deliver a panegyric upon him as a sufferer for the Faith. After a short time, however, Maximus managed to procure his own consecration secretly from some Egyptian Bishops, who during an illness of Gregory enthroned him at night in the Church. In the morning, when the people discovered what had been done, they were very indignant, and Maximus and his friends were driven out of the Church and forced to leave the City. Meanwhile the rank and fashion of Constantinople began to dislike Gregory, who would not condescend to the arts of the popular preacher, and whose simple retiring life and gentle demeanour were made matter of reproach to him. Gregory was quite willing to retire, and was only prevented from doing so by the earnest remonstrances of his friends, who solemnly assured him that if he went away the Faith would depart with him; so he consented to remain till a fitter man could be found. Late in 380 Theodosius came to Constantinople, where almost his first act was to deprive the Arians of the Churches, and to put Gregory in possession of the Cathedral of S. Sophia. The next year the great Council of Eastern Bishops, which ranks as the Second Ecumenical Council, met at the Capital, under the presidency of Meletius of Antioch. Its first care was to sanction the translation of Gregory from the See of Sasima to that of the Metropolis of the Empire, and to enthrone him in S. Sophia, and thus he became the recognised Archbishop of the Imperial City. Meletius shortly afterwards died, and Gregory assumed the Presidency of the Council. He failed in his endeavours to heal the schism which was troubling the Church of Antioch, and when the Egyptian Bishops on their arrival shewed a disposition to take up the case of Maximus, and were determined at any rate to oust Gregory from the Patriarchal Throne on the ground of a Nicene canon forbidding translations, which had virtually been rescinded by the act of the Council, he made up his mind to resign. He obtained a reluctant assent to this course from the Emperor, and then took leave of the Synod in one of the most magnificent of all his Orations, in which he gives a graphic account of his work in the Metropolis. Nectarius, Prefect of the City, who was only a catechumen, was elected in his place, and Gregory went home to Nazianzus. He administered the affairs of the Church there for a little while, and then, having procured the election of Eulalius as Bishop, he retired to Arianzus, where he passed the few remaining years of his life in seclusion, but still continued to take an active interest in the affairs of the Church. His own city was greatly disturbed by Apollinarian teachers, whose efforts to establish themselves within the Church were very persevering. Apollinarius, or as he is frequently called in the West, Apollinaris, was a Bishop of Laodicea in the latter half of the Fourth Century, and was at one time greatly respected for his learning and orthodoxy by S. Athanasius and S. Basil. He was even an instructor of S. Jerome in 374, but he seceded from the Church in the next year, owing to views which he had come to hold about the nature of our Lord; these really prepared the way for various forms of the Monophysite heresy. He fell into the error of a partial denial of our Lord's true Humanity, attributing to Christ a human body and a human soul, but not a reasoning spirit, whose place, according to him, was supplied by the Divine Logos. This view had first appeared in 362, when it came before a Council at Alexandria. Those who were accused of holding it denied it, and expressed their sense of the absurdity of such a view, pointing out that our Lord could not be said to be really incarnate if He had no human mind; but about 369 it assumed a definite form (though even then it was not known to be the teaching of Apollinarius). Arguing from the Divinity of Christ that He cannot have had a human mind, for if He had He would have had sinful inclinations, and the one Christ would have been two persons, Apollinarius and his followers went on to maintain that the Incarnation only meant a certain converse between God and Man; and that Christ's Body was not really born of Mary, but was a part of the Godhead converted into flesh. S. Athanasius wrote two Books against these two propositions, but did not name Apollinarius, most probably because he did not believe him to be committed to them. The fundamental error of the system was the idea that the Incarnation was, not the Union of the two Natures, but only a blending so close, that in the mind of these teachers all the Divine Attributes were transferred to the human nature, and all the human ones to the Divine, and the two were merged in one compound being.
In 377 a Roman Synod excommunicated Apollinarius and his adherents, and S. Damasus wrote a letter containing twenty-five anathemas, which he sent to Paulinus of Antioch and others. This condemnation is in almost the identical words used by S. Gregory in the first of two letters on the question which he wrote to Cledonius, a Priest of Nazianzus, and which were adopted as symbolic at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Of these letters Canon Bright says that they belong to that class of documents of the Fourth Century which refuted by anticipation the heresies of the Fifth. Gregory affirmed True Godhead and True Manhood to be combined in the One Person of the Crucified, Who was the adorable Son, Whose Mother was the Mother of God, and Who assumed, in order to redeem it, the entire nature that fell in Adam. In his seclusion, says Mr. Crake, his sole luxuries were a garden and a fountain. He spent his last days in continual devotion. His knees were worn with kneeling, and his whole thoughts and aspirations had gone before to the long home to which he was hastening. After the manner of the Saints, he was very rigorous in his self-denial. His bed was of straw with a covering of sackcloth, and a single tunic was all the outward clothing of him who had been Bishop of Constantinople. Yet his glory was only in the Lord. "As a fish cannot swim without water, and a bird cannot fly without air, he said, so a Christian cannot advance a single step without Christ." He died in 391, and in the same year that he passed from the roll of the earthly episcopate Augustine was ordained Priest at Hippo Regius in Africa.
Ullmann gives the following description of his character and personal appearance:
"Gregory was of middle height and somewhat pale; but his pallor became him. His hair was thick and blanched by age, his short beard and conspicuous eyebrows were thicker. On his right eye he had a scar. His manner was friendly and attractive; his conduct simple. The keynote of his inner being was piety; his soul was full of fiery strength of faith, turned to God and Christ; a lofty zeal for divine things led him all his life. This zeal manifested itself above all in a steadfast adherence to and defence of certain dogmas which that age held to be specially important; as well as in lively conflicts, not always free from partisanship, with opposing convictions; but not less in a hearty and living apprehension of practical Christianity, the establishment and enlargement of which in men's minds was to him all important. His asceticism was overdone; it injured his health; yet it did not degenerate into hypocrisy; it was to him the means for elevating and liberating the mind, but not in and for its own sake a higher virtue. An inborn and inbred love of solitude hindered him from turning all his powers to a publicly useful activity. His seclusion did not allow him to become familiar with the knowledge of men and of the world; lacking in knowledge of men, carelessly confident, sometimes distrustful and bitter in his judgment of others, he demanded from others much, but from himself most. Susceptible of great resolves, and full of fiery zeal for all good, he was not always steadfast and persevering in carrying them out. In endurance and conflict he was noble and high-minded; in victory moderate; in prosperity humble; never flattering the great, but an ever ready helper to the oppressed and persecuted, and to the poor a loving father. The most excellent qualities were in Gregory mingled with faults; he was not quite free from vanity, he was very irritable and sensitive, but also readily forgave and cherished no grudges. He was a man feeling after holiness, and striving after the highest good, but not perfect, as no man upon earth is."
Before leaving Constantinople he made his will, in which he bequeathed all his property to the Deacon Gregory for life, with reversion to the poor of Nazianzus.
[2525] ek duoin enantiotatoin sunkekramenes, hellenikes te kai nomikes terateias; hon amphoteron ta mere phugon, ek meron sunetethe. Tes men gar ta eidola kai tas thusias apopempomenoi, timosi to pur kai ta luchna; tes de to sabbaton aidoumenoi kai ta peri ta bromata estin ha mikrologian, ten peritomen atimazousin.--Or. xviii. 5.
[2526] Carm. de vita sua, 511.
[2527] Ib. 339.
[2528] What time I parted from Egyptian shores, Whence I had somewhat culled of ancient lore, We weighed, and under Cyprus cut the waves In a straight course for Hellas, when there rose A mighty strife of winds, and shook the ship; And all was night; earth, seas, and darkened skies; And thunders echoed to the lightning's shock. Whistled the rigging of the swelling sails, And bent the mast; the helm had lost its power, For none could hold it in the raging seas. The ship was filled with overwhelming waves; Mingled the shout of sailor, and the cries Of helmsman, captain, and of passenger, And those who till that fearful hour had been Unconscious of a God; for fear can teach. And, worst of all our dread impending woes, No water had we, for the ship began To labour, and the beakers soon were broke Which held our treasure of sweet water scant; And famine fought with surging and with storm To slay us. But God sent a swift release. For Punic sailors suddenly appeared, Who in their own sore terror soon perceived By our sad cries our danger, and with oars (For they were strong) came up and saved our barque And us, who now all but sea-corpses were; Like fish forsaken of their native wave, Or lamp that dies for want of nourishment. But while we all were fearing sudden death, Mine was a worse, because a secret, fear. The cleansing waters ne'er had passed on me, That slay our foe and join us to our God. This was my lamentation, this my dread. For this I stretched my hands and cried to God, And cried above the noise of surging waves, And rent my clothes, and lay in misery. But, though ye scarce believe it, yet tis true, All those on whom our common danger pressed Forgot themselves, and came and prayed with me. And Thou wast then, O Christ, my great defence, Who now deliverest from the storm of life. For when no good hope dawned upon our eyes, Nor isle, nor continent, nor mountain top, Nor torch, nor star to light the mariners, Nor small nor great of earthly things appeared, What port was left for troubled sailor-folk? Despairing of all else, I look to thee; Life, breath, salvation, light, and strength to men, Who frightest, smitest, smilest, healest all, And ever weavest good from human ill. I call to mind Thy wonders of old time, By which we recognize Thy mighty hand; The sea divided--Israel's host brought through-- Their foes defeated by Thy lifted hand-- And Egypt crushed by scourges, chiefs and all-- Nature subdued, and walls thrown down by shout. And, adding mine to those old famous acts, Thine own, I said, am I, both erst and now; Twice shalt Thou take me for Thine own, a gift Of earth and sea, a doubly hallowed gift, By prayers of mother and by fateful sea. To Thee I live, if I escape the waves, And gain baptismal dews; and Thou wilt lose A faithful servant if Thou cast me off, E'en now Thine own disciple, in the deep; Shake off for me Thy slumber, and arise, And stay my fear. So prayed I--and the noise Of winds grew still, the surges ceased, the ship Held straight upon her course; my prayer was heard.