court of the Prætorian Prefect of the East alone. The display of talent in the law-courts frequently obtained for a man the government of a province, whence the road was open to those higher dignities of vice-prefect, prefect, patrician, consul, which were honoured by the title of “illustrious.”[17] But the pure and upright disposition of the youthful advocate recoiled from the licentiousness which corrupted society; from the avarice, fraud, and artifice which marked the transactions of men of business; from the chicanery and rapacity that sullied the profession which he had entered.[18] He was accustomed to say later in life that “the Bible was the fountain for watering the soul.” If he had drunk of the classical fountains in the school of Libanius, he had imbibed draughts yet deeper of the spiritual well-spring in quiet study of Holy Scripture at home. And like many another in that degraded age, his whole soul revolted from the glaring contrast presented by the ordinary life of the world around him to that standard of holiness which was held up in the Gospels. He had formed also an intimate friendship with a young man, his equal in station and age, by whose influence he was diverted more and more from secular life, and eventually induced altogether to abandon it. This was Basil, who will come before us in the celebrated work on the priesthood. He must not be confounded with the great Basil,[19] Bishop of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, who was some fifteen years older than Chrysostom, having been born in A.D. 329, nor with Basil, Bishop of Seleucia, who was present at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, and must therefore have been considerably younger. Perhaps he may be identified with a Basil, Bishop of Raphanea in Syria, not far from Antioch, who attended the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381. Chrysostom has described his friendship with Basil in affecting language:[20] “I had many genuine and true friends, men who understood and strictly observed the laws of friendship; but one there was out of the many who exceeded them all in attachment to me, and strove to leave them all behind in the race, even as much as they themselves surpassed ordinary acquaintances. He was one of those who accompanied me at all times; we engaged in the same studies, and were instructed by the same teachers; in our zeal and interest for the subjects on which we worked, we were one. As we went to our lectures or returned from them, we were accustomed to take counsel together on the line of life it would be best to adopt; and here, too, we appeared to be unanimous.”