compiled his book
On St. Babylas, against the Gentiles; in which he speaks of the miracles
wrought at his relics, as of facts to which he and his auditors had been
eye-witnesses, (t. 2, p. 530.) Montfaucon refers to the same time his
Synopsis of the Old Testament: in which he places in the canon the
deutero-canonical books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Esther, Toby, and
Judith: and out of the seven canonical epistles counts only three, viz:
that of St. James, one of St. Peter, and one of St. John, (no others
being received by the Syrians, as appears from Cosmas Indicopleustes,)
t. 6, p. 308.

St Chrysostom was ordained priest by the patriarch Flavian, in 386, and
appointed his ordinary preacher. On this occasion the saint made a
sermon, (t. 1, p. 436,) in which he expresses his dread and surprise at
his promotion, earnestly begs the prayers of the people, {259} and says
he desires to entertain them on the praises of God, but was deterred by
the checks of his conscience, and remorse for his sins: for the royal
prophet, who invites all creatures, even dragons and serpents, to sound
forth the praises of God, passes by sinners as unworthy to be allowed a
place in that sacred choir: they are ignominiously ejected, as a
musician cuts off a string that is not tunable with the rest.

The holy doctor, grieving for the spiritual blindness of many who were
seduced by heresy, and considering their dangers as most grievous, and
their miseries most pressing, preached five most eloquent sermons on the
Incomprehensible Nature of God, against the Anomaeans. He had taken
notice that these heretics, who were very numerous in Syria, resorted
willingly to his sermons with the Catholics, which afforded him an
opportunity of more easily reclaiming them. The Anomaeans were the
followers of Eunomius, who, to the errors of the rankest Arianism, added
a peculiar blasphemy, asserting that both the blessed in heaven, and
also men in this mortal life, not only know God, but also comprehend and
fathom the divine nature as clearly as we know our own, and even as
perfectly as God comprehends himself. This fanaticism and impiety St.
Chrysostom confutes in these five homilies, demonstrating, from the
infinitude of the divine attributes, and from holy scriptures, that God
is essentially incomprehensible to the highest angels. He strongly
recommends to Catholics a modest and mild behavior towards heretics; for
nothing so powerfully gains others as meekness a