his cause to Constantinople. In order to overcome the Arian ism of the Goths, he ordained some persons of their country, and assigned them a church within the city, by whose industry he reclaimed many, and he himself often preached there, and prevailed on others of the clergy to do the same. He made liberal and active attempts to spread the gospel among barbarous nations, though the troubles, which afterward befel him, must have checked both these and other christian designs.

He was, doubtless, endowed with many qualities which belong to a reformer, and on account of his earnest efforts, profligate bishops accused him.

A synod, at length, held and managed by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, his determined enemy, and one of the worst ecclesiastical characters in history, supported by the influence of the proud Eudoxia, the empress, condemned him with extreme injustice. Chrysostom, foreseeing the effect of the storm which was gathering around him, addressed himself to the bishops, who were his friends, assembled in the great rooms of his house. "Brethren," said he, "be earnest in prayer, and as you love our Lord Jesus, let none of you for my sake desert his charge. For, as was Paul's case, I am ready to be offered up, and the time of my departure is at hand. I see I must undergo many hardships, and then quit this troublesome life. I know the subtlety of Satan, who can not bear to be daily tormented with my preaching. By your constancy you will find mercy at the hand of God, and remember me in your prayers." The assembly being afflicted with vehement sorrow, he besought them to moderate their grief; saying, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." "I always told you this life is a road in which joys and sorrows both march hastily away. The visible scene of things before us is like a fair, where we buy and sell, and sometimes recreate ourselves. Are we better than the patriarchs? Do we excel the prophets and apostles, that we should live here for ever?"

When one of the company passionately bewailed the desolations of the church, the bishop, striking the end of his right

fore-finger on the palm of his left hand, (which he was accustomed to do when much in earnest,) said, "Brother, it is enough, pursue the argument no further; however, as I requested, desert not your churches. As for the doctrine of Christ, it began not with me, nor shall it die with me. Did not Moses die? and did not Joshua succeed him? Paul was beheaded, and left he not Timothy, Titus, Apollos, and many more behind him?"

Thus did this worthy father comfort his mourning friends. The people of Constantinople, who sincerely loved the bishop, insisted on his being heard by more equitable judges, and so strong was their agitation, that Chrysostom, fearing a popular insurrection, delivered himself up secretly to the officer, who came to execute the imperial warrant against him. He was conveyed immediately to a port in the Black⚫ sea. As soon as it was known that he was gone, the whole city was in an uproar; many blamed the emperor, who, in so weak a manner, had given up the most upright of men, to the malice of his wife and of Theophilus. The tumult was at length so violent, that Eudoxia herself, affrighted at the danger, pressed her husband to recall him, and even wrote to Chrysostom a letter full of protestations of sorrow and respect.

He was therefore restored to his bishopric. But the calm season lasted not long.

A silver statue of the empress was solemnly erected in the street, just before the great church of St. Sophia, and dedicated with many heathenish extravagancies. The bishop impatient of these things, publicly reproved them from the pulpit. His enemies could not desire a greater advantage, and they improved it to the utmost.

He was suspended and confined; his friends and followers were dispersed, rifled, killed, or imprisoned. Edicts were issued, severely threatening all that refused to renounce. communion with Chrysostom.

Receiving at length a warrant signed by the emperor to depart, he exhorted his friends to continue their care of the church, and to communicate with the bishop, who should be

chosen, by common consent, in his room, and he retired once more from his See, in the year 404.

He was conveyed to Cucusus, in Armenia, a barren, cold region, infested with robbers, and mournfully marked already with the murder of Paul, the former bishop of Constantinople. His journey to this place was attended with many grievous hardships, though sweetened with the compassionate care of various persons, who keenly sympathized with injured innocence. At Cucusus, however, he met with very generous treatment. Here he preached frequently to a people who heard him gladly. A grievous famine raging in these parts, he was enabled, by the liberality of Olympias, to relieve the poor, and he redeemed many captives which had been taken by the Isaurian robbers. He had formerly conceived a plan for converting the pagans, which were still in Phenicia, and had made some progress in it.

But, understanding that the design had met with a check, he again made vigorous attempts for the support of so good a work, and ordered sums of money for the erection of churches and the support of missionaries. He seemed to recover his health for a time; but, winter approaching, he felt the usual effects of that season on persons of weak constitutions. His stomach had unhappily received much injury from the austerities of his youth, and never recovered its tone. The next spring he recruited, but was always obliged to observe the strictest regimen.

He was obliged to move from place to place on account of danger from robbers; and as he wrote to Innocent, bishop of Rome, who sincerely, though unsuccessfully, labored in his cause, he was, in the third year of his banishment, exposed to famine, pestilence, war, continual sieges and incredible. desolation, to death every day, and to the Isaurian swords.

His enemies, beholding with an evil eye the respect every where paid to him, procured an order for him to be removed to Pityus, the very shore of the Black sea. In his way thither, he was brought to an oratory of Basiliscus, who had suffered martyrdom under Dioclesian's persecution. Here he

desired to rest; but his guards, who had all along treated him with brutish ferocity, refused him the indulgence.

Nature was, however, exhausted; he had not gone four miles before he was so extremely ill that they were obliged to return with him. Here he received the Lord's Supper, made his last prayer before them all, and, having concluded with his usual doxology, "glory be to God for all events," he breathed out his soul, in the fifty-third year of his age, in the year 407.

This great man, "though dead, yet speaks" by his works. He labored much in expounding the Scriptures, and, though not copious in the exhibition of evangelical truths, still he every where shows that he loved it.

He was a bishop of the first See; learned, eloquent above measure, of talents the most popular, of a genius the most exuberant, and of a solid understanding by nature; magnanimous and generous, liberal almost to excess, sympathizing with distress of every kind, and severe only to himself; a man of that open, frank, ingenuous temper which is so proper to conciliate friendship; a determined enemy of vice, and of acknowledged piety in all his intentions! Yet we have seen him exposed to the keenest shafts of calumny, expelled with unrelenting rage by the united efforts of the court, the nobility, the clergy of his own diocese, and the bishops of other dioceses. What is to be said? The just conclusion seems to be that real godliness, under christian as well as heathen governments, is too much hated, dreaded and persecuted.

CHAPTER XV.

Jerome.

CLASSICAL EDUCATION; LIVES IN RETIREMENT; MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS.

HIS renowned monk was born at Stridon, a town. in the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia, under the emperor Constantine, in the year 331. The place was obscure, and was rendered still more so by the desolations of the Goths.

That Jerome was of a liberal and opulent family, appears from the pains taken with his education, which was finished at Rome, that he might there acquire the graces of Latinity. He was in truth the most learned of the Roman fathers, and was eminent both for genius and industry. He was brought up in christianity from infancy, and hence, like other good men who have had the same advantages, he appears never to have known the extreme conflicts with indwelling sin, which, to later converts, have given so much pain, and often have rendered them more eminently acquainted with vital religion.

After his baptism at Rome, he traveled into France, in company with Bonosus, a fellow student. He examined libraries, and collected information from all quarters; and, returning into Italy, he determined to follow the profession of a monk,-a term which did not at that time convey the modern idea of the word. In Jerome's time it meant chiefly the life of a private recluse christian, who yet was fettered by no certain rules nor vows, but acted according to his own pleasure.

Such a life suited the disposition of a studious person like him. He was, however, made a presbyter of the church, but never would proceed any further in ecclesiastical dignity. He spent four years in the deserts of Syria, reading and studying with immense industry.