§* 35. PAUL uF THEBES AND ST. AJ^THOXY. 181
grave-digging lions, it is haixl to imagine what was more credi ble and less worthy of repetition.
In this Panl we have an example of a canonized saint, whc lived ninety years nnseen and unknown in the wilderness, beyond all fellowship with the visible church, without Bible, public worship, or sacraments, and so died, yet is supposed to have attained the highest grade of piety. How does this consist with the common doctrine of the Catholic church respecting the necessity and the operation of the means of grace? Augustine, blinded by the ascetic spirit of his age, says even, that anchorets, on their level of perfection, may dispense with the Bible, Certain it is, that this kind of perfection stands not in the Bible, but outside of it.
Tlie proper founder of the hermit life, the one chiefly in strumental in giving it its prevalence, was St. Anthony of Egypt. He is the most celebrated, the most original, and the most venerable representative of this abnormal and eccentric sanctity, the "patriarch of the monks," and the "childless father of an innumerable seed." '
Anthony sprang from a Christian and honorable Coptic family, and was born about 251, at Coma, on the borders of the Thebaid. Naturally quiet, contemplative, and reflective, he avoided the society of playmates, and despised all higher learning. He understood only his Coptic vernacular, and remained all his life ignorant of Grecian literature and secular science.^ But he diligently attended divine worship with his parents, and so carefully heard the Scripture lessons, that he retained them in memory.* Memory was his library. He afterward
' Jerome saj's of Anthony, in his Vita Pauli Theb. (c. i.) : "Non tam ipse ante jmnes (eremitas) fuit, quam ab eo omnium incitata sunt studia."
' According to the common opinion, whiclx was also Augustine's, Anthony could not even read. But Tillemont (torn. vil. 107 and 666), Butler, and others think that this ignorance related only to the Greek alphabet, not to the Egyptian. Athanasius, p. 795, expresses himself somewhat indistinctly ; that, from dread of society, he would not iLLa^e7v ypd,u,uaTu (letters ? or the arts ?), but speaks afterward of hia regard for reading.
* Augustine says of him, De doctr. Christ. § 4, that, without being able to rea(^ from only bearing the Bible, he knew it by heart. The life of Athanasius shows, inr deed, that a number of Scriptwe passages were very familiar to him. But of a connected and deep knowledge of Scripture in him, or in these anchorets generaUy, we find no trace.
182 TniED I'ERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
made faithful, but oiily too literal use of single passages of Scripture, and began his discourse to the hermits with the verj uncatholic-sounding declaration : " The holy Scriptures giv^e us instruction enough." In his eighteenth year, about 270, the death of his parents devolved on him the care of a younger sister and a considerable estate. Six months afterward he heard in the church, just as he was meditating on the apostles' implicit following of Jesus, the word of the Lord to the rich young ruler: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come and follow me." ' Tliis word was a voice of God, which determined his life. He divided his real estate, consisting of three hundred acres of fertile land, among the inhabitants of the village, and sold his personal property for the benefit of the poor, excepting a moderate reserve for the support of his sister. But when, soon afterward, he heard in the church the exhortation, " Tal<e no thought for the morrow," * he distributed the remnant to the poor, and inti'usted his sister to a society of pious virgins.' He visited her only once after — ■ a fact characteristic of the ascetic depreciation of natural ties.
He then forsook the hamlet, and led an ascetic life in the neighborhood, praying constantly, according to the exhortation : " Pray without ceasing ; " and also laboring, according to the maxim : "If any will not work, neither should he eat." What he did not need for his slender support, he gave to the poor. He visited the neighboring ascetics, who were then already very plentiful in Egypt, to learn humbly and thankfully their several eminent virtues ; from one, earnestness in prayer ; from another, watchfulness ; from a third, excellence in fasting ; from a fourth, meekness ; from all, love to Christ and to felloAV men. Thus he made himself universally beloved, and came to be reverenced as a friend of God.
But to reach a still higher level of ascetic holiness, he re-
' Matt. xix. 21. ' Matt. vi. 34.
' Ei9 irap^fvaJra, say3 Athannsius ; i e., not " un inonastere de verges,'' as Tille mont transhtcs, for nunneries did not ye:, exist ; but a soeiety of female ascetics within the congregation ; from which, however, a regular cloister might of coursi rery caeily grow.