consulted even by emperors
and kings, in the most important matters; and sometimes, on great
occasions, when a stylite descended from his pillar, or some famous
hermit left his cell, and appeared among the crowds of a city, he was
able to make everything bend to his will.

We must not be blind to the serious errors of monkery; but we are bound
also to own that God was pleased to make it the means of great good. The
monks did much for the conversion of the heathen, and when the ages of
darkness came on, after the overthrow of the Roman empire in the West,
they rendered inestimable service in preserving the knowledge of
learning and religion, which, but for them, might have utterly perished
from the earth.

CHAPTER XIV.

ST. BASIL AND ST. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUM. COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

PART I. A.D. 373-381.

Although St. Athanasius was now dead, God did not fail to raise up
champions for the true faith. Three of the most famous of these were
natives of Cappadocia--namely, Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and
his friend Gregory of Nazianzum. But although Gregory of Nyssa was a
very good and learned man, and did great service to the truth by his
writings, there was nothing remarkable in the story of his life; so I
shall only tell you about the other two.

Basil and Gregory of Nazianzum were both born about the year 329. Basil
was of a noble Christian family. Gregory's father had belonged to a
strange sect called Hypsistarians, whose religion was a mixture of
Jewish and heathen notions; but he had been converted from it by his
wife, Nonna, who was a very pious and excellent woman, and, before his
son's birth, he had risen to be bishop of Nazianzum.

The two youths became acquainted at school in Cappadocia, and, when they
were afterwards sent to the famous schools of Athens, they grew into the
closest friendship. They lived and read and walked together: Gregory
says that they had all things common, and that it was as if they had
only one soul in two bodies. Athens was an excellent place for learning
all that the wise men of this world could teach, and therefore students
flocked to it from distant countries. But it was a dangerous place for
Christian young men; for the teachers were heathen philosophers, and
knew well how to entangle them in arguments, so that many of the pupils,
who did not rightly understand the grounds of their faith, were deceived
into giving it up. Thus, at the very time when Basil