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Then again, coming to Councils, she quotes St. Gregory Nazianzen upon him; who is truly dreadful in regard to Ecumenic Councils of the Church, and indeed may awaken thoughts of Deliberative Assemblies generally, in the modern constitutional mind.
Gregory of Nazianzen, surnamed the Theologian, the oracle of his time, who gave up the charge of three Bishoprics, Sozima, Nazianzen, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, that he might go and end his days In rural life, on his paternal estate of Arianzen.
He went into France to gain instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he had from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld Fenelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself. Guided by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their talents the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and morality.
With incredible rapidity, and by all the means within reach of an absolute monarch, he turned this nobly situated town, connecting two seas and two continents, into a splendid residence and a new Christian Rome, 'for which now, as Gregory of Nazianzen expresses it, 'sea and land emulate each other, to load it with their treasures, and crown it queen of cities. Here, instead of idol temples and altars, churches and crucifixes rose; though among them the statues of patron deities from all over Greece, mutilated by all sorts of tasteless adaptations, were also gathered in the new metropolis.
Wherewith the worthy Marcus went off with his little son at his heels to inspect the doings of the slaves in the farm-court in the rear, having no taste for the occupation of his father and the Bishop, who composed themselves to listen to a MS. of the letters of S. Gregory Nazianzen, which Sidonius had lately acquired, and which was read aloud to them by a secretary slave.
Moreover, I found in Gregory Nazianzen and others, that to confess this derivation of the Son and Spirit and the underivedness of the Father alone, was in their view quite essential to save Monotheism; the One God being the underived Father.
Athanasius was Patriarch of Alexandria and Cyril of Jerusalem; Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Basil the Great, formed a triumvirate of holy, eloquent, and erudite defenders of truth and justice; Ambrose was by his faith and piety illumining the See of Milan; the Christian Cicero, Chrysostom, was pouring forth at Constantinople streams of golden eloquence; Jerome, the hermit of Bethlehem, was giving his masterly expositions of Scripture.
It was not till the fourth century that such great names as Arius, Athanasius, Hosius, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, Hilary of Poictiers, Martin of Tours, Diodorus of Tarsus, Ambrose of Milan, Basil of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Theophilus of Alexandria, Chrysostom of Constantinople, arose and made their voices heard in the council chambers of the great.
And as Sozomenus saith of Spiridion; and as Nazianzen saith of his own father, that a good and diligent bishop doth serve in the ministry never the worse for that he is married, but rather the better, and with more ableness to do good.
Above his head rose the clear blue African sky; at his side were the saddlebags full of women's clothing. Gregory looked up half plaintively into the blue sky. "Am I, am I Gregory Nazianzen Rose?" he said. It was also strange, he sitting there in that sloot in that up-country plain! strange as the fantastic, changing shapes in a summer cloud.
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