reater part
of his time in prayer and meditation on the holy scriptures: his bed was
no other than the hard floor. In subduing his passions, he found none of
so difficult a conquest as vain-glory;[5] this enemy he disarmed by
embracing every kind of public humiliation. The clamors of his old
friends and admirers, who were incensed at his leaving them, and pursued
him with their invectives and censures, were as arrows shot at random.
John took no manner of notice of them: he rejoiced in contempt, and
despised the frowns of a world whose flatteries he dreaded: Christ
crucified was the only object of his heart, and nothing could make him
look back after he had put his hand to the plough. And his progress in
virtue was answerable to his zealous endeavors.

St. Meletius, bishop of Antioch, called the young ascetic to the service
of the church, gave him suitable instructions, during three years, in
his own palace, and ordained him Reader. John had learned the art of
silence, in his retirement, with far greater application than he had
before studied that of speaking. This he discovered when he appeared
again in the world, though no man ever possessed a greater fluency of
speech, or a more ready and enchanting eloquence, joined with the most
solid judgment and a rich fund of knowledge and good sense; yet in
company he observed a modest silence, and regarded talkativeness as an
enemy to the interior recollection of the heart, as a source of many
sins and indiscretions, and as a mark of vanity and self-conceit. He
heard the words of the wise with the humble docility of a scholar, and
he bore the impertinence, trifles, and blunders of {235} fools in
discourse, not to interrupt the attention of his soul to God, or to make
an ostentatious show of his eloquence or science: yet with spiritual
persons he conversed freely on heavenly things, especially with a pious
friend named Basil, one of the same age and inclinations with himself,
who had been his most beloved school-fellow, and who forsook the world
to embrace a monastic life, a little before our saint. After three
years, he left the bishop's house to satisfy the importunities of his
mother, but continued the same manner of life in her house, during the
space of two years. He still saw frequently his friend Basil, and he
prevailed on two of his school-fellows under Libanius to embrace an
ascetic life; Theodorus, afterwards bishop of Mopsuestia, and Maximus,
bishop of Seleucia. The