to Chrysostom that he yielded to the reasonable wishes of his devoted mother. He remained at home, but turned his home into a monastery. He secluded himself from the world and practiced a rigid asceticism. He ate little and seldom, and only the plainest food, slept on the bare floor and frequently rose to prayer. He kept almost unbroken silence to prevent a relapse into the habit of slander. His former associates at the bar called him unsociable and morose. But two of his fellow- pupils under Libanius joined him in his ascetic life, Maximus (afterwards bishop of Seleucia), and Theodore of Mopsuestia. They studied the Scriptures under the direction of Diodorus (afterwards bishop of Tarsus), the founder of the Antiochian school of theology, of which Chrysostom and Theodore became the chief ornaments.7 Theodore was warmly attached to a young lady named Hermione, and resolved to marry and to leave the ascetic brotherhood. This gave rise to the earliest treatise of Chryso- stom—namely, an exhortation to Theodore, in two letters.8 He plied all his oratorical arts of sad sympathy, tender entreaty, bitter reproach, and terrible warning, to reclaim his friend to what he thought the surest and safest way to heaven. To sin, he says, is human, but to persist in sin is devilish; to fall is not ruinous to the soul, but to remain on the ground is. The appeal had its desired effect; Theodore resumed his monastic life and became afterwards bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia and one of the first biblical scholars. The arguments which Chrysostom used, would condemn all who broke their monastic vows. They retain moral force only if we substitute apostasy from faith for apostasy from monasticism, which must be regarded as a temporary and abnormal or exceptional form of Christian life. 7 Socrates and Sozomenus represent Diodor and Karterius as abbots under whom Chrysostom lived as monk, but Neander (in the 3d ed. I. 29) thinks it more likely that Chrysostom was previously instructed by Diodor at Antioch. 8 Parænesis ad Theodorum Lapsum, in Migne’s ed. I., Pars I. 277–319. The second letter is milder than the first, and was written earlier. It is somewhat doubtful whether the first refers to the same case. Neander (I. 38 sq.) conjectures that the second only is addressed to Theodore. 10 His Conversion and Ascetic Life.