St. Meletius, on his being promoted to the see of Antioch, about the year 361, raised these both to the priesthood, and they took care of that church, as his delegates, during his banishment by Constantius. Thus they continued together their zealous labors till Diodorus was made bishop of Tarsus. In 381, St. Meletius took Flavian with him to the general council which was assembled at Constantinople; but dying in that capital, Flavian was chosen to succeed him. His life was a perfect copy of the eminent episcopal virtues, and especially of the meekness, the candor, and affability of his worthy predecessor.
Unhappily the schism, which for a long time had divided the church of Antioch, was not yet extinguished. The occasion was this: after the death of St. Eustathius, they could not agree in the choice of his successor; those who were most attached to this holy prelate, with St. Athanasius and the West, followed Paulinus: the Apollinarists declared for Vitalis: and the greatest body of the orthodox of Antioch, with Flavian, Diodorus, and all the East, adhered to St. Meletius, who, as we have seen already, was succeeded by Flavian. Paulinus, bishop of that part of the Catholics called Eustathians, from their attachment to that prelate, though long since dead, still disputed that see with Flavian; but dying in 383, the schism of Antioch must have ended, had not his abettors kept open the breach by choosing Evagrius in his room; though it does not appear that he had one bishop in communion with him, Egypt and the West being now neuter, and the East all holding communion with Flavian. Evagrius dying in 395, the Eustathians, though now without a pastor, still continued their separate meetings, and kept up the schism several years longer. St. Chrysostom being raised to the see of Constantinople, in 398, labored hourly to abolish this fatal schism, which was brought about soon after by commissioners constituted for this purpose by the West, Egypt, and all the other parties concerned, and the Eustathians received Flavian as their bishop. In the year 404, when St. Chrysostom was banished, Flavian testified his indignation against so unjust a proceeding, and wrote upon that subject to the clergy of Constantinople. But he did not live to be witness of all the sufferings his dear friend was to meet with, dying about three years before him, in 404. The general council of Chalcedon calls him blessed, (Conc. t. 4, p. 840,) and Theodoret (l. 5, c. 232) gives him the titles of the great, the admirable saint. St. Chrysostom is lavish in his praises of him. Flavian's sermons and other writings are all lost except his discourse to Theodosius, preserved by St. Chrysostom. No church or Martyrology, whether among the Greeks or Latins, ever placed Falvius I. of Antioch in the catalogue of the saints. Whence Chatelain, in his notes, speaking of St. Meletius, February the 12th, p. 630; and on St. Flavian of Constantinople, February the 17th, p. 685, expresses his surprise at the boldness of Baillet and some others, who, without regard to the decrees of Urban VIII., presumed to do it of their own private authority, and without any reason, have assigned for his feast the 21st of February. Chatelain, in his additions to his Universal Martyrology, p. 711, names him with the epithet of venerable only, on the 26th of September. He is only spoken of here, to answer our design of giving in the notes some account of the most eminent fathers of the church who have never been ranked among the saints. On St. Flavian II. of Antioch, banished by the emperor Anastasius with St. Elias of Jerusalem, for their zeal in defending the council of Chalcedon against the Eutychians, see July {} 4th, on which these two confessors are commemorated in the Roman Martyrology. 10. St. Chrys. Hom. 21, ad Pap. Antioch. seu de Statius. t. 2. 11. Sozom. l. 8, c. 2, &c. 12. Socrat. c. 2. See Stilting, §35, p. 511. 13. St. Chrys. l. Quod regulares foeminæ, t. 1, p. 250. 14. Stilting, §41, p. 526. 15. Phot. Cod. 59. Socr. l. 6, c. 21. Stilting, §40, p. 523. 16. [Greek: Kai sunêgores elambanomen]. Chrys. Serm. contra ludos et spect. t. 6, p. 272. Ed. Ben. [Greek: Andreas Paulon kai Timotheon]. 17. Mich. vi. 3. Jer. ii. 5. 18. Hom. 13, in Ephes. t. 11, p. 95 19. Pallad in Vit. Chrysost. Item S. Chrysost. Hom. in 1 Tim. v. 5, l. 3, de Sacerd. c. 8, and l. ad V{}oior. Stilting, §67, p. 603. 20. [Greek: Iôannês hu tês eleêmosunês]. Pallad. c. 12. 21. Hom. 2, & 25, in Acta. Hom. 14, in Hebr. Pallad. in Vit. S. Chrys. 22. S. Procl. Or. 22. p. 581. 23. L. 2, Ep. 294, p. 266. 24. L. 3, de Sacerd. 25. Stilting, §43, p. 530, et seq. 26. About this time the poet Claudian wrote his two books against Eutropius, as he had done before against Rufinus. 27. Pallad. Dial. {} 127. Stilting, §47, p. 542. 28. T. 3, p. 411. 29. S. Joan. Damasc. Orat. 3, de Imaginibus, p. 480, {} Billii. See F. Sollier in Hist. Chronol. Patriarch Alexand. in Theophilo, p. 52. 30. See Stilting, §54, 55, 5{}, p. 567. 31. T. 3, p. 415. 32. Socrates and Sozomen say that he preached another sermon against the empress, beginning with these words: Herodias is again became furious. But Montfaucon refutes this slander, trumped up by his enemies. The sermon extant under that title is a manifest forgery, t. {}n spuriis, p. 1. See Montfaucon, and Stilting, §63, p. 503. 33. {}p t. 3, p. 515. Pallad. Dial. Stilting, §58, p. 578. 34. S. Nilus, l. 2, ep. 265. 35. L. 3, ep. 279. 36. T. 3, p. 525. 37. Ep. 8. 38. Ep. 8, p. 589. 39. Ibid. 3, p. 552. 40. Ibid. 4, p. 570. 41. Pallad. Theodoret, l. 5, c. 34. 42. Pallad. Sozom. l. 8. c. 28. 43. The passage of Palladius, in which St. Basiliscus is called bishop of Comana, is evidently falsified by the mistake of copiers, as Stilting demonstrates; who shows this Basiliscus to have suffered not at Nicomedia, but near Comana, in the country where his relics remained; the same that is honored on the 2d of March. It is without grounds that Tillemont, Le Quien, &c., imagine there were two martyrs of the same name, the one a soldier, who suffered at Comana under Galerius Maximian; the other, bishop of that city. T. 5, in S. Basilisc. note 4. See Stilting, §83, p. 665. 44. Sir Harry Saville is of opinion that he was only fifty-two years old: but he must have been sixty-three, as born in 344. 45. Nestorius, Or. 12, apud Marium Mercat. par. 2, p. 86, ed. Gamier. Stilting, §88, p. 685. 46. Jos. Assemani. Comm. In Calend. Univ. t. 6. p. 105, and Stilting. 47. Joan. xxi. 17. St. Chrys. l. 2, de Sacred. c. 1. 48. Hom. 3 & 44, in Act. et alibi sæpe. 49. See St. Chrys. hom. 16, in Rom. 50. Hom. 52, in Acta.
{252}
ON THE WRITINGS
OF
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.
IN the Benedictine edition of his works given by Dom Montfaucon, we have in the first tome his two Exhortations to Theodorus; three books against the Adversaries of a Monastic Life; the Comparison between a King and a Monk; two books on Compunction; three books to Stagirius the monk, on Tribulation and Providence; against those Clergymen who harbor Women under their roof to serve them; another treatise to prove that Deaconesses, or other Regular Women, ought not to live under the same roof with men; On Virginity; To a Young Widow; On the Priesthood; and a considerable number of scattered homilies. Theodorus, after renouncing the advantages which high birth, a plentiful estate, a polite education, and an uncommon stock of learning offered him in the world, and having solemnly consecrated himself to God in a monastic state, violated his sacred engagement, returned into the world, took upon him the administration of his estate, fell in love with a beautiful young woman named Hermione, and desired to marry her. St. Chrysostom, who had formerly been his school-fellow, under Libanius, and been afterwards instrumental in inducing him to forsake the world, and some time his companion in a religious state, grievously lamented his unhappy fall; and by two most tender and pathetic exhortations to repentance, gained him again to God. Every word is dictated by the most ardent zeal and charity, and powerfully insinuates itself into the heart by the charm of an unparalleled sweetness, which gives to the strength of the most persuasive eloquence an irresistible force. Nothing of the kind extant is more beautiful, or more tender, than these two pieces, especially the former. The saint, in the beginning, borrows the most moving parts of the lamentations of Jeremy, showing that he had far more reason to abandon himself to bitter grief than that prophet; for he mourned not for a material temple and city with the holy ark and the tables of the law, but for an immortal soul, far more precious than the whole material world. And if one soul which observes the divine law is greater and better than ten thousand which transgress it, what reason had he to deplore the loss of one which had been sanctified, and the holy living temple of God, and shone with the grace of the Holy Ghost: one in which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had dwelt; but was stripped of its glory and fence, robbed of its beauty, enslaved by the devil, and fettered with his bolts and chains. Therefore the saint invites all creatures to mourn with him, and declares he will receive no comfort, nor listen to those who offer him any, crying out with the prophet: Depart from me: I will weep bitterly: offer not to comfort me. Isa. xxii. 4. His grief, he says, was just, because he wept for a soul that was fallen from heaven to hell, from grace into sin: it was reasonable, because by tears she might yet be recovered; and he protests that he would never interrupt them, till he should learn that she was risen again. To fortify his unhappy friend against the temptation of despair, he shows by the promises, examples, and parables of the Old and New Testaments, that no one can doubt of the power or goodness of God, who is most ready to pardon every sinner that sues for mercy. Observing that hell was not created for man, but heaven, he conjures him not to defeat the design of God in his creation, and destroy the work of his mercy by persevering in sin. The difficulties which seemed to stand in his way, and dispirited him, the saint shows would be all removed, and would even vanish of themselves, if he undertook the work with courage and resolution: this makes the conversion of a soul easy. He terrifies him by moving reflections on death, and the divine judgments, by a dreadful portraiture which he draws of the fire of hell, which resembles not our fire, but burns souls, and is eternal; lastly, by the loss of heaven, on the joys of which kingdom he speaks at large; on its immortality, the company of the angels, the joy, liberty, beauty, and glory of the blessed, adding, that such is this felicity, that in its loss consists the most dreadful of all the torments of the damned. Penance averts these evils, and restores to a soul all the titles and advantages which she had forfeited by her fall: and its main difficulty and labor are vanquished by a firm resolution, and serious beginning of the work. This weakens and throws down the enemy: if he be thoroughly vanquished in that part where he was the strongest, the soul will pursue, with ease and cheerfulness, the delightful and beautiful course of virtue upon which she has entered. He conjures Theodorus, by all that is dear, to have compassion on himself; also to have pity on his mourning friends, and not by grief send them to their graves: he exhorts him resolutely to break his bonds at once, not to temporize only with his enemy, or pretend to rise by degrees; and he entreats him to exert his whole strength in laboring to {253} be of the happy number of those who, from being the last, are raised by their fervor to the first rank in the kingdom of God. To encourage him by examples, he mentions a young nobleman of Phoenicia, the son of one Urbanus, who, having embraced with fervor the monastic state, insensibly fell into lukewarmness, and at length returned into the world, where he enjoyed large possessions, lived in pomp, and abandoned himself to the pursuit of vanity and pleasures; till, opening his eyes upon the remonstrances of certain pious friends, he distributed his whole estate among the poor, and spent the rest of his life in the desert with extraordinary fervor. Another ascetic, falling by degrees, in an advanced age, committed the crime of fornication; but immediately rising, attained to an eminent degree of sanctity, and was honored with the gift of miracles. The disciple of St. John, who had been a captain of a troop of robbers and murderers, became an illustrious penitent. In like manner, our saint exhorts and conjures this sinner to rise without delay, before he was overtaken by the divine judgments, and to confess his sins with compunction of heart, abundant bitter tears, and a perfect change of life, laboring to efface his crimes by good works, to the least of which Christ has promised a reward.
St. Chrysostom begins his second Exhortation to Theodorus, which is much shorter than the first, by expressing his grief as follows: (t. 1, p. 35:) "If tears and groans could have been conveyed by letters, this would have been filled. I grieve not that you have taken upon you the administration of your affairs; but that you have trampled under your feet the sacred engagement you had made of yourself to Christ. For this I suffer excessive trouble and pain; for this I mourn; for this I am seized with fear and trembling, having before my eyes the severe damnation which so treacherous and base a perfidiousness deserves." He tells him yet "that the case is not desperate for a person to have been wounded, but for him to neglect the cure of his wounds. A merchant after shipwreck labors to repair his losses; many wrestlers, after a fall, have risen and fought so courageously as to have been crowned; and soldiers, after a defeat, have rallied and conquered. You allege," says he, "that marriage is lawful. This I readily acknowledge; but it is not now in your power to embrace that state: for it is certain that one who, by a solemn engagement, has given himself to God as his heavenly spouse, if he violates this contract, he commits an adultery, though he should a thousand times call it marriage. Nay, he is guilty of a crime so much the more enormous as the majesty of God surpasses man. Had you been free, no one would charge you with desertion; but since you are contracted to so great a king, you are not at your own disposal." St. Chrysostom pathetically shows him the danger, baseness, and crime of deferring his repentance, sets before him hell, the emptiness of the world, the uneasiness and troubles which usually attend a married life, and the sweetness of the yoke of Christ. He closes this pressing exhortation by mentioning the tears and prayers of his friends, which they would never interrupt, till they had the comfort of seeing him raised from his fall. St. Chrysostom wrote these two exhortations about the year 369, which was the second that he spent in his mother's house at Antioch when he led there an ascetic life. The fruit of his zeal and charity was the conversion of Theodorus, who broke his engagements with the world, and returned to his solitude. In 381 he was made bishop of Mopsuestia. In opposing the Apollinarist heresy, he had the misfortune to lay the seeds of Nestorianism in a book which he composed on the Incarnation, and other writings. He became a declared protector of Julian the Pelagian, when he took refuge in the East; wrote an express treatise against original sin; and maintained the Pelagian errors in a multitude of other works, which were all condemned after his death, though only fragments of them have reached us, preserved chiefly in Facundus, Photius, and several councils. He died in 428, before the solemn condemnation of his errors, and in the communion of the Catholic church. See Tillemont, t. 12.
During St. Chrysostom's retreat in the mountains, two devout servants of God desired of him certain instructions on the means of attaining to the virtue of compunction. Demetrius, the first of these, though he was arrived at a high degree of perfection in an ascetic life, always ranked himself among those who crawl on the earth, and said often to St. Chrysostom, kissing his hand, and watering it with tears, "Assist me to soften the hardness of my heart." St. Chrysostom addressed to him his first book on Compunction, in which he tells him that he was not unacquainted with this grace, of which he had a pledge in the earnestness of his desire to obtain it, his love of retirement, his watching whole nights, and his abundant tears, even those with which, squeezing him by the hand, he lead begged the succor of his advice and prayers, in order to soften his dry, stony heart into compunction. With the utmost confusion for his own want of this virtue, he yielded to his request, begging in return his earnest prayers for the conversion of his own soul. Treating first on the necessities and motives of compunction, he takes notice that Christ pronounces those blessed who mourn, and says we ought never to cease weeping for our own sins, and those of the whole world, which deserves and calls for our tears so much the more loudly, as it is insensible of its own miseries. We should never cease weeping, if we considered how much sin reigns among men. The saint considers the sin of rash judgment as a general vice among men, from which he thinks scarce any one will be found to have lived always free. He {254} says the same of anger; then of detraction; and considering how universally these crimes prevail among men, cries out: "What hopes of salvation remain for the generality of mankind, who commit, without reflection, some or other of these crimes, one of which is enough to damn a soul?" He mentions also, as general sins, swearing, evil words, vain-glory, not giving alms, want of confidence in divine providence, and of resignation to his will, covetousness, and sloth in the practice of virtue. He complains that whereas the narrow path only leads to heaven, almost all men throw themselves into the broad way, walking with the multitude in their employs and actions, seeking their pleasure, interest, or convenience, not what is safest for their souls. Here what motives for our tears! A life of mortification and penance he prescribes, as an essential condition for maintaining a spirit of compunction; saying that water and fire are not more contrary to each other, than a life of softness and delights is to compunction; pleasure being the mother of dissolute laughter and madness. A love of pleasure renders the soul heavy and altogether earthly; but compunction gives her wings, by which she raises herself above all created things. We see worldly men mourn for the loss of friends and other temporal calamities. And are not we excited to weep for our spiritual miseries? We can never cease if we have always before our eyes our sins, our distance from heaven, the pains of hell, God's judgments, and our danger of losing Him, which is the most dreadful of all the torments of the damned.
In his second book On Compunction, which is addressed to Stelechius, he expresses his surprise that he should desire instructions on compunction of one so cold in the divine service as he was; but only one whose breast is inflamed with divine love, and whose words are more penetrating than fire, can speak of that virtue. He says that compunction requires in the first place, solitude, not so much that of the desert, as that which is interior, or of the mind. For seeing that a multitude of objects disturbs the sight, the soul must restrain all the senses, remain serene, and without tumult or noise within herself, always intent on God, employed in his love, deaf to corporeal objects. As men placed on a high mountain hear nothing of the noise of a city situated below them, only a confused stir which they no way heed; so a Christian soul, raised on the mountain of true wisdom, regards not the hurry of the world; and though she is not destitute of senses, is not molested by them, and applies herself and her whole attention to heavenly things. Thus St. Paul was crucified and insensible to the world, raised as far above its objects as living men differ from carcasses. Not only St. Paul, amid a multiplicity of affairs, but also David, living in the noise of a great city and court, enjoyed solitude of mind, and the grace of perfect compunction, and poured forth tears night and day, proceeding from an ardent love and desire of God and his heavenly kingdom, the consideration of the divine judgments, and the remembrance of his own sins. Persons that are lukewarm and slothful, think of what they do or have done in penance to cancel their debts; but David nourished perpetually in his breast a spirit of compunction, by never thinking on the penance he had already done, but only on his debts and miseries, and on what he had to do in order to blot out or deliver himself from them. St. Chrysostom begs his friend's prayers that he might be stirred up by the divine grace to weep perpetually under the load of his spiritual evils, so as to escape everlasting torments.