COMMENCEMENT OF ASCETIC LIFE—STUDY UNDER DIODORUS—FORMATION OF AN ASCETIC BROTHERHOOD—THE LETTERS TO THEODORE. A.D. 370.

The enthusiasm of minds newly awakened to a full perception of Christian holiness, and a deep sense of Christian obligations, was in early times seldom contented with anything short of complete separation from the world. The Oriental temperament especially has been at all times inclined to passionate extremes. It oscillates between the most abandoned licentiousness and intense asceticism. The second is the corrective of the first; where the disease is desperate, the remedies must be violent. Chrysostom, as will be perceived throughout his life, was never carried to fanatical extremes; a certain sober-mindedness and calm practical good sense eminently distinguished him, though mingled with burning zeal. But in his youth especially he was not exempt from the spirit of the age and country in which he lived. He irresistibly gravitated towards that kind of life which his friend Basil had already adopted—a life of retirement, contemplation, and pious study—“the philosophy” of Christianity, as it was called at that time.45

It does not appear that Basil had actually joined any monastic community, but merely that he was leading a life of seclusion, and practising some of the usual monastic austerities. Chrysostom, indeed, distinctly asserts that, previous to his own baptism, their intercourse had not been entirely broken off; only that it was impossible for him, who had his business in the law-courts and found his recreation in the theatre, to be so acceptable as formerly to one who now never entered public places, and who was wholly devoted to meditation, study, and prayer.46 Their intercourse was necessarily more rare, though their friendship was substantially unshaken. “When, however, I had myself also lifted my head a little above this worldly flood, he received me with open arms” (probably referring here to his baptism or preparation for it); “but even then I was not able to maintain my former equality, for he had the advantage of me in point of time, and having manifested the greatest diligence, he had attained a very lofty standard, and was ever soaring beyond me.”47

This disparity, however, could not diminish their natural affection for one another; and Basil at length obtained Chrysostom’s consent to a plan which he had frequently urged—that they should abandon their present homes and live together in some quiet abode, there to strengthen each other in undisturbed study, meditation, and prayer. But this project of the young enthusiasts was for a time frustrated by the irresistible entreaties of Chrysostom’s mother, that he would not deprive her of his protection, companionship, and help. The scene is described by Chrysostom himself,48 with a dramatic power worthy of Greek tragedy. It reminds the reader of some of those long and stately, yet elegant and affecting, narratives of the messenger who, at the close of the play, describes the final scene which is not represented. Certainly it bespeaks the scholar of a man who had made his pupils familiar with the best classical writers in Greek. “When she knew that we were meditating this course, my mother took me by the right hand and led me into her own chamber, and there, seating herself near the bed on which she had given birth to me, wept fountains of tears; to which she added words of lamentation more pitiable even than the tears themselves. ‘I was not long permitted to enjoy the virtue of thy father, my child: so it seemed good to God. My travail-pangs at your birth were quickly succeeded by his death; bringing orphanhood upon thee, and upon me an untimely widowhood, with all those miseries of widowhood which those only who have experienced them can fairly understand. For no description can approach the reality of that storm and tempest which is undergone by her who having but lately issued from her father’s home, and being unskilled in the ways of the world, is suddenly plunged into grief insupportable, and compelled to endure anxieties too great for her sex and age. For she has to correct the negligence, to watch against the ill-doings, of her slaves, to baffle the insidious schemes of kinsfolk, to meet with a brave front the impudent threats and harshness of tax-collectors.’”49

She then describes minutely the expense, and labour, and constant anxiety which attended the education of a son; how she had refrained from all thoughts of second marriage, that she might bestow her undivided energies, time, and means upon him; how amply it had all been rewarded by the delight of his presence, recalling the image of her husband;—and now that he had grown up, would he leave her absolutely forlorn? “In return for all these my services to you,” she cried, “I implore you this one favour only—not to make me a second time a widow, or to revive the grief which time has lulled. Wait for my death—perhaps I shall soon be gone; when you have committed my body to the ground, and mingled my bones with your father’s bones, then you will be free to embark on any sea you please.” Such an appeal to his sense of filial gratitude and duty could not be disregarded. Chrysostom yielded to his mother’s entreaties, although Basil did not desist from urging his favourite scheme.50

At the same time he assimilated his life at home as much as possible to the condition of a monk. He entirely withdrew from all worldly occupations and amusements. He seldom went out of the house; he strengthened his mind by study, his spirit by prayer, and subdued his body by vigils and fasting, and sleeping upon the bare ground. He maintained an almost constant silence, that his thoughts might be kept abstracted from mundane things, and that no irritable or slanderous speech might escape his lips. Some of his companions naturally lamented what they regarded as a morose and melancholy change.51

But the intercourse between him and Basil was more frequent than before; and two other young men, who had been their fellow-students at the school of Libanius, were persuaded to adopt the same kind of secluded life. These two were Maximus, afterwards Bishop of Seleucia, in Isauria; and Theodore, who became Bishop of Mopsuestia, in Cilicia.52 This little fraternity formed, with some others not named, a voluntary association of youthful ascetics. They did not dwell in a separate building, nor were they in any way established as a monastic community, but (like Wesley and his young friends at Oxford) they lived by rule, and practised monastic austerities. The superintendence of their studies and general conduct they submitted to Diodorus and Carterius, who were presidents of monasteries in the vicinity of Antioch.53 In addition to his own intrinsic merits and eminence, Diodorus claims our attention, because there can be no doubt that he exercised a great influence upon the minds of his two most distinguished scholars, Chrysostom and Theodore. Indeed, judging from the fragments of his works, and the notices of him by historians, it is not too much to say that he was the founder of a method of Biblical interpretation of which Chrysostom and Theodore became the most able representatives.

He was of noble family, and the friend of Meletius, who confided to him and the priest Evagrius the chief care of his diocese during his second exile under Valens about A.D. 370. And one of the first acts of Meletius, on his return in A.D. 378, was to make Diodorus Bishop of Tarsus. His writings in defence of Christianity were sufficiently powerful and notorious to provoke the notice of Julian, who, in a letter to Photinus, attacks him with no small asperity.54 The Emperor finds occasion for ridicule in the pale and wrinkled face and the attenuated frame of Diodorus, wasted by his severe labours and ascetic practices; and represents these disfigurements as punishments from the offended gods against whom he had directed his pen. Being well known as a warm friend of Meletius, Diodorus was exposed to some risk from the Arian party during the exile of the bishop from A.D. 370-378. But he was not deterred from frequenting the old town on the south side of the Orontes, where the congregation of Meletius held their assemblies, and diligently ministering to their spiritual needs. He accepted no fixed stipend, but his necessities were supplied by the hospitality of those among whom he laboured.55 Of his voluminous writings, a commentary on the Old and New Testament is that most frequently quoted by ecclesiastical writers. They expressly and repeatedly affirm that he adhered very closely to the literal and historical meaning of the text, and that he was opposed to those mystical and allegorical interpretations of Origen and the Alexandrian school, which often disguised rather than elucidated the true significance of the passage.56 One evil of the allegorical method was, that it destroyed a clear and critical perception of the differences between the Older Revelation and the New. The Old Testament was regarded as a kind of vast enigma, containing implicitly the facts and doctrines of the New. To detect subtle allusions to the coming of our Saviour, to the events of his life, to his death and resurrection, in the acts, speeches, and gestures of persons mentioned in the Old Testament, was regarded as a kind of interpretation no less satisfactory than it was ingenious. To believe indeed that the grand intention running through Scripture from the beginning to the end is to bring men to Jesus Christ; that the history of the fall of man is given to enable us to appreciate the need of a Restorer, and to estimate his work at its proper value; that the history of a dispensation based on law enables us to accept with more thankfulness a dispensation of spirit; that the history of the Jewish system of sacrifices is intended to conduct us to the one great Sacrifice as the substance of previous shadows, the fulfilment of previous types; that, alike in the law and the prophets, intimations and hints and significant parallels of the subsequent history to which they lead on are to be discerned;—this may be reasonable, profitable, and true: but it can be neither profitable nor true to see allusions, prophecies, and parallels in every minute and trivial detail of that earlier history.

From this vital error Diodorus appears to have emancipated himself and his disciples. He perceived, as we shall see Chrysostom perceived, a gradual development in Revelation: that the knowledge, and morality, and faith of men under the Old Dispensation were less advanced than those of men who lived under the New. One instance must suffice. He remarks that the Mosaic precept, directing the brother of a man who had died childless to raise up posterity to his brother by marrying his wife, was given for the consolation of men who had as yet received no clear promise respecting a resurrection from the dead.57 There is an approach to what some might deem rationalistic criticism, when he affirms that the speech of God to men in the Old Testament was not an external voice, but an inward spiritual intimation. When, for instance, it is said that God gave a command to Adam, it is evident, he says, that it was not made by a sound audible to the bodily ear, but that God impressed the knowledge of the command upon him according to his own proper energy, and that when Adam had received it his condition was the same as if it had come to him through the actual hearing of the ear. And this, he observes, is what God effected also in the case of the prophets.58 A similar rationalistic tendency is observable in his explanation of the relation between the Divine and human elements in the person of our blessed Lord. His language, in fact, on this subject is Nestorian: a distinction was to be made between Him who, according to his essence, was Son of God—the Logos—and Him who through Divine decree and adoption became Son of God. He who was born as Man from Mary was Son according to grace, but God the Logos was Son according to nature. The Son of Mary became Son of God because He was selected to be the receptacle or temple of God the Word. It was only in an improper sense that God the Word was called Son of David; the appellation was given to Him merely because the human temple in which He dwelt belonged to the lineage of David.59 It is clear that Diodorus would have objected equally with Nestorius to apply the title of “God-bearer” (Te?t????) to the blessed Virgin. Sixty years later, in A.D. 429, the streets of Constantinople and Alexandria resounded with tumults excited by controversy about the subject of which this was the watchword. But Diodorus happily lived too early for these dreadful conflicts, and his scholar Theodore was not personally disturbed; though long after his death, in A.D. 553, his writings were condemned by the Fifth Œcumenical Council, because the Nestorians appealed to them in confirmation of their tenets, and revered his memory. The practical element in Diodorus, his method of literal and common-sense interpretation of Holy Scripture, was inherited chiefly by Chrysostom; the intellectual vein, his conceptions of the relation between the Godhead and Manhood in Christ, his opinions respecting the final restoration of mankind, which were almost equivalent to a denial of eternal punishment, were reproduced mainly by Theodore.

It was inevitable that those who, in an access of religious fervour, had renounced the world and subjected themselves to the sternest asceticism, should sometimes find that they had miscalculated their powers. The passionate enthusiasm which for a time carried them along the thorny path would begin to subside; a hankering after a more natural, if not more worldly, life ensued; and occasionally the reaction was so violent, the passions kept down in unnatural constraint reasserted themselves with such force, that the ascetic flew back to the pleasures and sometimes to the sins of the world, with an appetite which was in painful contrast to his previous abstinence. The youthful Theodore was for a time an instance, though far from an extreme instance, of such reaction: the strain was too great for him; he relapsed for a season into his former habits of life; he retired from the little ascetic brotherhood to which Chrysostom and Basil belonged. There is no evidence that he fell into any kind of sin; he simply returned to the occupations and amusements of ordinary life. He was in love with and desirous of marrying a young lady named Hermione. But Chrysostom was at this period such an ardent ascetic; he was so deeply impressed with the evil of the world; and regarded an austere and absolute separation from it as so indispensable to the highest standard of Christian life, that to him any divergence from that path, when once adopted, seemed a positive sin. The relapse of Theodore called forth two letters of lamentation, remonstrance, and exhortation from his friend. They are the earliest of his extant works, and exhibit a command of language which does credit to the training of Libanius as well as to his own ability, and an intimate acquaintance with Holy Scripture, which proves how much time he had already spent in diligent and patient study. Since these epistles have been justly considered among the finest of his productions, and represent his opinions at an early stage of his life respecting repentance, a future life, the advantages of asceticism and celibacy, some paraphrases from them will be presented to the reader.

He begins his first letter by quoting the words of Jeremiah: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!”

“If the prophet uttered that lamentation over a ruined city, surely I may express a like passionate sorrow over the fallen soul of a brother. That soul which was once the temple of the Holy Spirit now lies open and defenceless to become the prey of any hostile invader. The spirit of avarice, of arrogance, of lust, may now find a free passage into a heart which was once as pure and inaccessible to evil as heaven itself. Wherefore I mourn and weep, nor will I cease from my mourning until I see thee again in thy former brilliancy. For though this may seem impossible to men, yet with God it is possible, for He it is who lifteth the beggar from the earth and taketh the poor out of the dunghill, that He may set him with the princes, even with the princes of his people.” An eminent characteristic of Chrysostom is that he is always hopeful of human nature; he never doubts the capacity of man to rise, or the willingness of God to raise him. Theodore himself appears to have been stricken with remorse, and to have drooped into despondency, to rouse him from which and lead him to repose more trustfully on the goodness of God, was one main purpose of Chrysostom’s letters. “Despair was the devil’s work;” “it is he who tries to cut off that hope whereby men are saved, which is the support and anchor of the soul, which, like a long chain, let down from heaven, little by little draws those who hold tightly to it up to heavenly heights, and lifts them above the storm and tempest of these worldly ills. The devil tries to extinguish that trust which is the source and strength of prayer, which enables men to cry, ‘as the eyes of a maiden look unto the hand of her mistress, even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God until He have mercy upon us.’ Yet if man will only believe it, there is never a time at which any one, even the most abandoned sinner, may not turn and repent and be accepted by God. For God being impassible, his wrath is not a passion or an emotion; He punishes not in anger, since He is unsusceptible by nature of injury from any insult or wrong done by us, but in mercy, that He may bring men back to Himself.60 The many instances of God’s mercy; his relenting towards the Jews, and even to Ahab, when he humbled himself; the repentance of Manasseh—of the Ninevites—of the penitent thief—all accepted, although preceded by a long course of sin, prove that the words ‘today if ye will hear his voice’ are applicable to any time:—it is always ‘to-day’ as long as a man lives; repentance is estimated not by length of time, but by the disposition of the heart.” He acutely observes that “despondency often conceals moral weakness; a secret though perhaps unconscious sympathy with the sin which the man professes to deplore and hate.” “To fall is natural, but to remain fallen argues a kind of acquiescence in evil, a feebleness of moral purpose which is more displeasing to God than the fall itself.”61

But although he speaks in the most hopeful, encouraging language of the efficacy of repentance, however late, if sincere, in this life, no one can assert more strongly the impossibility of restoration when the limits of this present existence have once been passed. In this respect he differs alike from Origen, Diodorus, and his fellow-student Theodore, and from believers in the later developed doctrine of purgatory. “As long as we are here, it is possible, even if we sin ten thousand times, to wash all away by repentance; but when once we have been taken to that other world, even if we manifest the greatest penitence, it will avail us naught, but however much we may gnash with our teeth, and beat our breasts, and pour forth entreaties, no one will be able even with the tip of his finger to cool us in the flame; we shall only hear the same words as the rich man: ‘between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.’”62 Nothing is more remarkably characteristic of Chrysostom’s productions, especially the earlier, than a frequent recurrence to this truth: the existence of a great impassable chasm between the two abodes of misery and bliss. Heaven and hell were no distant dreamlands to him, but realities so nearly and vividly present to his mind that they acted as powerful motives, encouraging to holiness, deterring from vice. He paints the two pictures in glowing colours, and submits them to the contemplation of his friend. “When you hear of fire, think not that the fire in that other world is like it; for this earthly fire burns up and consumes whatever it lays hold of, but that burns continually those who are seized by it and never ceases, wherefore it is called unquenchable. For sinners must be clothed with immortality, not for honour, but merely to supply a constant material for this punishment to feed upon; and how terrible this is, a description would indeed never be able to present, but from our experience of small sufferings it is possible to form some little conception of those greater miseries. If you should ever be in a bath which has been overheated, then I pray you consider the fire of hell; or if ever you have been parched by a severe fever, transfer your thoughts to that flame, and you will be able clearly to distinguish the difference. For if a bath or a fever so distress and agitate us, what will be our condition when we fall into that river of fire which flows past the terrible Judge’s throne.”63 “Heaven is, indeed, a subject which transcends the powers of human language, yet we can form a dim image of what it is like. It is the place ‘whence sorrow and sighing shall flee away’ (Is. xxxv. 10); where poverty and sickness are not to be dreaded; where no one injures or is injured, no one provokes or is provoked; no one is harassed by anxiety about the necessary wants, or frets over the loftier ambitions, of life; it is the place where the tempest of human passions is lulled; where there is neither night nor cold nor heat, nor changes of season, nor old age; but everything belonging to decay is taken away, and incorruptible glory reigns alone. But far above all these things, it is the place where men will continually enjoy the society of Jesus Christ, together with angels and archangels and all the powers above.”64 “Open your eyes,” he cries in a transport of feeling, “and contemplate in imagination that heavenly theatre crowded not with men such as we see, but with those who are nobler than gold or precious stones or sunbeams, or any brilliant thing that can be seen; and not with men only, but angels, thrones, dominions, powers ranged about the King whom we dare not describe for his transcendent beauty, majesty, and splendour. If we had to suffer ten thousand deaths every day; nay, if we had to undergo hell itself, for the sake of beholding Christ coming in his glory, and being numbered among the band of saints, would it not be well to submit to all these things? ‘Master, it is a good thing for us to be here:’ if such an exclamation burst from St. Peter on witnessing a partial and veiled manifestation of Christ’s glory, what are we to say when the reality shall be displayed, when the royal palace shall be thrown open and we shall see the King Himself; no longer by means of a mirror, or as it were in a riddle, but face to face; no longer through faith, but actual sight.”65 He passes on to some remarks upon the soul, which are Platonic in character: “Man cannot alter the shape of his body, but God has conceded to him a power, with the assistance of Divine grace, of increasing the beauty of the soul. Even that soul which has become deformed by the ugliness of sin may be restored to its pristine beauty. No lover was ever so much captivated by the beauty of the body as God loves and longs for the beauty of the human soul.66 You who are now transported with admiration of Hermione’s beauty” (the girl whom Theodore wished to marry) “may, if you will, cultivate a beauty in your own soul as far exceeding hers as heaven surpasses earth. Beauty of the soul is the only true and permanent kind, and if you could see it with the eye, you would admire it far more than the loveliness of the rainbow and of roses, and other flowers which are evanescent and feeble representations of the soul’s beauty.”67 He tells some curious stories of men who had relapsed from monastic life and subsequently been reclaimed to it. One, a young man of noble family and heir to great wealth, had thrown up all the splendour which he might have commanded, and exchanged his riches and his gay clothing for the poverty and mean garb of a recluse upon the mountains, and had attained an astonishing degree of holiness. But some of his relations seduced him from his retreat, and once more he might be seen riding on horseback through the forum followed by a crowd of attendants. But the holy brethren whom he had deserted ceased not to endeavour to recover him; at first he treated them with haughty indifference, when they met and saluted him, as he proudly rode through the streets. But at last, as they desisted not day by day, he would leap from his horse when they appeared, and listen with downcast eyes to their warnings; till, as time went on, he was rescued from his worldly entanglements, and restored to his desert and the study of the true philosophy, and now, when Chrysostom wrote, he bestowed his wealth upon the poor, and had attained the very pinnacle of virtue.68 Earnestly, therefore, does he implore Theodore to recover his trust in God, to repent and return to the brotherhood which was buried in grief at his defection. “Now the unbelieving and the worldly rejoice; but return to us, and our sorrow and shame will be transferred to the adversary’s side.” “It was the beginning of penitence which was arduous; the devil met the penitent at the door of the city of refuge, but, if defeated there, the fury of his assaults would diminish.” He warned him against an idle confession of sinfulness not accompanied by any honest effort to amend. “Such was no true confession, because not joined with the tears of contrition or followed by alteration of life.”69 But of Theodore he hoped better things; as there were different degrees of glory reserved for men, implied in our Lord’s mention of “many mansions,” and his declaring that every one should be rewarded according to his works, he trusted that Theodore might still obtain a high place; that he might be a vessel of silver, if not of gold or precious stone, in the heavenly house.70

In the second epistle Chrysostom expresses more distinctly his view respecting the solemn obligations of those who joined a religious fraternity. “If tears and groanings could be transmitted through a letter, this of mine would be filled with them; I weep that you have blotted yourself out of the catalogue of the brethren, and trampled on your covenant with Christ.” “The devil assaulted him with peculiar fury, because he was anxious to conquer so worthy an antagonist; one who had despised delicate fare and costly dress, who had spent whole days in the study of Holy Scripture, and whole nights in prayer, who had regarded the society of the brethren as a greater honour than any worldly dignity. What, I pray you, is there that appears blessed and enviable in the world? The prince is exposed to the wrath of the people and the irrational outbursts of popular feeling—to the fear of princes greater than himself—to anxieties about his subjects; and the ruler of to-day is to-morrow a private man: for this present life no way differs from a stage; as on that, one man plays the part of a king, another of a general, a third of a common soldier; but when evening has come the king is no king, the ruler no ruler, the general no general; so will it be in that day; each will receive his due reward, not according to the character which he has enacted, but according to the works which he has done.”71 Theodore had clearly expressed his intention of honourably marrying Hermione; but though Chrysostom allows that marriage is an honourable estate, yet he boldly declares that for one who like Theodore had made such a solemn renunciation of the world, it was equally criminal with fornication. He had wholly dedicated himself to the service of God, and he had no right to bind himself by any other tie: to marry would be as culpable as desertion in a soldier. He points out the miseries, the anxieties, the toils, often fruitless, which accompanied secular life, especially in the married state. From all such ills the life of the brotherhood was exempt: he alone was truly free who lived for Christ; he was like one who, securely planted on an eminence, beholds other men below him buffeting with the waves of a tumultuous sea. For such a high vantage-ground Chrysostom implores Theodore to make. He begs him to pardon the length of his letter: “nothing but his ardent love for his friend could have constrained him to write this second epistle. Many indeed had discouraged what they regarded as a vain task and sowing upon a rock; but he was not so to be diverted from his efforts: he trusted that by the grace of God his letters would accomplish something; and if not, he should at least have delivered himself from the reproach of silence.”72

These letters are the productions of a youthful enthusiast, and as such, allowances must be made for them. They abound not only in eloquent passages, but in very fine and true observations upon human nature—on penitence—on God’s mercy and pardon. It is only the application of them to the case of Theodore which seems harsh and overstrained. At a later period Chrysostom’s views on ascetic and monastic life were modified; but in early life, though never fanatical, they were what we should call extreme. His earnest efforts for the restoration of his friend were crowned with success. Theodore abandoned the world once more and his matrimonial intentions, and retired into the seclusion of the brotherhood. Some twenty years later, in A.D. 394, he was made Bishop of Mopsuestia, which is pretty nearly all we know about him, but the extant fragments of his voluminous writings prove him to have been a man of no ordinary ability, and a powerful commentator of the same sensible and rational school as Chrysostom himself. We may be disposed to say, What of Hermione? Had she no claims to be considered? But the ascetic line of life was regarded by the earnest-minded as so indisputably the noblest which a Christian could adopt, that her disappointment would not have been allowed to weigh in the balance for a moment against what was considered the higher call.73