he returned to Alexandria on the invitation of the civil government after deposition by a Church council at Tyre. But in both cases the defence was really unanswerable. The condemning synods were not fairly representative, and they had no jurisdiction over the bishops they presumed to depose.
Chrysostom's second offence was final. A silver image of Eudoxia had been set up opposite his church and the inauguration of it was celebrated with dances and buffoonery, which the patriarch detested as morally pernicious. He vehemently denounced the whole of the proceedings, an action which of course mortally offended the empress. There is extant a sermon attributed to Chrysostom on this occasion, beginning with the sentence, "Again Herodias is raging, again she is excited, again she is dancing, again she is seeking to obtain the head of John." The sermon as it stands is spurious, and Gibbon thought that this celebrated sentence in particular was certainly an invention; but the preacher who could call a woman "Jezebel" on one occasion might be imagined when more provoked on a later occasion to have designated her "Herodias." At all events, Chrysostom's offence was unpardonable. For a time he remained in seclusion at Constantinople, twice escaping assassination, while the city was in a great state of commotion. Then he was banished, a synod condemning him for having resumed his office without ecclesiastical permission since the synod of the Oak had deposed him. After three years of exile the hardships he had endured hastened his death (Sept. 14, 407).
Passing on now to the Christological controversies which followed the formal settlement of the Arian disputes at the council of Constantinople, we notice two opposite tendencies of thought, each of which had to be guarded against by those who would keep to the ever sharpening knife-edge of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The Church having reaffirmed the primary facts of the perfect Divinity and
