§ 170. JOHN CHETSOSTOM. 93f.
worthier, bat wlio bitterly complained of l/ie evasion. Tliia was the occasion of his celebrated treatise On the Priesthood, in which, in the form of a dialogue with Basil, he vindicates his not strictly truthful conduct, and delineates the responsiblo duties of the spiritual office.'
After the death of his mother he fled from the seductiona and tumults of cily life to the monastic solitude of the mountains near Antioch, and there spent six happy years in theological study and sacred meditation and prayer, under the guidance of the learned abbot Diodorus (afterwards bishop of Tarsus, f ^^^)i and in communion with such like-minded young men as Tlieodore of Mopsuestia, the celebrated father of Antiochian (Nestorian) theology (f 429). Monasticism was to him a most profitable school of experience and self-government ; because he embraced this mode of life from the purest motives, and brought into it intellect and cultivation enough to make the seclusion available for moral and spiritual growth.
In this period he composed his earliest writings in praise of monasticism and celibacy, and his two long letters to the fallen Theodore (subsequently bishop of Mopsuestia), who had regretted his monastic vow and resolved to marry.^ Chrysostom regarded this small affair from the ascetic stand-point of his age as almost equal to an apostasy from Christianity, a: d plied all his oratorical arts of sad sympathy, tender entreaty bitter reproach, and terrible warning, to reclaim his friend to what he thought the surest and safest way to heaven. To sin, he says, is human, but to persist in sin is devilish ; to fall is not ruinous to the soul, but to remain on the ground is. The appeal had its desired effect, and cannot fail to make a salutary impression upon every reader, provided we substitute some eally great offence for the change of a mode of life which can only be regarded as a temporary and abnormal form of Christian practice.
' Hepl Upa!(Tvui)s. De sacordotio libri vi. Separate editions are: That of i'Vobenius at Basel, 1525, Greek, with a preface by Erasmus; that of Hughes at Cambridge, lYlO, Greek and Latta, with the Life of Chrysostom by Cave ; that of/. A. Benfjel, Stuttgart, 1725, Greek and Latin, reprinted at Leipsic in 1825 and 1834 besides several translations into modern languages. Comp. above, § 51, p. 253.
' Compare Tillemout, Montfaucon, and Neander (1. c. i. p. 3fi fif.).
936 THIRD PEKIOD, A.D. 311-590.
Bj excessive self-mortifications John undermined his health, and returned about 380 to Antioch. There he was immediately ordained deacon by Meletius in 380, and by Flavian was made presbyter in 386. By his eloquence and his pure and earnest character he soon acquired great reputation and the love of the whole church.
During the sixteen or seventeen years of his laboi-s in Antioch he wrote the greater part of his Homilies and Commentaries, liis work on the Priesthood, a consolatory Epistle to the despondent Stagirius, and an admonition to a young widow on the glory of widowhood and the duty of continuing in it. He disapproved second marriage, not as sinful or illegal, but as inconsistent with an ideal conception of marriage and a high order of piety.
After the death of Nectarius (successor of Gregory Xazianzen), towards the end of the year 397, Chrysostoni w^as chosen, entirely without his own agency, patriarch of Constantinople. At tliis post he labored several years with happy effect. But his unsparing sermons aroused the anger of the empress Eudoxia, and his fame excited the envy of the ambitious patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria. An act of Christian love towards the persecuted Origenistic monks of Egypt involved him in the Origenistic controversy, and at last the united influence of Theophilus and Eudoxia overthrew him. Even the sympathy of the people and of Innocent I., tlie bishop of Rome, was unavailing in his behalf. He died in banishment on the fourtecntii of September, a. d. 407, thanking God for all.' The Greeks celebrate liis memorial day on the thirteenth of November, the Latins on the twenty-seventh of January, the day on whicli his remains in 438 were solemnly deposited in the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople witli those of the emperors and patriarchs.
Persecution and undeserved sufferings tested the character of Chrysostom, and have heightened his fame. The Greek churcii honors liim as the greatest teaciier of the church, approached only by Athanasius and the three Cappadocians. His labors fall within the comparatively quiet period between
' Compare particulars above, § IZi.