Chrysostom

“ Chrysostom seems to divide the pleasures of this world into two classes: the more sensual he calls flowers, the rest he calls shadows: the grosser natures cling to the former more tenaciously than to any other kind. ”

“ Chrysostom had always been an ascetic liver, but he had not a robust frame, and he had been accustomed to wholesome food and the frequent use of the bath. Continuous travelling by night as well as day, the scorching sun, hot dust, hard bread, brackish water, and deprivation of the bath, threw him into a fever; but either from fear of the Isaurians, or of Leontius, bishop of Ancyra, in Galatia, one of his most virulent enemies, the journey was pursued without intermission till he arrived, more dead than alive, at Cæsarea, in Cappadocia. ”

“ Their resentment was inflamed by a powerful party, embracing the magistrates, the ministers, the favourite eunuchs, the ladies of the court, and Eudoxia the empress herself, against whom the preacher thundered daily from the pulpit of St Sophia. A favourable pretext for gratifying their revenge was discovered in the shelter which Chrysostom had given to four Nitrian monks, known as the tall brothers, who had come to Constantinople on being excommunicated by their bishop, Theophilus of Alexandria, a man who had long circulated in the East the charge of Origenism against Chrysostom. ”

“ Chrysostom was one of those rare men who combine greatness and goodness, genius and piety, and continue to exercise by their writings and example a happy influence upon the Christian church. He was a man for his time and for all times. ”

“ They that wear soft clothing are in king's houses,"--as much as to say, My prophets, my ministers, rejoice not in such things.
So Chrysostom could never forget that he was a minister of Christ, and was willing to forego the trappings and pleasures of material life sooner than abdicate his position as a spiritual dictator. The secular historians of our day would call him arrogant, like the courtiers of Arcadius, who detested his plain speaking and his austere piety; but the poor and unimportant thought him as humble as the rich and great thought him proud. ”

“ Chrysostom have always been considered as eminently likely among the relics of Antiquity, to be useful as models for preaching, and as containing hints for the application of Scripture to common life, and the consciences of persons around us. ”

“ Chrysostom heard them with grief and confusion, and ascribed them to the fondness of a good master, and the charity of the people. Afterwards, ascending the pulpit, he said that every word of the discourse had struck him to the heart, and made him sigh within himself: for praises sting the conscience no less than sins, when a soul is conscious to herself how far she is from what is said of her: they only set before her eyes the last day, in which, to her greater confusion, all things will appear naked and as they are; for we shall not be judged by the masks which are put on us by other men. ”

“ Everything combined to make Chrysostom the pride and the glory of the ancient Church,--the doctrines which he did not hesitate to proclaim to unwilling ears, and the matchless manner in which he enforced them,--perhaps the most remarkable preacher, on the whole, that ever swayed an audience; uniting all things,--voice, language, figure, passion, learning, taste, art, piety, occasion, motive, prestige, and material to work upon. ”

“ In his general teaching Chrysostom elevates the ascetic element in religion, and in his homilies he inculcates the need of personal acquaintance with the Scriptures, and denounces ignorance of them as the source of all heresy. ”

“ Chrysostom was an admirer of active and useful monasticism, and warns against the dangers of idle contemplation. He shows that the words of our Lord, “One thing is needful;” “Take no anxious thought for the morrow;” “Labor not for the meat that perisheth,” do not inculcate total abstinence from work, but only undue anxiety about worldly things, and must be harmonized with the apostolic exhortation to labor and to do good. ”

“ The second is the corrective of the first; where the disease is desperate, the remedies must be violent. Chrysostom, as will be perceived throughout his life, was never carried to fanatical extremes; a certain sober-mindedness and calm practical good sense eminently distinguished him, though mingled with burning zeal. ”

“ Thus the Pagan sophist helped to forge the weapons which were destined to be turned against his own cause. When he was on his death-bed being asked by his friends who was most worthy to succeed him, “it would have been John,” he replied, “if the Christians had not stolen him from us.”
In due time Chrysostom began to practise as a lawyer; and as the profession of the law was reckoned one of the surest avenues to political distinction for a man of talent, and the speeches of Chrysostom excited great admiration, a brilliant and prosperous career seemed to lie before him. ”

“ Chrysostom acted on his advice. He entered the choir with his friendly bishops, bestowed on them a farewell kiss and farewell words; then bidding them wait for him there while he went to repose, he entered the baptistry, and sent for the deaconesses, Olympias, Pentadia, Procla, and Salvina. “Come hither, my daughters,” he said, “and hearken to me: my career, I perceive, is coming to an end; I have finished my course, and perchance ye will see my face no more. ”

“ VII. Chrysostom, and the contemporary fathers of the Eastern Church, naturally seem very remote from us; but, in fact, they are nearer to us in their modes of thought than many who in point of time are less distant. They were brought up in the study of that Greek literature with which we are familiar. Philosophy had not stiffened into scholasticism. The ethics of Chrysostom are substantially the same with the ethics of Butler. So, again, Eastern fathers of the fourth century are far more nearly allied to us in theology than writers of a few centuries later. ”

“ But the object of Chrysostom was, not to utter ineffectual lamentations. He aimed at rousing the people from their profound dejection, and printing, if possible, on their hearts, humbled and softened by distress, deep and lasting impressions of good. He told them that there was everything to be hoped for from the embassy of Flavian. “The Emperor was pious, the bishop courageous, yet prudent and adroit; God would not suffer his errand to be fruitless. The very sight of that venerable man would dispose the royal mind to clemency. ”

“ John Chrysostom, deplores with infinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamity of his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity of illustrious persons cut off from among mankind, but, what is more, their writings, by which the rich conceptions of their souls and the divine ornaments of their minds were to have been consecrated to posterity, did not survive them. ”

“ Chrysostom's extant works are more voluminous than those of any other Father, filling 13 folios in the Benedictine ed. They may be roughly divided into—I. Treatises; II. Expositions of Scripture, chiefly in the form of Homilies, but partly continuous Commentaries; III. Homilies, (a) doctrinal, (b) occasional, (c) panegyrical, (d) general; IV. Letters; V. Liturgy.
I. Treatises.—The earliest works we have from his pen are his letters ad Theodorum Lapsum, i. ii. (see supra) , written while Chrysostom was still resident at Antioch before A.D. 372. ”

“ While the several candidates and their patrons were exhausting all their arts on the spot to obtain the favour of the electors, the clergy and people, distracted by conflicting bribes and arguments, unanimously decided to summon a man from a distance who had not come forward at all. They submitted the name of Chrysostom to the Emperor, who immediately approved their choice.402 In fact, the election of Chrysostom was in all probability the suggestion of Eutropius. During a recent visit on public business to Antioch, he had heard and recognised the eloquence of the great preacher. ”

“ He thoroughly knows them, ardently loves them, has a like temperament, shares not a little in the faults of his age and his race, as must always be the case with a truly inspiring orator or poet. Even when severely rebuking, when blazing with indignation, he never seems alien, never stands aloof, but throws himself among them, in a very transport of desire to check, and rescue, and save. Is there, indeed, any preacher, ancient or modern, who in these respects equals John Chrysostom? ”

“ Chrysostom rejoiced in the opportunity afforded to the Church of exhibiting at once her clemency and power, by taking a noble revenge upon her former adversary. The clamour of the soldiers on the other side of the veil increased. Chrysostom led the unhappy fugitive to the sacristy; and having concealed him there, he confronted his pursuers, asserted the inviolability of the Church’s sanctuary, and refused to surrender the refugee. “None shall penetrate the sanctuary save over my body; the Church is the Bride of Jesus Christ, who has intrusted her honour to me, and I will never betray it.” ”

“ John Chrysostom without alluding to a subject well known to collectors and amateurs, and popularly called ‘La Pénitence de St. Jean Chrysostome.’ It represents a woman undraped, seated in a cave, or wilderness, with an infant in her arms; or lying on the ground with a new-born infant beside her; in the distance is seen a man with a glory round his head, meagre, naked, bearded, crawling on his hands and knees in the most abject attitude ”

“ Chrysostom observes, “to be regarded as sources of consolation. If death were a final and total destruction, then indeed it would have been reasonable to lament the extinction of one so benevolent, so gentle, so humble, prudent, and devout, as her late husband. But if death was only the landing of the soul in a tranquil haven, only a transition from the worse to better, from earth to heaven, from men to angels and archangels, and to Him who is the Lord of angels, then there was no place left for tears. ”

“ It is worth making such extracts as these, because they enable us to see how widely remote Chrysostom was from the mind and taste of our own times in some points, although in others he seems so nearly congenial. There is another vein of thought in this letter which is still more alien. “If,” he says, “in addition to the rewards of her chastity, her fasts, her vigils, her prayers, her boundless hospitality, she wishes to enjoy the sight of her adversaries, those iniquitous and blood-stained men undergoing punishment for their crimes, that pleasure also shall be hers. ”

“ A half Oriental, half Greek, partly Jewish population, like that of Antioch, whose purer feelings and nobler reason were seriously impaired by habits of licentiousness and luxury, was naturally liable to superstitious terrors, and addicted to superstitious practices of all kinds. Chrysostom is frequently reproving his people for being anxious and afraid where there was no cause, while they abandoned themselves to vice, the only worthy cause for fear, without scruple or alarm. ”

“ The letter written by Chrysostom in A.D. 406 to Innocent is full of grateful acknowledgments for all the efforts which 385he had made, and was still making, on his behalf. “Though separated by so vast a length of journey, yet are we near your Holiness, beholding with the eye of the soul your courage, your genuine, inflexible firmness, and we derive constant and abiding consolation from you. For the higher the waves are lifted up, the more numerous the rocks and reefs, the more does your untiring vigilance increase.... ”

“ Chrysostom’s meaning.↑ i.e. the Syriac, which the Hebrew means in the N.T. probably in all cases—it being then the language of the Hebrews.↑ Col. iii. 3. Ver. 4. confirms his application of it.↑ Perhaps alluding to Il. xv. 362.↑ Chrysostom’s interpretation of ἡ κτίσις is undoubtedly correct in principle, although he probably gives to it too general an idea in calling it “this whole world”—reaching “even to things without sense also.” It is more likely that the apostle has in mind distinctively the irrational creation. (So Meyer, Godet, Thayer, Dwight) . Nature is subject to “vanity”—i.e. ”

“ Chapter XII.—The Writings of Chrysostom.
Chrysostom was the most fruitful author among the Greek Fathers. Suidas makes the extravagant remark that only the omniscient God could recount all his writings. The best have been preserved and have already been noticed in chronological order. ”

“ Chrysostom directs his discourse to a Christian father, whom he threatens with the judgment of Hell, if he withdrew his children from this state of perfection, in which they would have become suns in heaven, whereas, if they were saved in the world, their glory would probably be only that of stars. He inveighs against parents, who, by their discourse and example, instil into their children a spirit of vanity, and sow in their tender minds the seeds of covetousness, and all those sins which overrun the world. He compares monks to angels, in their uninterrupted joy and attention to God ”

“ Messengers were sent across the Bosporus to seek him, for the exact place of his retreat appears to have been unknown. Briso, the Empress’s chamberlain, a man of Christian piety and a personal friend of Chrysostom, discovered him at Prænetum. He was the bearer of a humble, we might say abject, letter of self-exculpation from the Empress. “Let not your holiness (ἡ ἁγιωσύνη) imagine that I was cognisant of what has been done. I am guiltless of thy blood. Wicked and corrupt men have contrived this plot. I remember the baptism of my children by thy hands. God whom I serve is witness of my tears.” ”