Therefore is He wroth at your folly, and at your tyrannical oppression of those whom you wrong; and therefore He judges it not right to pass you over without punishing you, as indeed He has begun to do. For this would not be becoming in Him, nor would it be without peril to you; your complaint is intolerable, and needs more than ordinary treatment. He sees you actually the worse for bruises, and weals without number, the result of your chastisement. Yes, a cloud of senseless and most obdurate wrong rests upon you, your brothers, your kinsfolk, and your households, even your allies, those who share with you bed and board, those who are bound to you by the closest ties of blood----all these relationships you have perverted into the bitterest hatred; insomuch that they are expelled from their own countries and from their family hearths, and wander far away, without a city or a home to dwell in. Further yet, you have made them exiles, so far as it was in your power, and that, not with a limit of time fixed for their exile, but for ever, so far as it lay with you; so savage were you, so desperately thrown off your balance.
Chrysostom the Blessed
This is what you have gained by your victory over them, and the blessed John; by fanning your spiteful enmity, and letting your tongue run wild against him, like a sharpened sword. Instead of profitable instruction, you nurse your ill-temper, and pour out upon the Church your false accusations, defiling the cars of those who hear them; accusations against men to whom the Lord in mercy and loving-kindness will give according to their works. But for you, O blessed John, with what words shall I weave you an unfading crown? I need not fear to praise you now, as you have passed from the field of combat, the fiercest waves of struggle breasted. Shall they be the words of the law of Moses, which he used in the blessing of Joseph the strenuous, and Levi the contemplative, the priest? For in you I see both of these. "Blessed of the Lord be his land, and from the mountains of heaven, and dew, and abysses of springs beneath, and in the time of fruits, the turnings of the sun and the comings together of the months, from the heads of the mountains which are from the beginning, and from the heads of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph" (and every man who shall be as Joseph) "and upon the head of the brethren whom he ruled, glorified among his brethren as the first-born. The beauty of a bull are his horns, his horns are the horns of an unicorn; with them he shall push the nation, even unto the end of the earth."
And to Levi he said (and to whosoever imitates him), "Give to Levi his signs, and his truth to the holy man, whom they tried in trial, and reviled at the water of contradiction. Who saith to his father and mother, I have not seen thee, neither did he acknowledge his brethren, he observed thine oracles, and kept thy covenant; he showed thy judgments to Jacob, and thy law to Israel. He shall ever place incense upon thine altar upon thy feast day. Bless, Lord, his strength, and accept the works of his hands; smite the eyebrow of the enemies that rise up against him, and let them that hate him rise not up again." And I would weave with these one word more: "Let them that love him, O Jesus Christ, be not ashamed; for Thine is the power for ever. Amen."
Bish. This is the constant effort of your understanding mind, Theodorus, seeker of noble thoughts, to bring forth from the treasure of your mind, as the Saviour said, "Things new and old;" things old, the lessons of human wisdom; things new, the oracles of the Holy Spirit. From these treasures you have given its due to each side of his character. It was worthy of your sound judgment to express yourself in language so well suited to the offences committed, and to weave from the blessing of Moses the crown John deserves; who served as a priest without thought of self, and in his extraordinary righteousness did indeed know not father or mother, or ties of blood, but only those who love, and practise, the word of God. But those who in our time profess to be bishops, have run their muddy breed aground upon money-getting, and military operations, and high position; transgressing the law which says, "The priests shall not give their sons to be rulers, and them that run beside the king," while they waste the things of the spirit upon plots, and vexations, and imprisonments, and banishments, drinking madness undiluted, thinking by these methods to dishonour the friends of virtue.
The Curse of Ambition
Of them the Saviour said, "The days shall come, in which they who kill you will think that they do God service." I take it that He did not speak of Gentiles, for then He would have said "gods," as they profess not one, but many, gods; when He made mention of the One and Only God, He pointed to those who are now despoiling us, under pretence of benefit to the Church. They hide their own depravity and jealousy, representing themselves in words as concerned for the welfare of the Church which they have ruined by their deeds. But however clever they are, the outcome of events will prove them to have been underlings of him who boasted, "I shall never be shaken from generation to generation, without evil." For the serpent, the deviser of lawlessness and cultivator of the vilest covetousness, as he could devise no more novel form of heresy, goaded those in authority in the Church to mutual destruction, to satisfy their craving for high position, and the highest position of all; for the sake of these they rent the Church in twain.
The Satanic Work of Chrysostom's Enemies
For if the harmony of God the Spirit had existed among the bishops, and John deserved deprivation from his office, whether for causing wrong-doing, or as being unworthy of the priesthood, or, as Theophilus maintains, as being guilty of pride; the all-powerful wisdom of God was well able to debar him from the exercise of the priesthood by constitutional restraints, or devise means by which he could be expelled without all this confusion and lamentation, whether by death, or by paralysis, or by loss of voice----as we know some of those who have thrown themselves against him have suffered, and others will suffer. But seeing that the steps taken against him were unworthy of the Saviour----he was not deposed, but exiled----it is abundantly clear that it was the work of the devil, whose kingdom was being destroyed by John's teaching. I know that John deservedly deposed from their office six persons, of whom I spoke earlier, for buying the dignity of the priesthood. Who wept then? Whose nose bled? What spider's web was broken? Who left his home? Who was fined a farthing? Who in the whole of Asia----vagabond, mob orator, farm-labourer, cobbler, or plebeian----was not glad at what had been done to vindicate the sacred laws? "How," each cried, "are thy works magnified, O Lord? In wisdom didst thou do them all." For where God is at work, all is done in wisdom; where the malevolent demon, everything is correspondently done in unwisdom. And upon unwisdom follow monstrous evils----envyings, murders, strife, emulations, evil tempers, quarrels, discord, noise, conspiracies of ignorant men, hot-headed actions of men in authority, crucifixions, tortures, burnings, streams of blood, intolerable fines, stakes, breaches of the divine ordinances, contempt of law, rejection of self-control, world-wide schism, watch set upon land and sea, engines employed on shipboard, on horseback, on foot, to hinder those who travel for the truth's sake.
God had not Forgotten
How then can they dare to say, John was expelled in the dispensation of God? I ask those who use such words, Was the all-powerful wisdom of God, as I said, without resource to stop John, if he was unworthy, by unseen power? Or to persuade those who disagreed with him, patiently to bear with his action, without all this exercise of force by the magistrates? For if God is the same God Who worked with Moses for the freedom and obedience of Israel, when Pharaoh openly cried, "I know not God, and I will not let the people go," how, in dealing with John, did He need the help of earthly magistrates? He had grown old, I suppose, or weak, or resource-less. And was He Who brought to light the adulteries of some, the unnatural crimes of others, and again the impostures of others, now without resource to convict John? Or again, He Who made the tongue of a man to swell with constriction, until he had to make his confession in writing, and allowed another to meet with his death from a sudden seizure; He Who tormented another with a brood of worms, as he lay speechless upon his bed for nearly a whole year, or laid upon another unspeakable horrors from chronic gout, or burnt the legs of another, because He so willed; or Who prematurely snatched away another, whom every one knows, by a nauseating death; was He too weak, as you assert, in the case of John, if he was a sacrilegious man, to do any of these things, but was in need of so and so, before He could expel John in disgrace, and thereby add to His glory?
God will Recompense
No. They deceive themselves, in their ignorance of the command of the word of God. For he cannot properly be called sacrilegious, who distributed to the poor gold, and silver, and fabrics of silk, the food of moths; but he who for money and reputation and the pleasures of the table sells the teachings and ordinances of the Saviour; and after him, he who ruins a holy man, adorned by his life and words, through whom, as by a chalice or a piece of plate, the Saviour oft gave the drink of the word, the diet of their salvation, to those who love the word of God. No, let them be called sacrilegious, who have sacrilegiously robbed the apostolic Church, and deprived her of such teachers, and who sell ordinations for money; whom divine justice will pursue, to correct their wickedness. For if those who corrupted the law of Moses were for their wanton heedlessness driven out of the temple by the Saviour with a scourge, a scourge of cords, because they were selling doves within it; what punishment shall they have, who higgle the priesthood of the New Testament, except to be shattered by the Chief Shepherd with His rod of iron? As the apostle says, "A man that hath set at nought Moses' law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite to the spirit of grace? For we know him who saith, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
May God, Who glorified this holy man, this saintly shepherd, this lamp of righteousness, grant to us to find part and lot with him, in His awful day of righteous judgment; to Whom belongs glory, honour, majesty, and magnificence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto all ages. Amen.