"He continued in this mood, irresolute as to his line of conduct, and without holding any communication with the bishop's dwelling. A meeting, however, became unavoidable, for the festival of the Epiphany was approaching; and, unless he chose to put himself outside of the church, Valens could not do otherwise than attend at divine service. On the morning of the feast, he therefore came to a determination, and went to the temple with an escort of soldiers, himself doubting whether he would be received peacefully, or would have to force an entry through violence. He entered: the crowd was most numerous, and had just begun the choral psalms; the chant was both harmonious and powerful, the whole service offering that appearance of majesty and order which Basil excelled in maintaining in his church. At the bottom of the nave stood Basil himself, facing the people, but motionless like a pillar of the sanctuary, and with his eyes fixed upon the altar. There he remained standing, just as the acts of the saints represent him, his tall or rather towering stature showing off his spare and slender figure, while his aquiline features were strongly brought forth by his thin, emaciated cheeks; a latent fire flashed from under his prominent forehead and his arched eyebrows, whilst now and then a somewhat disdainful smile parted on each side of his mouth his long white beard. All around him stood his clergy in an attitude of fear and respect. At this imposing sight Valens stopped, as if suddenly seized with a sort of bewilderment. The service continued as though his presence had passed unperceived. At the offertory, he stepped forward to present the gift which he had prepared; but no hand was held out to receive it; nobody came forward to meet him. A cloud passed before his eyes; he staggered on his legs; and, had not one of the attendants supported him, he would have fallen to the ground. Basil had pity on his anguish, and waved with his hand that the offering should be accepted.
"The next day, the emperor having recovered his composure, returned to the church, and, feeling bolder, resolved to speak to his terrible antagonist. The service being over, he passed behind the velum where the officiating priest was wont to retire. Basil received him with kindness, in the presence of his faithful friend Gregory, who had hastened to his side. The interview was a long and peaceful one. Basil fully explained to the monarch his reasons for not conforming to his wishes, and even entered into many theological developments. By thus flattering his vanity, and by appearing to set some value on his opinion, he kept him for several hours spellbound by his lucid and powerful eloquence. This, by no means, satisfied many of the by-standers, who had already gone over to Arianism, and some of them endeavored to interfere. Among these was the unfortunate Demosthenes, who made an attempt at a theological argument, but in the midst of his demonstration he unwittingly coined a most ridiculous barbarism. 'Strange,' exclaimed Basil, smiling, 'here we have caught Demosthenes blundering in Greek!' The emperor departed, somewhat pacified, and bestowed upon Basil a piece of land for a hospital which he had founded," (pp. 94-103.)
What a picture! what a lesson for every one! How it brings home to every mind the fact that a new power had arisen, which was more than a match for worldly rulers, though clothed with even imperial purple. In the present instance, the lesson became still more apparent, when Valens left Caesarea without having dared to sign a decree of banishment against Basil, and fully convinced that a supernatural agency interfered to protect him. In the West, observes Prince de Broglie, Valentinian endeavored to maintain a neutral position between the church and heathenism; but he found it impossible to keep his ground, and his own measures turned against him. In the East, Valens aimed at governing against the church, but was overcome by the sole ascendency of sanctity combined with genius. The time, in fact, was come when the temporal power proved to be utterly helpless to save a crumbling state of society from its utter downfall, and when the fundamental principles on which all society must ever rest were to be recast and remodelled by more skilful hands, though even through a dark, chaotic period, to serve again in future days as the substratum of modern Christendom. Geologists plunging into the bowels of the earth tell us of primitive periods, and primitive creations, that appear to our wondering eyes as the forerunners or foreshadows of our own world. We read something of the same kind in the facts and incidents of the fourth century: the priestly power makes itself already felt in a Basil, or in Augustin, much as it was hereafter displayed in a Gregory I., or a Lanfranc, or an Anselm, or even a Hildebrand. Doubtless, Basil and Ambrose were no Hildebrands, but they are of the same race and genus—there is a family likeness between them all, because, perhaps, the same spirit burns within them, whatever may be their outward figure or robe. To convey our meaning through another simile. You enter a gallery, containing the portraits of some eminent family, whose deeds have left their imprint for ages on the country to which they belong. You take your stand at the founder of the illustrious stock, and probably his large, open, noble figure sinks at once into your memory, as if you had before you some huge relic of the fossil world. And then you go on, following, one by one, each successive representative of the time-honored generations. The ancestral likeness becomes almost extinct, and you vainly endeavor to retrace in the effeminate lineaments of a courtier the eagle-eye and haughty traits of his forefathers. But all of a sudden you are riveted to the spot by the portrait of a youth, who seems to embody within himself every distinctive mark of the whole race. You would almost mistake him for a son of the original founder, and yet he bears so completely about him the peculiarities of his own time that to place him anywhere else would be committing an utter anachronism. Your mind is, as it were, thrown off its balance, and you hardly know how to account for the delusion. Something of the same kind occurs when you compare certain prelates of the middle age, or even of later times, with the last bishops of the Roman empire; and nowhere does this highly interesting fact come forth in stronger relief than in the work before us. It would be easy to demonstrate the assertion by other incidents belonging to the life of St. Basil; we prefer giving a still better proof in St. Ambrose, the celebrated bishop of Milan.
He was the last Roman statesman, just as Theodosius might be termed the first Christian emperor. He had been brought up in the familiarity of Probus, one of the most eminent patricians of the great city. As he himself belonged to a noble family, he had learned at an early age all the traditions and arts of the Roman government, whilst the austerity of his religious principles guarded him against the allurements of pleasure. Of an open, commanding exterior, a good speaker, well versed in literature, no less proficient in the laws of his country, it seemed natural that with such eminent qualifications, backed with excellent connections, he should attract the sovereign's notice. This actually took place, and he was appointed to the consular government of Milan. But the times were dangerous, for the unbending disposition of Valentinian had now become tyrannical. Probus was by no means blind to the peril incurred by his youthful protégé; and on taking leave of him the veteran politician simply said, "Child, I have but one piece of advice to give you. Behave, not like a governor, but like a bishop." The advice was characteristic and pithy: Ambrose remembered it well. In the midst of the universal confusion and terror caused by the emperor's cruelty, Milan enjoyed the greatest order and tranquillity. No riots, no insurrections, no complaints; the thing was in itself a wonder, more particularly, if we recollect the dissensions existing between the Arian bishop Auxentius, and the better part of his flock. In fact, a young governor setting an example of chastity, integrity, and humanity—showing himself affable, just, or merciful according to the occasion—never sacrificing to his own ambition or private interests the time and property of others; such a man, says Prince de Broglie, was, in the eyes of the population, fit to grace the episcopal seat far better than the praetorium of the civil magistrate.
The popular election of Ambrose to the episcopacy is too well known for us to relate once more a story that has been so often and so ably told. What we wish particularly to bring forward is the secular character which is constantly enforced upon a bishop of those times, whether he wills it or not, from the very simple reason that he could do what no other could accomplish.
Ambrose had scarcely been consecrated—he had scarcely bestowed the whole of his large fortune upon the poor, he had scarcely given himself up to the absorbing duties of his new position, when be was called upon to guide the first steps of his own sovereign, young Gratian, who had just succeeded to his father Valentinian, and raised Theodosius to the throne of the East. Both these princes were sincere Christians, but Theodosius had been brought up in the camp, had tasted the bitter cup of adversity, and added to the qualities of a good soldier those of a cool judgment and a sound heart. Gratian, on the contrary, was a mere stripling, whose intentions were upright, but who had hardly any experience in public affairs. He thus was naturally disposed to lean on Ambrose, whose advice, both as a pastor and a statesman, might be so eminently useful. That advice was not wanting, and for some time the policy of the Western Empire was in reality the policy of Ambrose. We use the word advisedly, for no other could better answer to our meaning and to the real state of things. At the same time we beg the reader to remember that not for one minute does the bishop separate his strong, manly adherence to the gospel from his views as to the secular government; both are, indeed, so blended, so utterly identified, that it becomes as impossible to distinguish them one from another, as it is to mark where the influence of our bodily organs terminates, and where that of our soul begins. The evils of the times were too frequent, and too poignant, not to require the interference of Ambrose—not to make him bold, even as a bishop, a sort of civil magistracy, of which his flock would have been the very last to complain. Though he had not the slightest idea of using his sober but penetrating eloquence for anything like popular demonstrations, yet he was not the man to refuse the part or an intercessor, if a population, suffering from oppression, claimed his support; or if the sovereign asked of him to strengthen his wavering counsels, he would readily hold out a helping hand.
And here we may find, with our author, manifest indications of that great Christian doctrine, the "de jure" alliance of church and state. Ambrose had been formed from childhood upward to a certain course of ideas, which led him naturally to assume a large share in the direction of public affairs.
"He could not apprehend the notion that the empire should have no official form of worship, or rather that it should have two religions together at one and the same time. He was shocked at the sight of an incoherent confusion of Christianity and heathenism to be met with at every step throughout the West, and nowhere more than at Rome itself. The churches and their rival temples, both opened on the same day, by order of the senate or emperor, for the same official ceremonies; Jupiter and Mars, two glorified demons, associated with the one jealous God, as the protectors of the commonwealth; invoked in the same language, thanked for the same favors; and then the monuments covered with profane inscriptions, the statues of idols towering over the basilicas, or defying on the public squares and at the corner of every street the cross triumphant; all this adulterous mixture of truth and error, which the Christian emperors had never dared to proscribe completely, scandalized the jealous purity of his faith quite as much as his taste for administrative regularity. As a prefect, he would have gladly put an end to such confusion, as being a public nuisance; as a a bishop, he felt indignant against so poisonous a profanation. The empire acknowledging but one master, and there being but one God in heaven, why should not these two unities be linked together by an indissoluble union? Why should the state tolerate within its limits anything beyond those two grand unities? On this central point Gratian and the bishop agreed even before they had seen each other. The alliance of the church and state, which the timorous conscience of a Gratian had looked for, Ambrose was ready not only to recommend, but enforce as a duty," (vol. ii. p. 18.)