Chapter X.
Macarius, [2587] the Egyptian monk, distinguished for his miracles and virtues, wrote one letter which was addressed to the younger men of his profession. In this he taught them that he could serve God perfectly who, knowing the condition of his creation, should devote himself to all labours, and by wrestling against every thing which is agreeable in this life, and at the same time imploring the aid of God would attain also to natural purity and obtain continence, as a well merited gift of nature.
[2587] Born about 300, died 390 (391).
Chapter XI.
Evagrius [2588] the monk, the intimate disciple of the above mentioned Macarius, educated in [2589] sacred and profane literature and distinguished, whom the book which is called the Lives of the fathers mentions as a most continent and erudite man, wrote many things of use to monks among which are these: Suggestions against the eight principal sins. He was first to mention or among the first at least to teach these setting against them eight books taken from the testimony of the Holy Scriptures only, after the example of our Lord, who always met his tempter with quotations from Scripture, so that every suggestion, whether of the devil or of depraved nature had a testimony against it. This work I have, under instructions, translated into Latin translating with the same simplicity which I found in the Greek. He composed also a book of One hundred sentiments for those living simply as anchorites, arranged by chapters, and one of Fifty sentiments for the erudite and studious, which I first translated into Latin. The former one, translated before, I restored, partly by retranslating and partly by emendation, so as to represent the true meaning of the author, because I saw that the translation was vitiated and confused by time. He composed also a doctrine of the common-life suited to Cenobites and Synodites, [2590] and to the virgin consecrated to God, a little book suitable to her religion and sex. He published also a few collections of opinions very obscure and, as he himself says of them, only to be understood by the hearts of monks, and these likewise I published in Latin. He lived to old age, mighty in signs and miracles.
[2588] Born 345, died 399.
[2589] educated in T 31 e Her.; omit A 25 30 a.
[2590] Synodites a kind of monks.
Chapter XII.
Theodorus, [2591] presbyter of the church at Antioch, a cautious investigator and clever of tongue, wrote against the Apollinarians and Anomians On the incarnation of the Lord, fifteen books containing as many as fifteen thousand verses, in which he showed by the clearest reasoning and by the testimony of Scripture that just as the Lord Jesus had a plenitude of deity, so he had a plenitude of humanity. He taught also that man consists only of two substances, soul and body and that sense and spirit are not different substances, but inherent inborn faculties of the soul through which it is inspired and has rationality and through which it makes the body capable of feeling. Moreover the fourteenth book of this work treats wholly of the uncreated and alone incorporeal and ruling nature of the holy Trinity and of the rationality of animals which he explains in a devotional spirit, on the authority of Holy Scriptures. In the fifteenth volume he confirms and fortifies the whole body of his work by citing the traditions of the fathers.
[2591] Theodore of Mopsuesta (?), born at Antioch (?) about 350, died 428.
Chapter XIII.
Prudentius, [2592] a man well versed in secular literature, composed a Trocheum [2593] of selected persons from the whole Old and New Testament. He wrote a commentary also, after the fashion of the Greeks, On the six days of creation from creation of the world until the creation of the first man and his fall. He wrote also short books which are entitled in the Greek, Apotheosis, Psychomachia and Hamartigenia, that is On divinity, On spiritual conflict, On the origin of sin. He wrote also In praise of martyrs, an invitation to martyrdom in one book citing several as examples and another of Hymns, but specially directed Against Symmachus [2594] who defended idolatry, from which we learn that Palatinus was a soldier.
[2592] Born at Saragossa 348, was at Rome in 405, died in Spain 408?
[2593] Trocheum. There is much controversy over the word, some maintaining that it should be Dittochaeon= "the double food or double testament" (Lock in Smith and Wace) or Diptychon. It is a description of a series of pictures from the Bible. The mss. read Trocheum a.e.; Troceum T 25; Trocetum 30; Trocleum A; Tropeum 31. A recent monograph on the subject has not yet come to hand.
[2594] Symmachus. Two works are here confused, the work against Symmachus, and the Cathemerinon hymns, in the preface to which the quotation occurs.