eving that this will be a
great succor to those souls for which prayer is offered, while the holy
and most tremendous victim lies present." And, (n. 10, ib.,) "If a king,
being offended at certain persons, had banished them, and their friends
offer him a rich garland for them, will not he be moved to release their
punishment? In like manner, we, offering prayers to God for the dead,
though they be sinners, do not make a garland, but we offer Christ
sacrificed for our sins, striving to appease and make our merciful God
propitious both to them and ourselves." This very passage is quoted out
of St. Cyril, in the sixth century, by Eustratius, a priest of
Constantinople, author of the life of the patriarch Eutychius, in his
book on praying for the dead, or on the state of the dead, published by
Leo Allatius, l. De Consensu Eccl. Orient. et Occid. De Purgat., and in
Bibl. Patr. t. 27. It is also cited by Nicon the monk, in his Pandect.

St. Cyril's famous letter to Constantius, On the Apparition of the Cross
in the Heavens, was written by him soon after he was raised to the
episcopal dignity, either in the same year, 350, or in the following.

A sermon, On the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, and
the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, bears the name of St. Cyril of
Jerusalem, in almost all the MSS.; but the custom of carrying blessed
candles in procession that day, mentioned in this discourse, was only
introduced at Jerusalem at the suggestion of a devout lady named Icelia,
about the middle of the fifth century, about sixty years after the death
of St. Cyril. Other passages in this discourse seem clearly levelled
against the heresy of Nestorius. The style is also more pompous and
adorned than that of St. Cyril, nor abounds with parenthesis like his.
It is a beautiful, eloquent, and solid piece, and was probably composed
by some priest of the church of Jerusalem, whose name was Cyril, about
the sixth century, when either Sallust or Elias was patriarch. See Dom.
Touttee, and Ceillier, t. 6, p. 544.

ST. EDWARD, KING AND MARTYR.

HE was monarch of all England, and succeeded his father, the glorious
king Edgar, in 975, being thirteen years old. He followed in all things
the counsels of St. Dunstan; and his ardor in the pursuit of all virtues
is not to be expressed. His great love of purity of mind and body, and
his fervent devotion, rendered him the miracle of princes, while by his
modesty, clemency, prudenc