Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/395

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIEE 375 infirmities compelled him to return to the society of mankind ; and the authority of Meletius devoted his talents to the service of the church ; but in the midst of his family, and afterwards on the archiepiscopal throne, Chrysostom still persevered in the practice of the monastic virtues. The ample revenues, which his predecessors had consumed in pomp and luxury, he diligently applied to the establishment of hospitals ; and the multitudes, who were supported by his charity, preferred the eloquent and edifying discourses of their archbishop to the amusements of the theatre or the circus. The monuments of that eloquence, which was admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constanti- nople, have been carefully preserved, and the possession of near one thousand sermons, or homilies, has authorized the critics ^^ of succeeding times to appreciate the genuine merit of Chryso- stom. They unanimously attribute to the Chi'istian orator the free command of an elegant and copious language ; the judg- ment to conceal the advantages which he derived from the knowledge of rhetoric and philosophy ; an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, of ideas and images, to vary and illustrate the most familiar topics ; the happy art of engaging the passions in the sei^vice of virtue ; and of exposing the folly as well as the turpitude of vice, almost with the truth and spirit of a dramatic representation. The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople pro- His adminis- voked, and gradually united against him, two sorts of enemies : defects. AD. 398-403 the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered, from the pulpit of St. Sophia, against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding, or even marking, the character of any individual. When he declaimed against the peculiar vices of the rich, poverty might obtain a transient consolation from his invectives ; but the guilty were still sheltered by their numbers, and the re- proach itself was dignified by some ideas of superiority and enjoyment. But, as the pyramid rose towards the summit, it in- sensibly diminished to a point ; and the magistrates, the ministers, the favourite eunuchs, the ladies of the court, ^^^ the empress •"- As I am almost a stranger to the voluminous sermons of Chrysostom, I have given my confidence to the two most judicious and moderate of the ecclesiastical critics, Erasmus (tom. iii. p. 1344) and Dupin (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, torn, iii. p. 38) ; yet the good taste of the former is sometimes vitiated by an excessive love of antiquity ; and the good sense of the latter is always restrained by prudential considerations.
 * Tbe females of Constantinople distinguished themselves by their enmity or