Immoderate addiction to the pleasures of the table is a frequently recurring subject of censure. He depicts in lively terms the freshness, activity, and good health of the temperate man; the lethargy, the headaches, the cramps, the gout, the sickness of the glutton. Here is his portrait of a fat gourmand:—“To whom is not the man disagreeable who makes obesity his study, and has to be dragged about like a seal? I speak not of those who are such by nature, but of those who, naturally graceful, have brought their bodies into this condition through luxurious living. The sun has risen, he has darted everywhere his brilliant rays, he has roused every one to his work: the tiller has taken his hoe, the smith his hammer, each workman his proper tool; the woman sets to work to spin or weave; while he like a hog goes forth to the occupation of filling his stomach, seeking how to provide for a costly table. When the sun has filled the market-place, and other men have already tired themselves with work, he rises from his bed, stretching himself like a fatting pig. Then he sits a long time on his couch to shake off the drunkenness of the previous evening, after which he adorns himself and walks out a spectacle of ugliness, not so much like a man as a man-shaped beast.”... “Who might not justly say, ‘this fellow is a burden to the earth; he has come into the world in vain; nay, not in vain, alas! but to the injury both of himself and other people?’”[445]
Such passages as these prove that the power of Chrysostom to captivate his hearers consisted not always in eloquence or ornate rhetoric, but in a kind of bold and rough plain-speaking, which dragged out into broad daylight the most flagrant evils of the time, and painted them in strong coarse colours, to excite derision or disgust. But the fickleness and impulsiveness of the people were fatal obstacles to the retention of fixed and durable impressions. The population upon whom Chrysostom poured forth his torrents of exhortation or invective was more debased than that to which Savonarola preached; not so vigorous, not so homogeneous, not so much animated by a sentiment of citizenship, not under the refining influence of a taste for literature and art.[446] It was a vast, disorderly medley of incoherent elements, destitute of those political privileges, and of that industrial commercial spirit, which inspire the character with manly energy and independence. A passionate, invincible love of pleasure, an abandoned devotion to such public amusements as in no way appealed to the intellect, and were calculated to debase and relax the finer moral feelings,—these were insuperable bars to the substantial success of the Christian reformer. A large proportion of his hearers seem to have listened to his discourses as pleasant exhibitions of bold satire and eloquent declamation; they applauded, they laughed, they wept, they were smitten with something like compunction; and Chrysostom confesses that at the moment he could not repress a natural feeling of gratification at the effect produced; but that when he went home, and reflected that the benefit which his hearers should have derived generally evaporated in empty applause, instead of manifesting itself in some solid improvement, he wept and groaned from vexation. What men learned in the church was undone in the theatre: “his work was like that of a man who attempted to clean a piece of ground into which a muddy stream was constantly flowing.”[447]
His letters to individuals, and the eulogia which he passes at the beginning of some of his homilies on the zeal, piety, and attention of his flock, prove indeed that there were bright exceptions, but the mass of the people remained irreclaimable. On grand festivals, such as Easter Day, vast crowds attended the church; the very precincts were thronged, and the multitude surged backwards and forwards like the waves of the sea. A large portion was composed of the fashionable and rich; but Chrysostom greatly preferred those smaller congregations, consisting chiefly of poor, who attended regularly, and on whose attachment to the Church he could depend. He enjoyed these quiet services, free from the bustle and disturbance of large crowds.[448] The wealthy and the gay spared little time for the services of the Church, though they never pleaded business as an excuse for absence from the theatre. If they came now and then, they did so as a kind of condescension and favour shown to God and his priest. They lazily slumbered, or idly gossiped during the service; yet they boasted of their attendance afterwards.[449]
After the account in previous chapters of Chrysostom’s method of dealing with the prevalent heresies of the day at Antioch, there is no occasion to say much more. The same forms of error had to be encountered at Constantinople by much the same arguments. Only one, Novatianism, appears to have been more prominent in this city than at Antioch. The exclusive pretensions to purity of doctrine and moral life made by the Novatians excited his special indignation. “What arrogance! what boastfulness is this! Can you, being a man, call yourself clean? Nay, what madness is it? As well call the sea free from waves; for as waves never cease to move on the sea, so do sins never cease to work in us.”[450] The harshness of the Novatians, in refusing the readmission of apostates on repentance, was peculiarly offensive to his merciful and hopeful view of human nature. Sicinnius, the Novatian bishop in Constantinople, wrote a book against him, in which he makes a handle of particular expressions in Chrysostom’s homilies detached from their context; such as, “Repent a thousand times, and enter the Church;” ... “let the unclean person, the adulterer, the thief, enter;” but omitting the words which follow—“that he may learn to do these things no more. I draw all, I throw my net over all, desiring to catch not those only who are sound, but those who are sick.”[451] A hopefulness and love, which never despaired of the sinner, are eminently characteristic of Chrysostom; and the strong words of encouragement and comfort which he used were of course susceptible of a construction injurious to him, by those who prided themselves on enforcing a very rigid standard of moral and ecclesiastical discipline.
Twenty years had elapsed since Gregory Nazianzenus, with much reluctance and trembling, had accepted the See of Constantinople. The city was at that time a very stronghold of Arianism. Arians had held the see for nearly forty years. The services of the orthodox were held in a private house, and were at first exposed to violent disturbance from the populace, which, hounded on by the Arian clergy, hooted and threw stones at the worshippers. But the eloquence, combined with the holiness, of Gregory had subdued this violent opposition. The ranks of the orthodox were swelled, and the little house was enlarged into a noble church, under the name of Anastasia, as significant of the revival of the true faith.[452] Imperial authority completed the work which Gregory had begun. The Arians and other sectaries were prohibited by various enactments from assembling for worship within the city walls;[453] but in the time of Chrysostom they began again to molest the faithful. On Saturdays and Sundays they made a practice of assembling in colonnades and public places, and there loudly singing Arian songs—songs, that is, embodying Arian doctrine, like the Thalia composed by Arius; abstract statements of theology, very unpoetical in form, very incapable, as we should have supposed, of exciting popular feeling.[454] This noisy singing went on during the greater part of the night; at dawn they marched through the streets singing antiphonally, and then held assemblies for worship outside the gates. Chrysostom, with more of zeal perhaps than wisdom, organised rival processions of antiphonal singers; the Empress supplied them with tapers mounted on silver crosses. Street frays were the inevitable consequence of these counter demonstrations; the Arians took to their old practice of stone-throwing; Briso, one of the Emperor’s chamberlains, was wounded by a stone in the forehead, and several persons killed on both sides, after which the Arian assemblies were suppressed by royal order.
The practical energy of Chrysostom was not confined within the limits of his own diocese. He did not forget his native city, but laboured, and laboured successfully, to heal the schism by which the Church of Antioch had been so long distracted. Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, consented at his earnest request to join with him in the despatch of an embassy to Rome, to supplicate the recognition of Flavian as sole bishop. Acacius, Bishop of Berœa, and Isidore, for whom Theophilus had striven to obtain the See of Constantinople, were selected to carry the petition, and they returned with a favourable answer from the Bishops of the West. It is a satisfaction to find Chrysostom united in this charitable work with those who afterwards became his most malignant enemies.[455]
His missionary efforts extended northwards to the Danube, and southwards to Phœnicia, Syria, and Palestine. He sought out men of apostolic zeal to evangelise some Scythian tribes on the banks of the Danube, and appointed a Gothic bishop, Unilas, who accomplished great things, but died in A.D. 404, when Chrysostom was in exile, and unable to appoint a successor.[456] A novel spectacle was witnessed one day in the Church of St. Paul. A large number of Goths being present, Chrysostom ordered some portions of the Bible to be read in Gothic, and caused a Gothic presbyter to address his countrymen in their native tongue. The Archbishop, who preached afterwards, rejoiced in the occurrence as a visible illustration of the diffusion of the Gospel among all nations and languages, a triumph before their very eyes over Jews and Pagans, and a fulfilment of such prophecy as “Their sound is gone out into all lands;” “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” “Where is the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras? Extinguished. Where is the teaching of the tent-maker and the fisherman? Not only in Judæa, but also among the barbarians, as ye have this day perceived, it shines more brilliantly than the sun itself. Scythians, and Thracians, Samaritans, Moors, and Indians, and those who inhabit the extremities of the world, possess this teaching translated into their own language; they possess such philosophy as was never dreamed of by those who wear a beard and thrust passengers aside with their staff in the Forum, and shake their wise locks, looking more like lions than men.”... “Nay! our world has not sufficed for these evangelists; they have betaken themselves even to the ocean, and enclosed barbarian regions and the British Isles in their net.”[457] Chrysostom assigned a church in Constantinople for the use of the Scythian inhabitants (probably Gothic, for the Greek historians used the word Scythian very vaguely), ordained native readers, deacons, and presbyters, and frequently preached there himself through the medium of an interpreter.[458] Some of his letters when in exile are addressed to Gothic monks, who occupied the house where Promotus had lived.[459] They were staunch friends to him during his exile, and the monastic body established in this house existed in the seventh century.
Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza, wrote a letter to Chrysostom in A.D. 398, urging him to obtain an order from the Emperor for the destruction of Pagan temples in that city. Chrysostom did not cease to solicit Eutropius till he had procured an edict, not indeed for the destruction, but for the closing of the temples, and the demolition of the idols which they contained. In the following year, however, A.D. 399, an edict was issued addressed to Eutychianus, Prefect of the East, directing that the temples should be demolished throughout the country. This appears to have been obtained chiefly through the influence of Chrysostom; and large bodies of monks were sent by him into Phœnicia, where especially paganism prevailed, who were to use every effort to extirpate it, both by assisting in the destruction of temples, and by the propagation of Christian truth. The money required for this missionary expedition was supplied by the liberality of some ladies in Constantinople, rich not only in faith, but also in the wealth of this world. The welfare of these missionary projects continued, as will hereafter be seen, to engage his most anxious attention throughout his exile to the very close of his life.[460]