ying 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 Constantinople, 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 Chrysostom. They unanimously attribute to the
Christian orator the free command of an elegant and copious language;
the judgment 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 service
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 labors of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked, and
gradually united against him, two sorts of enemies; 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 reproach
itself was dignified by some ideas of superiority and enjoyment. But
as the pyramid rose towards the summit, it insensibly diminished to a
point; and the magistrates, the ministers, the favorite eunuchs, the
ladies of the court, the empress Eudoxia herself, had a much larger
share of guilt to divide among a smaller proportion of criminals. The
personal applications of the audience were anticipated, or confirmed, by
the testimony of their own conscience; and the intrepid preacher assumed
the dangerous right of exposing both the offence and the offender to
the public abhorrence. The secret resentment of the court encouraged
the discontent of the clergy and monks of Constantinople, who were
too hastily reformed by the fervent zeal of their archbishop. He had
condemned, from the pulpit, the domestic females of the clergy of
Constantinople, who, under the name of servants, or sisters, afforded a
perpetual occasion either of sin or of s