in its way, and not rarely almost incredible. But this moral heroism — and these are the weak points of it — oversteps not only the present standard of Christianity, but all sound measure ; it has no support either in the theory or the practice of Christ and the apostolic church ; and it has far more resemblance to heathen than to biblical precedents. Many of the most eminent saints of the desert differ only in their Christian confession, and in some Bible phrases learnt by rote, from Buddhist fakirs and Mohammedan dervises. Their highest virtuousness consisted in bodily exercises of their own devising, which, without love, at best profit nothing at all, very often only gratify spiritual vanity, and entirely obscure the gospel way of salvation. To illustrate this by a few examples, we may choose any of the most celebrated eastern anchorets of the fourth and fifth centuries, as reported by the most credible contemporaries. The holy Scriptures instruct us to pray and to labor ; and to pray not only mechanically with the lips, as the heathen do, but with all the heart. But Paul the Simple said daily three hundred prayers, counting tliem with pebbles, which he carried in his bosom (a sort of rosary) ; when he heard of a virgin who prayed seven hundred times a day, he was troubled, and told his distress to Macarius, who well answered him: "Either thou prayest not with thy heart, if thy conscience reproves thee, or thou couldst pray oftener. I have for six years prayed only a hundred times a day, without being obliged to condemn myself for neglect." Christ ate and drank like other men, ex- ' In Theodoret : Hist, relig. c. (vita) 13. 166 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. pressly distingmshing himself thereby from John, the repre- sentative of the old covenant ; and Paul recommends to us to use the gifts of God temperately, with cheerful and childlike gratitude.' But the renowned anchoret and presbyter Isidore of Alexandria (whom Athanasius ordained) touched no meat, never ate enough, and, as Palladius relates, often burst into tears at table for shame, that he, who was destined to eat angels' food in paradise, should have to eat material stuff like the irrational brutes. Macarius the elder, or the Great, for a long time ate only once a week, and slept standing and leaning on a staff. The equally celebrated younger Macarius lived three years on four or five ounces of bread a day, and seven years on raw herbs and pulse. Ptolemy spent three yeai*s alone in an unwatered desert, and quenched his thirst with the dew, which he collected in December and January, and preserved in earthen vessels ; but he fell at last into skepticism, madness, and debauchery.^ Sozomen tells of a certain Bat- theeus, that by reason of his extreme abstinence, worms crawled out of his teeth ; of Alas, that to his eightieth year he never ate bread ; of Heliodorus,