candal. The silent and solitary
ascetics, who had secluded themselves from the world, were entitled to
the warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatized,
as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd of degenerate monks,
who, from some unworthy motives of pleasure or profit, so frequently
infested the streets of the capital. To the voice of persuasion, the
archbishop was obliged to add the terrors of authority; and his ardor,
in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was not always exempt
from passion; nor was it always guided by prudence. Chrysostom was
naturally of a choleric disposition. Although he struggled, according
to the precepts of the gospel, to love his private enemies, he indulged
himself in the privilege of hating the enemies of God and of the church;
and his sentiments were sometimes delivered with too much energy
of countenance and expression. He still maintained, from some
considerations of health or abstinence, his former habits of taking his
repasts alone; and this inhospitable custom, which his enemies imputed
to pride, contributed, at least, to nourish the infirmity of a morose
and unsocial humor. Separated from that familiar intercourse, which
facilitates the knowledge and the despatch of business, he reposed an
unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion; and seldom applied
his speculative knowledge of human nature to the particular character,
either of his dependants, or of his equals. Conscious of the purity
of his intentions, and perhaps of the superiority of his genius, the
archbishop of Constantinople extended the jurisdiction of the Imperial
city, that he might enlarge the sphere of his pastoral labors; and the
conduct which the profane imputed to an ambitious motive, appeared to
Chrysostom himself in the light of a sacred and indispensable duty.
In his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen
bishops of Lydia and Phrygia; and indiscreetly declared that a deep
corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected the whole
episcopal order. If those bishops were innocent, such a rash and unjust
condemnation must excite a well-grounded discontent. If they were
guilty, the numerous associates of their guilt would soon discover
that their own safety depended on the ruin of the archbishop; whom they
studied to represent as the tyrant of the Eastern church.

This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by Theophilus, archbishop of
Alexandria, a