idence; against those Clergymen who harbor Women
under their roof to serve them; another treatise to prove that
Deaconesses, or other Regular Women, ought not to live under the same
roof with men; On Virginity; To a Young Widow; On the Priesthood; and a
considerable number of scattered homilies. Theodorus, after renouncing
the advantages which high birth, a plentiful estate, a polite education,
and an uncommon stock of learning offered him in the world, and having
solemnly consecrated himself to God in a monastic state, violated his
sacred engagement, returned into the world, took upon him the
administration of his estate, fell in love with a beautiful young woman
named Hermione, and desired to marry her. St. Chrysostom, who had
formerly been his school-fellow, under Libanius, and been afterwards
instrumental in inducing him to forsake the world, and some time his
companion in a religious state, grievously lamented his unhappy fall;
and by two most tender and pathetic exhortations to repentance, gained
him again to God. Every word is dictated by the most ardent zeal and
charity, and powerfully insinuates itself into the heart by the charm of
an unparalleled sweetness, which gives to the strength of the most
persuasive eloquence an irresistible force. Nothing of the kind extant
is more beautiful, or more tender, than these two pieces, especially the
former. The saint, in the beginning, borrows the most moving parts of
the lamentations of Jeremy, showing that he had far more reason to
abandon himself to bitter grief than that prophet; for he mourned not
for a material temple and city with the holy ark and the tables of the
law, but for an immortal soul, far more precious than the whole material
world. And if one soul which observes the divine law is greater and
better than ten thousand which transgress it, what reason had he to
deplore the loss of one which had been sanctified, and the holy living
temple of God, and shone with the grace of the Holy Ghost: one in which
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had dwelt; but was stripped of its glory
and fence, robbed of its beauty, enslaved by the devil, and fettered
with his bolts and chains. Therefore the saint invites all creatures to
mourn with him, and declares he will receive no comfort, nor listen to
those who offer him any, crying out with the prophet: _Depart from me: I
will weep bitterly: offer not to comfort me_. Isa. xxii. 4. His grief,
he says, was just, because he wept