pecial
providence, through the entrance into the oratory being choked up by a
frighted crowd, all pressing to be foremost. "This, however," says St.
Gregory Nazianzen,[33] "is invariably affirmed and believed by all, that
as they strove to force their way in by violence, the _Fire_, which
burst from the foundations of the temple, met and stopped them, and one
part it burnt and destroyed, and another it desperately maimed, leaving
them a living monument of God's commination and wrath against sinners."
This eruption was frequently renewed till it overcame the rashness of
the most obdurate, to use the words of Socrates; for it continued to be
repeated as often as the projectors ventured to renew their attempt,
till it had fairly tired them out. Lastly, on the same evening, there
appeared over Jerusalem a lucid cross, shining very bright, as large as
that in the reign of Constantine, encompassed with a circle of light.
"And what could be so proper to close this tremendous scene, or to
celebrate this decisive victory, as the Cross triumphant, encircled with
the _Heroic_ symbol of conquest?"

This miraculous event, with all its circumstances, is related by the
writers of that age; by St. Gregory Nazianzen in the year immediately
following it; by St. Chrysostom, in several parts of his works, who says
that it happened not twenty years before, appeals to eye-witnesses still
living and young, and to the present condition of those foundations, "of
which," says he, "we are all witnesses;" by St. Ambrose in his fortieth
epistle, written in 388; Rufinus, who had long lived upon the spot;
Theodoret, who lived in the neighborhood in Syria; Philostorgius, the
Arian; Sozomen, who says many were alive when he wrote who had it from
eye-witnesses, and mentions the visible marks still subsisting;
Socrates, &c. The testimony of the heathens corroborates this evidence;
as that of Ammianus Marcellinus above quoted, a nobleman of the first
rank, who then lived in the court of Julian at Antioch and in an office
of distinction, and who probably wrote his {613} account from the letter
of Alypius to his master at the time when the miracle happened.
Libanius, another pagan friend and admirer of Julian, both in the
history of his own life, and in his funeral oration on Julian's death,
mentions these earthquakes in Palestine, but with a shyness which
discovers the disgrace of his hero and superstition. Julian himself
speaks of this event in the same c