She exclaims):
"Advance! What hinders thee?"
Anthony (stammering):
"I fear ... to commit a sin!"
She (replies):
"But King Saul killed himself! Razias, a just man, killed himself! Saint Pelagia of Antioch killed herself! Dommina of Aleppo and her two daughters—all three saints—killed themselves: and remember also how many confessors delivered themselves up to the executioner in their impatient longing for death! That they might enjoy death more speedily, the virgins of Miletus strangled themselves with their girdles. At Syracuse the philosopher Hegesias preached so eloquently upon death that men deserted the lupanars to go hang themselves in the fields. The patricians of Borne sought for death as a new form of debauch."
Anthony. "Aye! the love of death is strong; and many a anchorite has succumbed to it."
The Old Woman. "To do that which will make thee equal unto God—think! He created thee: thou wilt destroy his work—thou! and by thy courage,—of thy own free will! The enjoyment that Erostratus knew was not greater than this. And moreover thy body has so long mocked thy soul that it is full time thou shouldst take vengeance upon it. Thou wilt not suffer. It will soon be over. Of what art thou afraid?—a wide, black hole! Perhaps it is a void!"