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.”
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.
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.
