remonstrances and entreaties, and would have had recourse to flight,
had not his vow of stability cut off all possibility. Being by
compulsion promoted gradually to the orders of deacon, he most
earnestly prayed that God would by some means prevent his being
advanced to the priesthood; soon after he was seized with a lameness
in his hands, 1714, and some time after taken happily out of this
world. These simples are most edifying in such persons who were
called to a retired penitential life. In the clergy all promotion to
ecclesiastical honors ought to be dreaded, and generally only
submitted to by compulsion; which Stephen, the learned bishop of
Tourney, in 1179, observes to be the spirit and rule of the
primitive church of Christ, (ser. 2.) Yet too obstinate a resistance
may become a disobedience, an infraction of order and peace, a
criminal pusillanimity, according to the just remark of St. Basil,
Reg. disput. c. 21 Innocent III. ep. ad Episc. Calarit. Decret. l.
2, tit. 9, de Renunciatione.

SAINT PETER,

DISCIPLE of St. Gregory the Great, and first abbot of St. Austin's, in
Canterbury, then called St. Peter's. Going to France in 608, he was
drowned near the harbor of Ambleteuse, between Calais and Bologne, and
is named in the English and Gallican Martyrologies. See Bede, Hist. l.
1, c. 33.

{101}

JANUARY VII.

ST. LUCIAN, PRIEST AND MARTYR.

From his panegyric by St. Chrysostom, at Antioch, in 387, and pronounced
on his festival, T. 2, p. 524. And also from St. Jerom de script c. 77.
Eusebius, l. 8, c. 12, l. 9, c. 6, and Rufinus. See Tillemont T. 5, p.
474. Pagi, an. 311.

A.D. 312.

ST. LUCIAN, surnamed of Antioch, was born at Samosata, in Syria. He lost
his parents while very young; and being come to the possession of his
estate, which was very considerable, he distributed all among the poor.
He became a great proficient in rhetoric and philosophy, and applied
himself to the study of the holy scriptures under one Macarius at
Edessa. Convinced of the obligation annexed to the character of
priesthood, which was that of devoting himself entirely to the service
of God and the good of his neighbor, he did not content himself with
inculcating the practice of virtue both by word and example; he also
undertook to purge the scriptures, that is, both the Old and New
Testament, from the several faults that had crept into them, either by
reason of th