Unquestionable as the intellectual genius of Chrysostom was, yet it is rather in the purity of his moral character, his single-minded boldness of purpose, and the glowing piety which burns through all his writings, that we find the secret of his influence. If it was rather the mission of Augustine to mould the minds of men so as to take a firm grasp of certain great doctrines, it was the mission of Chrysostom to inflame the whole heart with a fervent love of God. Rightly has he been called the great teacher of consummate holiness, as Augustine was the great teacher of efficient grace;[767] rightly has it been remarked that, like Fénélon, he is to be ranked among those who may be termed disciples of St. John, men who seem to have been pious without intermission from their childhood upwards, and of whose piety the leading characteristics are ease, cheerfulness, and elevation; while Augustine belongs to the disciples of St. Paul, those who have been converted from error to truth, or from sin to holiness, and whose characteristics are gravity, earnestness, depth.[768] If Augustine has done more valuable service in building up the Church at large, Chrysostom is the more loveable to the individual, and speaks out of a heart overflowing with love to God and man, unconstrained by the fetters of a severe and rigid system. Yet it is precisely on this account that he has not been so generally appreciated as he deserves. His tone is too catholic for the Romanist, or for the sectarian partisan of any denomination. “It would be easy to produce abundant instances of his oratorical abilities; I wish it were in my power to record as many of his evangelical excellencies.” Such is the verdict of a narrow-minded historian,[769] and the comparative estimation in which he held St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom may be inferred from the number of pages in his History given to each: St. Augustine is favoured with 187, Chrysostom with 20. But he whose judgment is not cramped by the shackles of some harsh and stiff theory of Gospel truth will surely allow that Chrysostom not only preached the Gospel but lived it. To the last moment of his life he exhibited that calm, cheerful faith, that patient resignation under affliction, and untiring perseverance for the good of others, which are pre-eminently the marks of a Christian saint. The cause for which he fought and died in a corrupt age was the cause of Christian holiness; and, therefore, by the great medieval poet of Christendom he is rightly placed in Paradise between two men who, widely different indeed in character and circumstances from him and from one another, yet resembled him in this, that they freely and courageously spoke of God’s “testimonies even before kings, and were not ashamed”—Nathan the Seer, and Anselm the Primate of all England:—
“Natan profeta, e’l metropolitano
Crisostomo, ed Anselmo....”[770]
APPENDIX.
[Vide ante, p. 415 note.]
ON THE LETTER TO CÆSARIUS (Chrys. Op. vol. iii. p. 755).
The history of this letter, and the controversy connected with it, are curious and interesting. Peter Martyr transcribed a Latin translation of it, which he found in a manuscript at Florence, carried it with him to England, and deposited it in the library of Archbishop Cranmer. After Cranmer’s death, and the dispersion of his library, the letter disappeared. Peter Martyr had not stated the source from which he had derived it, and, therefore, when the assailants of the doctrine of Transubstantiation wished to make use of it, their opponents always maintained that it did not exist. In 1680, however, Emericus Bigotius discovered a copy in the library of St. Mark’s Convent, at Florence, probably the same which Peter Martyr, himself a Florentine, had transcribed. Emericus appended it to his edition of Palladius’s “Life of Chrysostom,” and in his preface endeavoured to vindicate its authenticity; but the Doctors of the Sorbonne suppressed the letter, and such portions of the preface as related to it. Emericus, however, had retained in his own possession some of the entire copies after they were printed, before they came into the licenser’s hands. The translation was published by Stephanus Le Moyne in 1685, by Jacob Basnage in 1687, and in 1689 by Harduin, a Jesuit, who strenuously maintained the Roman Catholic interpretation of the passage on the Eucharist. Montfaucon adopted Harduin’s version of it, annexing a few fragments in the Greek, picked out of Anastasius and John Damascene.