Through the rich and luxuriant region of Syria, and especially round
the richest and most luxurious of its cities, Antioch, hermits
settled, and bore, by the severity of their lives, a noble witness
against the profligacy of its inhabitants, who had half renounced
the paganism of their forefathers without renouncing in the least,
it seems, those sins which drew down of old the vengeance of a
righteous God upon their forefathers, whether in Canaan or in Syria
itself.

At Antioch, about the year 347, was born the famous Chrysostom, John
of the Golden Mouth; and near Antioch he became a hermit, and dwelt,
so legends say, several years alone in the wilderness: till, nerved
by that hard training, he went forth again into the world to become,
whether at Antioch or at Constantinople, the bravest as well as the
most eloquent preacher of righteousness and rebuker of sin which the
world had seen since the times of St. Paul. The labours of
Chrysostom belong not so much to this book as to a general
ecclesiastical history: but it must not be forgotten that he, like
all the great men of that age, had been a monk, and kept up his
monastic severity, even in the midst of the world, until his dying
day.

At Nisibis, again, upon the very frontier of Persia, appeared
another very remarkable personage, known as the Great Jacob or Great
St. James. Taking (says his admiring biographer, Theodoret of Cyra)
to the peaks of the loftiest mountains., he passed his life on them,
in spring and summer haunting the woods, with the sky for a roof,
but sheltering himself in winter in a cave. His food was wild
fruits and mountain herbs. He never used a fire, and, clothed in a
goats' hair garment, was perhaps the first of those Boscoi, or