iv own Bishop Taylor: and it is good for the Church in general, and encouraging for our own Church in particular, to notice such providential revivals of ancient graces in modern times. “Again, this profusion of literary talent, and eloquency and vehemence and skill in moral teaching, is of itself, as human nature now exists, a matter of much jealousy to con- siderate persons, found answerable to the profession implied in their works. And therefore it was desirable to dwell on it in this instance, for the purpose of pointing out afterwards how completely his life gave evidence that he meant and practiced what he taught. “The Homilies on the first Epistle to the Corinthians have ever been considered by learned and devout men as among the most perfect specimens of his mind and teaching. They are of that mixed form, between exposition and exhortation, which serves perhaps better than any other, first, to secure attention, and then to convey to an attentive hearer the full purport of the holy words as they stand in the Bible, and to communicate to him the very impression which the preacher himself had received from the text. Accordingly they come in not unfitly in this series, by way of specimen of the hortatory Sermons of the ancients, as St. Cyril’s, of their Catechetical Lectures, and St. Cyprians, the Pastoral Letters, which were circulated among them. “The date of these Homilies is not exactly known: but it is certain that they were delivered at Antioch, were it only from Hom. xxi. §. 9. ad fin. Antioch was at that time, in a temporal sense, a flourishing Church, maintaining 3,000 widows and virgins,1 maimed persons, prisoners, and ministers of the altar; although, St. Chrysostom adds, its income was but that of one of the lowest class of wealthy individuals. It was indeed in a state of division, on ac- count of the disputed succession in the Episcopate between the followers of Paulinus and Meletius since the year 362: but this separation affected not immediately any point of doc- trine; and was in a way to be gradually worn out, partly by the labors of St. Chrysostom himself, whose discourse concerning the Anathema seems to have been occasioned by the too severe way in which the partisans on both sides allowed themselves to speak of each other. It may be that he had an eye to this schism in his way of handling those parts of the Epistles to the Corinthians, which so earnestly deprecate the spirit of schism and party, and the calling ourselves by human names. “The Text which has been used in this translation is the Benedictine, corrected however in many places by that of Savile. The Benedictine Sections are marked in the margin thus, (2.) For the Translation, the Editors are indebted to the Reverend Hubert Kestell Cornish, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, and to the Reverend John Medley, M.A., of Wadham College, Vicar of St. Thomas, in the city of Exeter.” J. K[eble]. 1 Hom. 66. on St. Matt. t. ii. p. 422. ed. Savil. 4 Preface.