Quoth Antony, “When the stomach is full of meat, forthwith the great vices bubble out, according to that which the Saviour says: ‘That which entereth into the mouth defileth not a man; but that which cometh out of the heart sinks a man in destruction.’”
[This may be a somewhat paradoxical application of the text: but the last anecdote of Antony which I shall quote is full of wisdom and humanity.]
A monk came from Alexandria, Eulogius by name, bringing with him a man afflicted with elephantiasis. Now Eulogius had been a scholar, learned, and rich, and had given away all he had save a very little, which he kept because he could not work with his own hands.
And he told Antony how he had found that wretched man lying in the street fifteen years before, having lost then nearly every member save his tongue, and how he had taken him home to his cell, nursed him, bathed him, physicked him, fed him; and how the man had returned him nothing save slanders, curses, and insults; how he had insisted on having meat, and had had it; and on going out in public, and had company brought to him; and how he had at last demanded to be put down again whence he had been taken, always cursing and slandering. And now Eulogius could bear the man no longer, and was minded to take him at his word.
Then said Antony with an angry voice, “Wilt thou cast him out, Eulogius? He who remembers that he made him, will not cast him out. If thou cast him out, he will find a better friend than thee. God will choose some one who will take him up when he is cast away.” Eulogius was terrified at these words, and held his peace.
Then went Antony to the sick man, and shouted at him, “Thou elephantiac, foul with mud and dirt, not worthy of the third heaven, wilt thou not stop shouting blasphemies against God? Dost thou not know that he who ministers to thee is Christ? How darest thou say such things against Christ?” And he bade Eulogius and the sick man go back to their cell, and live in peace, and never part more. Both went back, and, after forty days, Eulogius died, and the sick man shortly after, “altogether whole in spirit.”
HILARION
I would gladly, did space allow, give more biographies from among those of the Egyptian hermits: but it seems best, having shown the reader Antony as the father of Egyptian monachism, to go on to his great pupil Hilarion, the father of monachism in Palestine. His life stands written at length by St. Jerome, who himself died a monk at Bethlehem; and is composed happily in a less ambitious and less rugged style than that of Paul, not without elements of beauty, even of tragedy.
PROLOGUE
Remember me in thy holy prayers, glory and honour of virgins, nun Asella. Before beginning to write the life of the blessed Hilarion, I invoke the Holy Spirit which dwelt in him, that, as he largely bestowed virtues on Hilarion, he may give to me speech wherewith to relate them; so that his deeds may be equalled by my language. For those who (as Crispus says) “have wrought virtues” are held to have been worthily praised in proportion to the words in which famous intellects have been able to extol them. Alexander the Great, the Macedonian (whom Daniel calls either the brass, or the leopard, or the he-goat), on coming to the tomb of Achilles, “Happy art thou, youth,” he said, “who hast been blest with a great herald of thy worth”—meaning Homer. But I have to tell the conversation and life of such and so great a man, that even Homer, were he here, would either envy my matter, or succumb under it.