who, under the name of servants, or sisters, afforded a
perpetual occasion either of sin or of scandal. The silent and solitary
ascetics, who had secluded themselves from the world, were entitled to
the warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatized,
as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd of degenerate monks,
who, from some unworthy motives of pleasure or profit, so frequently
infested the streets of the capital. To the voice of persuasion, the
archbishop was obliged to add the terrors of authority; and his ardor,
in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was not always exempt
from passion; nor was it always guided by prudence. Chrysostom was
naturally of a choleric disposition. [44] Although he struggled,
according to the precepts of the gospel, to love his private enemies,
he indulged himself in the privilege of hating the enemies of God and
of the church; and his sentiments were sometimes delivered with too much
energy of countenance and expression. He still maintained, from some
considerations of health or abstinence, his former habits of taking
his repasts alone; and this inhospitable custom, [45] which his enemies
imputed to pride, contributed, at least, to nourish the infirmity of
a morose and unsocial humor. Separated from that familiar intercourse,
which facilitates the knowledge and the despatch of business, he reposed
an unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion; and seldom applied
his speculative knowledge of human nature to the particular character,
either of his dependants, or of his equals.

Conscious of the purity of his intentions, and perhaps of the
superiority of his genius, the archbishop of Constantinople extended the
jurisdiction of the Imperial city, that he might enlarge the sphere of
his pastoral labors; and the conduct which the profane imputed to an
ambitious motive, appeared to Chrysostom himself in the light of a
sacred and indispensable duty. In his visitation through the Asiatic
provinces, he deposed thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia;
and indiscreetly declared that a deep corruption of simony and
licentiousness had infected the whole episcopal order. [46] If those
bishops were innocent, such a rash and unjust condemnation must excite
a well-grounded discontent. If they were guilty, the numerous associates
of their guilt would soon discover that their own safety depended on the
ruin of the archbishop; whom they studied to represent as the tyra