Chapter II.—Chrysostom’s Youth and Training, a.d. 347–370. “Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto Thee; and doest promise, that when two or three are gathered together in Thy name Thou wilt grant their requests: fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of Thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting, Amen.”1 This beautiful and comprehensive prayer, which is translated from the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, has made his name a household word wherever the Anglican Liturgy is known and used. John, surnamed Chrysostom ('Ιω€ννης Χρυσόστομος) is the greatest pulpit orator and commentator of the Greek Church, and still deservedly enjoys the highest honor in the whole Christian world. No one of the Oriental Fathers has left a more spotless reputation; no one is so much read and so often quoted by modern preachers and commentators. An admiring posterity, since the close of the fifth century, has given him the surname Chrysostom (the Golden Mouth), which has entirely superseded his personal name John, and which best expresses the general estimate of his merits. His life may be divided into five periods: (1) His youth and training till his conversion and baptism, A.D. 347–370. (2) His ascetic and monastic life, 370–381. (3) His public life as priest and preacher at Antioch, 381–398. (4) His episcopate at Constantinople, 398–404. (5) His exile to his death, 404–407. John (the name by which alone he is known among contemporary writers and his first biographers) was born in 347,2 at Antioch, the capital of Syria, and the home of the mother church of Gentile Christianity, where the disciples of Jesus were first called “Christians.” His father, Secundus, was a distinguished military officer (magister militum) in the im- perial army of Syria, and died during the infancy of John, without professing Christianity, 1 See the Greek original of this collect in Chrysostom’s Liturgy, in Migne’s edition, Tom. xii. 908; Daniel’s Codex Liturgicus, tom. iv.; Fasc. II. p. 343 (comp. the foot-note in tom. iii. 358); and Fr. Procter’s History of the Book of Common Prayer (11th ed. 1874), p. 245 sq. The precise origin of this prayer is uncertain. It does not occur in the oldest mss. of Chrysostom’s Liturgy, but in those of the Liturgy of St. Basil. It precedes the third anthem in the communion service, and was used since the ninth century or earlier in the exarchate of Cæsarea and the patriarchate of Constantinople. In the Oriental churches the prayer is said silently by the priest. See Bjerring, The Offices of the Oriental Church, p. 43. In the Anglican Church, it was placed at the end of the Litany (by Cranmer), in 1544, and at the close of the daily Morning and Evening Prayer in 1661. In the English Hom- ilies (Hom. I.), Chrysostom is called “that godly clerk and great preacher.” 2 So Montfaucon, Tillemont, Neander, Stephens, Venables, and others. Baur (Vorlesungen über die Dog- mengeschichte, Bd. I. Abthlg. II., p. 50) and others erroneously state the year 354 or 355, Villemain assigns the year 344 as that of his birth. Chrysostom’s Youth and Training, A.D. 347–370. 6 Chrysostom’s Youth and Training, A.D. 347–370.