succeed him, had he not been stolen
away by the Christians. His piety soon disposed him to receive the
sacrament of baptism; to renounce the lucrative and honorable profession
of the law; and to bury himself in the adjacent desert, where he
subdued the lusts of the flesh by an austere penance of six years. His
infirmities compelled him to return to the society of mankind; and the
authority of Meletius devoted his talents to the service of the church:
but in the midst of his family, and afterwards on the archiepiscopal
throne, Chrysostom still persevered in the practice of the monastic
virtues. The ample revenues, which his predecessors had consumed in pomp
and luxury, he diligently applied to the establishment of hospitals;
and the multitudes, who were supported by his charity, preferred the
eloquent and edifying discourses of their archbishop to the amusements
of the theatre or the circus. The monuments of that eloquence, which
was admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constantinople, have been
carefully preserved; and the possession of near one thousand sermons,
or homilies has authorized the critics [42] of succeeding times to
appreciate the genuine merit of Chrysostom. They unanimously attribute
to the Christian orator the free command of an elegant and copious
language; the judgment to conceal the advantages which he derived from
the knowledge of rhetoric and philosophy; an inexhaustible fund of
metaphors and similitudes of ideas and images, to vary and illustrate
the most familiar topics; the happy art of engaging the passions in the
service of virtue; and of exposing the folly, as well as the turpitude,
of vice, almost with the truth and spirit of a dramatic representation.

[Footnote 41: The sixth book of Socrates, the eighth of Sozomen, and the
fifth of Theodoret, afford curious and authentic materials for the life
of John Chrysostom. Besides those general historians, I have taken for
my guides the four principal biographers of the saint. 1. The author
of a partial and passionate Vindication of the archbishop of
Constantinople, composed in the form of a dialogue, and under the name
of his zealous partisan, Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, (Tillemont,
Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 500-533.) It is inserted among the works
of Chrysostom. tom. xiii. p. 1-90, edit. Montfaucon. 2. The moderate
Erasmus, (tom. iii. epist. Mcl. p. 1331-1347, edit. Lugd. Bat.) His
vivacity and good sense were his own; his errors, in the u