taxes, rose in revolt against the Emperor Theodosius the Great, broke down his statues and those of his deceased excellent wife Flacilla (d. 385) and his son Arcadius, dragged the fragments through the streets, and committed other acts of violence. The Emperor threatened to destroy the whole city. This caused general consternation and agony, but the city was saved by the intercession of Bishop Flavian, who in his old age proceeded to Constantinople and secured free pardon from the Emperor. Although a man of violent temper, Theodosius had profound reverence for bishops, and on another occasion he submitted to the rebuke of St. Ambrose for the wholesale massacre of the Thessalonians (390). In this period of public anxiety, which lasted several months, Chrysostom delivered series of extempore orations, in which he comforted the people and exhorted them to correct their vices. These are his twenty-one Homilies on the Statues, so-called from the overthrow of the imperial statues which gave rise to them. They were preached during Lent 387.14 In the same year St. Augustin submitted to baptism at the hands of St. Ambrose in Milan. One of the results of those sermons was the conversion of a large number of heathens. Thus the calamity was turned into a blessing to the church. During the sixteen or seventeen years of his labors in Antioch Chrysostom wrote the greater part of his Homilies and Commentaries; a consolatory Epistle to the despondent Stagirius; the excellent book on the martyr Babylas, which illustrates by a striking example the divine power of Christianity; a treatise on Virginity, which he puts above marriage; and an admonition to a young widow on the glory of widowhood, and the duty of continuing 12 in it. He disapproved of second marriage, not as sinful or illegal, but as inconsistent with an ideal conception of marriage and a high order of piety.15 14 Montfaucon goes with tedious minuteness into the chronology of these sermons. The twentieth was delivered ten days before Easter, the twenty-first on Easter, after the return of Flavian from Rome with the Emperor’s pardon. The first sermon was preached shortly before the sedition and has nothing to do with it, but is alluded to in the second. It is a temperance sermon, based on Paul’s advice to Timothy, 1 Tim. v. 23, where he emphasized the word “little” and the “often infirmities.” 15 Neander (vol. I.) gives large extracts from these ascetic treatises with many judicious and discriminating observations. 16 Chrysostom as Deacon, Priest and Preacher at Antioch. A.D. 381–398.