§ 35. PAUL OF THEBES AND ST. AlfTHONT. 181
his disciples he said on this occasion : " Wonder not that the emperor writes to me, for he is a man. Wonder much more that God has written the law for man, and has spoken to us bji his o«m Son."
During the last years of liis life the patriarch of monasticism withdrew as mucli as possible from the sight of yisitors, but allowed two disciples to live with him, and to take care of him in his infirm old age. When he felt his end approaching, he commanded them not to embalm his body, according to the Egyptian custom, but to bury it in the earth, and to keep the spot of his interment secret. One of his two sheepskins he bequeathed to the bishop Serapion, the other, with his underclothing, to Athanasius, who had once given it to him new, and now received it back worn out. What became of the robo woven from palm leaves, which, according to Jerome, he had inherited from Paul of Thebes, and wore at Easter and Pentecost, Athanasius does not tell us. After this disposition of his property, Anthony said to his disciples : " Children, farewell ; for Anthony goes away, and will be no more with you." With these words he stretched out his feet and expired with a smiling face in the year 356, a hundred and five years old. His grave i-emained for centuries unknown. His last will was thus a protest against the worship of saints and relics, which, however, it nevertheless greatly helped to promote. Under Justinian, in 561, his bones, as the BoUandists and Butler minutely relate, were miraculously discovered, brought to Alexandria, then to Constantinople, and at last to Yienne in South France, and in the eleventh century, during the raging of an epidemic disease, the so-called "holy fire," or "St. Antliony's fire," they are said to have performed great wonders.
Athanasius, the greatest man of the Nicene age, concludes his biography of his friend with this sketch of his character: "From this short narrative you may judge how great a man Anthony was, who persevered in the ascetic life from youth to the highest age. In his advanced age he never allowed himself better food, nor change of raiment, nor did he even waslj his feet. Yet he continued healthy in all his parts. His eyeeight was clear to the end, and his teeth sound, though by long
188 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
use worn to mere stumps. He retained also tlie perfect use of his bands aiid feet, and was more robust and \agorous than tbose wbo are accustomed to change of food and clothing and to washing. His fame spread from his remote dwelling on the lone mountain over the whole Eoman empire. What gave him his renown, was not learning, nor worldly wisdom, nor
human art, but alone his piety toward God And lei
all the brethren know, that the Lord will not only take holy monks to heaven, but give them celebrity in all the earth, however deep they may bury themselves in the wilderness."
The whole Nicene age venerated in Anthony a model saint.' This fact brings out most characteristically the vast diflference between the ancient and the modei-n, the old Catholic and the evangelical Protestant conception of the nature of the Christian religion. The specifically Christian element in the life of Anthony, especially as measured by the Pauline standard, is very small. Nevertheless we can but admire the needy magnificence, the simple, rude grandeur of this hermit sanctity even in its aberration. Anthony concealed under his sheeppkin a childlike humility, an amiable simplicity, a rare energy of will, and a glowing love to God, which maintained itself for almost ninety years in the absence of all the comforts and pleasures of natural life, and triumphed over all the temptations of the flesh. By piety alone, without the help of education or learning, he became one of the most remarkable and influential men in the history of the ancient church. Even heathen contemporaries could not withhold from him their reverence, and the celebrated philosopher Synesius, afterward a bishop, before his conversion reckoned Anthony among those rare men, in whom flashes of thought take the place of reasonings, and natural power of mind makes schooling needless.