Chapter 6

But how tolerant was his temper, and how humble his spirit; for though he was so great, he both honoured exceedingly the canon of the Church, and wished to put every ecclesiastic before himself in honour. For to the bishops and presbyters he was not ashamed to bow his head; and if a deacon ever came to him for the sake of profit, he discoursed with him on what was profitable, but in prayer he gave place to him, not being ashamed even himself to learn from him. {65} For he often asked questions, and deigned to listen to all present, confessing that he was profited if any one said aught that was useful. Moreover, his countenance had great and wonderful grace; and this gift too he had from the Saviour. For if he was present among the multitude of monks, and any one who did not previously know him wished to see him, as soon as he came he passed by all the rest, and ran to Antony himself, as if attracted by his eyes. He did not differ from the rest in stature or in stoutness, but in the steadiness of his temper, and purity of his soul; for as his soul was undisturbed, his outward senses were undisturbed likewise, so that the cheerfulness of his soul made his face cheerful, and from the movements of his body the stedfastness of his soul could be perceived, according to the Scripture, “When the heart is cheerful the countenance is glad; but when sorrow comes it scowleth.” . . . And he was altogether wonderful in faith, and pious, for he never communicated with the Meletian {66a} schismatics, knowing their malice and apostasy from the beginning; nor did he converse amicably with Manichæans or any other heretics, save only to exhort them to be converted to piety. For he held that their friendship and converse was injury and ruin to the soul. So also he detested the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all not to approach them, nor hold their misbelief. {66b} In fact, when certain of the Ariomanites came to him, having discerned them and found them impious, he chased them out of the mountain, saying that their words were worse than serpent’s poison; and when the Arians once pretended that he was of the same opinion as they, he was indignant and fierce against them. Then being sent for by the bishops and all the brethren, he went down from the mountain, and entering Alexandria he denounced the Arians, saying, that that was the last heresy, and the forerunner of Antichrist; and he taught the people that the Son of God was not a created thing, neither made from nought, but that he is the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Essence of the Father; wherefore also it is impious to say there was a time when he was not, for he was always the Word co-existent with the Father. Wherefore he said, “Do not have any communication with these most impious Arians; for there is no communion between light and darkness. For you are pious Christians: but they, when they say that the Son of God and the Word, who is from the Father, is a created being, differ nought from the heathen, because they worship the creature instead of God the Creator. {67} Believe rather that the whole creation itself is indignant against them, because they number the Creator and Lord of all, in whom all things are made, among created things.” All the people therefore rejoiced at hearing that Christ-opposing heresy anathematized by such a man; and all those in the city ran together to see Antony and the Greeks, {68a} and those who are called their priests {68b} came into the church, wishing to see the man of God; for all called him by that name, because there the Lord cleansed many by him from dæmons, and healed those who were out of their mind. And many heathens wished only to touch the old man, believing that it would be of use to them; and in fact as many became Christians in those few days, as would have been usually converted in a year. And when some thought that the crowd troubled him, and therefore turned all away from him, he quietly said that they were not more numerous than the fiends with whom he wrestled on the mountain. But when he left the city, and we were setting him on his journey, when we came to the gate a certain woman called to him: “Wait, man of God, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil; wait, I beseech thee, lest I too harm myself with running after thee.” The old man hearing it, and being asked by us, waited willingly. But when the woman drew near, the child dashed itself on the ground; and when Antony prayed and called on the name of Christ, it rose up sound, the unclean spirit having gone out; and the mother blessed God, and we all gave thanks: and he himself rejoiced at leaving the city for the mountain, as for his own home.

Now he was very prudent; and what was wonderful, though he had never learnt letters, he was a shrewd and understanding man. Once, for example, two Greek philosophers came to him, thinking that they could tempt Antony. And he was in the outer mountain; and when he went out to them, understanding the men from their countenances, he said through an interpreter, “Why have you troubled yourselves so much, philosophers, to come to a foolish man?” And when they answered that he was not foolish, but rather very wise, he said, “If you have come to a fool, your labour is superfluous, but if ye think me to be wise, become as I am; for we ought to copy what is good, and if I had come to you, I should have copied you; but if you come to me, copy me, for I am a Christian.” And they wondering went their way, for they saw that even dæmons were afraid of Antony.

And again when others of the same class met him in the outer mountain, and thought to mock him, because he had not learnt letters, Antony answered, “But what do you say? which is first, the sense or the letters? And which is the cause of the other, the sense of the letters, or the letters of the sense?” And when they said that the sense came first, and invented the letters, Antony replied, “If then the sense be sound, the letters are not needed.” Which struck them, and those present, with astonishment. So they went away wondering, when they saw so much understanding in an unlearned man. For though he had lived and grown old in the mountain, his manners were not rustic, but graceful and urbane; and his speech was seasoned with the divine salt, so that no man grudged at him, but rather rejoiced over him, as many as came. . . .

[Here follows a long sermon against the heathen worship, attributed to St. Antony, but of very questionable authenticity: the only point about it which is worthy of note is that Antony confutes the philosophers by challenging them to cure some possessed persons, and, when they are unable to do so, casts out the dæmons himself by the sign of the cross.]

The fame of Antony reached even the kings, for Constantinus the Augustus, and his sons, Constantius and Constans, the Augusti, hearing of these things, wrote to him as to a father, and begged to receive an answer from him. But he did not make much of the letters, nor was puffed up by their messages; and he was just the same as he was before the kings wrote to him. And he called his monks and said, “Wonder not if a king writes to us, for he is but a man: but wonder rather that God has written his law to man, and spoken to us by his own Son.” So he declined to receive their letters, saying he did not know how to write an answer to such things; but being admonished by the monks that the kings were Christians, and that they must not be scandalized by being despised, he permitted the letters to be read, and wrote an answer; accepting them because they worshipped Christ, and counselling them, for their salvation, not to think the present life great, but rather to remember judgment to come; and to know that Christ was the only true and eternal king; and he begged them to be merciful to men, and to think of justice and the poor. And they, when they received the answer, rejoiced. Thus was he kindly towards all, and all looked on him as their father. He then betook himself again into the inner mountain, and continued his accustomed training. But often, when he was sitting and walking with those who came unto him, he was astounded, as is written in Daniel. And after the space of an hour, he told what had befallen to the brethren who were with him, and they perceived that he had seen some vision. Often he saw in the mountain what was happening in Egypt, and told it to Serapion the bishop, who saw him occupied with a vision. Once, for instance, as he sat, he fell as it were into an ecstasy, and groaned much at what he saw. Then, after an hour, turning to those who were with him, he groaned and fell into a trembling, and rose up and prayed, and bending his knees, remained so a long while; and then the old man rose up and wept. The bystanders, therefore, trembling and altogether terrified, asked him to tell them what had happened, and tormented him much, that he was forced to speak. And he groaning greatly—“Ah! my children,” he said, “it were better to be dead before what I have seen shall come to pass.” And when they asked him again, he said with tears, that “Wrath will seize on the Church, and she will be given over to men like unto brutes, which have no understanding; for I saw the table of the Lord’s house, and mules standing all around it in a ring and kicking inwards, as a herd does when it leaps in confusion; and ye all perceived how I groaned, for I heard a voice saying, ‘My sanctuary shall be defiled.’”

This the old man saw, and after two years there befell the present inroad of the Arians, {72a} and the plunder of the churches, when they carried off the holy vessels by violence, and made the heathen carry them: and when too they forced the heathens from the prisons to join them, and in their presence did on the holy table what they would. {72b} Then we all perceived that the kicks of those mules presignified to Antony what the Arians are now doing without understanding, like the brutes. But when Antony saw this sight, he exhorted those about him, saying, “Lose not heart, children; for as the Lord has been angry, so will he again be appeased, and the Church shall soon receive again her own order and shine forth as she is wont; and ye shall see the persecuted restored to their place, and impiety retreating again into its own dens, and the pious faith speaking boldly everywhere with all freedom. Only defile not yourselves with the Arians, for this teaching is not of the Apostle but of the dæmons, and of their father the devil: barren and irrational and of an unsound mind, like the irrational deeds of those mules.” Thus spoke Antony.

But we must not doubt whether so great wonders have been done by a man; for the Saviour’s promise is, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Pass over from hence, it shall pass over, and nothing shall be impossible to you;” and again, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask my Father in my name, he shall give it you. Ask, and ye shall receive.” And he himself it is who said to his disciples and to all who believe in him, “Heal the sick, cast out devils; freely ye have received, freely give.” And certainly Antony did not heal by his own authority, but by praying and calling on Christ; so that it was plain to all that it was not he who did it, but the Lord, who through Antony showed love to men, and healed the sufferers. But Antony’s part was only the prayer and the training, for the sake whereof, sitting in the mountain, he rejoiced in the sight of divine things, and grieved when he was tormented by many, and dragged to the outer mountain.

For all the magistrates asked him to come down from the mountain, because it was impossible for them to go in thither to him on account of the litigants who followed him; so they begged him to come, that they might only behold him. And when he declined they insisted, and even sent in to him prisoners under the charge of soldiers, that at least on their account he might come down. So being forced by necessity, and seeing them lamenting, he came to the outer mountain. And his labour this time too was profitable to many, and his coming for their good. To the magistrates, too, he was of use, counselling them to prefer justice to all things, and to fear God, and to know that with what judgment they judged they should be judged in turn. But he loved best of all his life in the mountain. Once again, when he was compelled in the same way to leave it, by those who were in want, and by the general of the soldiers, who entreated him earnestly, he came down, and having spoken to them somewhat of the things which conduced to salvation, he was pressed also by those who were in need. But being asked by the general to lengthen his stay, he refused, and persuaded him by a graceful parable, saying, “Fishes, if they lie long on the dry land, die; so monks who stay with you lose their strength. As the fishes then hasten to the sea, so must we to the mountain, lest if we delay we should forget what is within.” The general, hearing this and much more from him, said with surprise that he was truly a servant of God, for whence could an unlearned man have so great sense if he were not loved by God?

Another general, named Balacius, bitterly persecuted us Christians on account of his affection for those abominable Arians. His cruelty was so great that he even beat nuns, and stripped and scourged monks. Antony sent him a letter to this effect:—“I see wrath coming upon thee. Cease, therefore, to persecute the Christians, lest the wrath lay hold upon thee, for it is near at hand.” But Balacius, laughing, threw the letter on the ground and spat on it; and insulted those who brought it, bidding them tell Antony, “Since thou carest for monks, I will soon come after thee likewise.” And not five days had passed, when the wrath laid hold on him. For Balacius himself, and Nestorius, the Eparch of Egypt, went out to the first station from Alexandria, which is called Chæreas’s. Both of them were riding on horses belonging to Balacius, and the most gentle in all his stud: but before they had got to the place, the horses began playing with each other, as is their wont, and suddenly the more gentle of the two, on which Nestorius was riding, attacked Balacius and pulled him off with his teeth, and so tore his thigh that he was carried back to the city, and died in three days. And all wondered that what Antony had so wonderfully foretold was so quickly fulfilled. These were his warnings to the more cruel. But the rest who came to him he so instructed that they gave up at once their lawsuits, and blessed those who had retired from this life. And those who had been unjustly used he so protected that you would think he and not they was the sufferer. And he was so able to be of use to all; so that many who were serving in the army, and many wealthy men, laid aside the burdens of life and became thenceforth monks; and altogether he was like a physician given by God to Egypt. For who met him grieving, and did not go away rejoicing? Who came mourning over his dead, and did not forthwith lay aside his grief? Who came wrathful, and was not converted to friendship? What poor man came wearied out, and when he saw and heard him did not despise wealth and comfort himself in his poverty? What monk who had grown remiss, was not strengthened by coming to him? What young man coming to the mountain and looking upon Antony, did not forthwith renounce pleasure and love temperance? Who came to him tempted by devils, and did not get rest? Who came troubled by doubts, and did not get peace of mind? For this was the great thing in Antony’s asceticism, that (as I have said before), having the gift of discerning spirits, he understood their movements, and knew in what direction each of them turned his endeavours and his attacks. And not only he was not deceived by them himself, but he taught those who were troubled in mind how they might turn aside the plots of dæmons, teaching them the weakness and the craft of their enemies. How many maidens, too, who had been already betrothed, and only saw Antony from afar, remained unmarried for Christ’s sake! Some, too, came from foreign parts to him, and all, having gained some benefit, went back from him as from a father. And now he has fallen asleep, all are as orphans who have lost a parent, consoling themselves with his memory alone, keeping his instructions and exhortations. But what the end of his life was like, it is fit that I should relate, and you hear eagerly. For it too is worthy of emulation. He was visiting, according to his wont, the monks in the outer mountain, and having learned from Providence concerning his own end, he said to the brethren, “This visit to you is my last, and I wonder if we shall see each other again in this life. It is time for me to set sail, for I am near a hundred and five years old.” And when they heard that they wept, and embraced and kissed the old man. And he, as if he was setting out from a foreign city to his own, spoke joyfully, and exhorted them not to grow idle in their labours or cowardly in their training, but to live as those who died daily, and (as I said before) to be earnest in keeping their souls from foul thoughts, and to emulate the saints, and not to draw near the Meletian schismatics, for “ye know their evil and profane determinations, nor to have any communion with the Arians, for their impiety also is manifest to all. Neither if ye shall see the magistrates patronising them, be troubled, for their phantasy shall have an end, and is mortal and only for a little while. Keep yourselves therefore rather clean from them, and hold that which has been handed down to you by the fathers, and especially the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ which ye have learned from Scripture, and of which ye have often been reminded by me.” And when the brethren tried to force him to stay with them and make his end there, he would not endure it, on many accounts, as he showed by his silence; and especially on this:—The Egyptians are wont to wrap in linen the corpses of good persons, and especially of the holy martyrs, but not to bury them underground, but to lay them upon benches and keep them in their houses; {77} thinking that by this they honour the departed. Now Antony had often asked the bishops to exhort the people about this, and in like manner he himself rebuked the laity and terrified the women; saying that it was a thing neither lawful nor in any way holy; for that the bodies of the patriarchs and prophets are to this day preserved in sepulchres, and that the very body of our Lord was laid in a sepulchre, and a stone placed over it to hide it, till he rose the third day. And thus saying he showed that those broke the law who did not bury the corpses of the dead, even if they were holy; for what is greater or more holy than the Lord’s body? Many, then, when they heard him, buried thenceforth underground; and blessed the Lord that they had been taught rightly. Being then aware of this, and afraid lest they should do the same by his body, he hurried himself, and bade farewell to the monks in the outer mountain; and coming to the inner mountain, where he was wont to abide, after a few months he grew sick, and calling those who were by—and there were two of them who had remained there within fifteen years, exercising themselves and ministering to him on account of his old age—he said to them, “I indeed go the way of the fathers, as it is written, for I perceive that I am called by the Lord.” . . .

[Then follows a general exhortation to the monk, almost identical with much that has gone before, and ending by a command that his body should be buried in the ground.]

“And let this word of mine be kept by you, so that no one shall know the place, save you alone, for I shall receive it (my body) incorruptible from my Saviour in the resurrection of the dead. And distribute my garments thus. To Athanasius the bishop give one of my sheepskins, and the cloak under me, which was new when he gave it me, and has grown old by me; and to Serapion the bishop give the other sheepskin; and do you have the hair-cloth garment. And for the rest, children, farewell, for Antony is going, and is with you no more.”

Saying thus, when they had embraced him, he stretched out his feet, and, as if he saw friends coming to him, and grew joyful on their account (for, as he lay, his countenance was bright), he departed and was gathered to his fathers. And they forthwith, as he had commanded them, preparing the body and wrapping it up, hid it under ground: and no one knows to this day where it is hidden, save those two servants only. And each (_i.e._ Athanasius and Serapion) having received the sheepskin of the blessed Antony, and the cloak which he had worn out, keeps them as a great possession. For he who looks on them, as it were, sees Antony; and he who puts them on, wears them with joy, as he does Antony’s counsels.

Such was the end of Antony in the body, and such the beginning of his training. And if these things are small in comparison with his virtue, yet reckon up from these things how great was Antony, the man of God, who kept unchanged, from his youth up to so great an age, the earnestness of his training; and was neither worsted in his old age by the desire of more delicate food, nor on account of the weakness of his body altered the quality of his garment, nor even washed his feet with water; and yet remained uninjured in all his limbs: for his eyes were undimmed and whole, so that he saw well; and not one of his teeth had fallen out, but they were only worn down to his gums on account of his great age; and he remained sound in hand and foot; and, in a word, appeared ruddier and more ready for exertion than all who use various meats and baths, and different dresses. But that this man should be celebrated everywhere and wondered at by all, and regretted even by those who never saw him, is a proof of his virtue, and that his soul was dear to God. For Antony became known not by writings, not from the wisdom that is from without, not by any art, but by piety alone; and that this was the gift of God, none can deny. For how as far as Spain, as Gaul, as Rome, as Africa, could he have been heard, hidden as he was in a mountain, if it had not been for God, who makes known his own men everywhere, and who had promised Antony this from the beginning? For even if they do their deeds in secret, and wish to be concealed, yet the Lord shows them as lights to all, that so those who hear of them may know that the commandments suffice to put men in the right way, and may grow zealous of the path of virtue.

Read then these things to the other brethren, that they may learn what the life of monks should be, and may believe that the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour will glorify those who glorify him, and that those who serve him to the end he will not only bring to the kingdom of heaven, but that even if on earth they hide themselves and strive to get out of the way, he will make them manifest and celebrated everywhere, for the sake of their own virtue, and for the benefit of others. But if need be, read this also to the heathens, that even thus they may learn that our Lord Jesus Christ is not only Lord and the Son of God, but that those who truly serve him, and believe piously on him, not only prove that those dæmons whom the Greeks think are gods to be no gods, but even tread them under foot, and chase them out as deceivers and corrupters of men, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and honour for ever and ever. Amen.

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