A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF S. GREGORY OF NYSSA. without choosing a profession, living on his share of the paternal property, and edut:ating himself by a discipline of his own. He remained for years unbaptized. And this is a very noticeable circumstance which meets us in the lives of many eminent Saints and Bishops of the Church. They either delayed baptism themselves, or it was delayed for them. Indeed there are instances of Bishops baptized and consecrated the same day. Gregory's first inclination or impulse to make a public profession of Christianity is said to have been due to a remarkable dream or vision. His mother Emmelia, at her retreat at Annesi, urgently entreated him to be present and take part in a religious ceremony in honour of the Forty Christian Martyrs. He had gone unwillingly, and wearied with his journey and the length of the service, which lasted far into the night, he lay down and fell asleep in the garden. He dreamed that the Martyrs appeared to him and, reproaching him for his indifference, beat him with rods. On awaking he was filled with remorse, and hastened to amend his past neglect by earnest entreaties for mercy and forgiveness. Under the influence of the terror which his dream inspired he consented to undertake the office of reader in the Church, which of course implied a profession of Christianity. But some unfitness, and, perhaps, that love of eloquence which clung to him to the last, soon led him to give up the office, and adopt the profession of a rhetorician or advocate. For this desertion of a sacred for a secular employment he is taken severely to task by his brother Basil and his friend Gregory Nazianzen. The latter does not hesitate to charge him with being influenced, not by conscientious scruples, but by vanity and desire of public display, a charge not altogether consistent with his character. Here it is usual to place the marriage of Gregory with Theosebeia, said to have been a sister of Gregory Nazianzen. Certainly the tradition of Gregory's marriage received such credit as to be made in after times a proof of the non-celibacy of the Bishops of his ao-e. But it rests mainly on two passages, which taken separately are not in the least conclusive. The first is the ninety-fifth letter of Gregory Nazianzen, written to console for a certain loss by death, i. e. of *' Theosebeia, the fairest, the most lustrous even amidst such beauty of the ddfXcpol ; Theosebeia, the true priestess, the yokefellow and the equal of a priest." J. Rupphas well pointed out that the expression ' yokefellow ' (o-vC^yop), which has been insisted as meaning 'wife,' may, especially in the language of Gregory Nazianzen, be equivalent to dd€\(f)6s. He sees in this Theosebeia ' a sister of the Cappadocian brothers.' The second passage is contained in the third cap. of Gregory's treatise On Virginity. Gregory there complains that he is *'cut off" by a kind of gulf from this glory of virginity" (napOevla). The whole passage should be consulted. Of course its significance depends on the meaning given to Trapdevia, Rupp asserts that more and more towards the end of the century this word acquired a technical meaning derived from the purely ideal side, i. e. virginity of soul : and that Gregory is alluding to the same thing that his friend had not long before blamed him for, the keeping of a school for rhetoric, where his object had been merely worldly reputation, and the truly ascetic career had been marred (at the time he wrote). Certainly the terrible indictment of marriage in the third cap. of this treatise comes ill from one whose wife not only must have been still living, but possessed the virtues sketched in the letter of Gregory Nazianzen : while the allusions at the end of it to the law-courts and their revelations appear much more like the professional reminiscence of a rhetorician who must have been familiar with them, than the personal com- plaint of one who had cause to depreciate marriage. The powerful words of Basil, de Virgin. I. 6io, a. b., also favour the above view of the meaning of irapOevla: and Gregory elsewhere distinctly calls celibacy irapOevla rov aafxaros, and regards it as a means only to this higher napdevLa (HI. 131). But the two passagcs above, when combined, may have led to the tradition of Gregory's marriage. Nicephorus Callistus, for example, who first makes mention of it, must have put upon napOcvla the interpretation of his own time (thirteenth century,) B 2