aving appointed St. Cyril both his
preacher and his catechist, our saint diligently acquitted himself of
both these functions, the most important of the episcopal charge. St.
Cyril mentions his sermons which he made to the people every Sunday.
(Cat. 5, 10, 14.) One of these is extant in the new edition of his
works. It is a moral discourse against sin, as the source of all our
miseries, drawn from the gospel upon the sick man healed at the Probatic
pond. (John v.) He preached every year a course of catechetical sermons
for the instruction of the catechumens, to prepare them for baptism and
the holy communion. Only those which he preached in 347, or rather in
348, seem to have been committed to writing. These consist of eighteen
to the competentes, or Illuminati, that is, catechumens before baptism;
and of five mystagogic catechetical discourses, so called either because
they were addressed to the catechumens immediately after they were
initiated in the holy mysteries of Baptism, Confirmation, and the
Eucharist, or because these sacraments are fully explained in them,
which were never expounded to those who were not initiated, out of
respect, and for fear of giving occasion to their profanation by the
blasphemies of infidels. In the first eighteen St. Cyril explains the
doctrine of the church concerning the pardon of sin, prayer, and all the
articles of the Apostles' Creed. The style is clear, suitable to an
exposition of doctrine such as is here given, and the work is one of the
most important of Christian antiquity. The Latin translation of
Grodecius, canon of Warmia in Poland, printed first in 1563, though
often corrected, was very inaccurate; and the Greek editions very
incorrect and imperfect, before that given of Thomas Miller at Oxford,
in 1703, which is very valuable, though the author in part of his notes,
where he endeavors to maintain the principles of the Protestant church,
is very inconsistent. Dom Tontee, a Maurist monk, who died in 1718,
prepared an excellent and complete edition of the works of St. Cyril;
which was published by Dom Maran, in 1720, in one volume in folio. The
journalists of Trevoux, in their memoirs for December, in 1721,
criticised some of the notes concerning the Semi-Arians, and the
temporary neutrality of St. Cyril. Dom Maran answered them by a learned
and curious dissertation, Sur le Semi-Ariens, printed by Vincent, in
1722.

Three French Calvinists, Aubertin, Rivet, (Critici Sacri, l