by the compromise that both should seize the loaf at opposite ends, pull till it broke, and keep what remained in their hands. A drink from^ the fountain, and thanksgiving to God closed the meal. The day afterward Anthony returned to his cell, and told his two disciples : " Woe to me, a sinner, who have falsely pretended to be a monk. I have seen Elijah and John in th^-^8|p|^#;«»«I«h*ave seen St. Paul in paradise." Soon after- ward 'he paid St. Paul a. second visit, but found him dead in his cave, with head erect and hands lifted* up to heaven. He wrapped up the corpse, singing psalms and hymns, and buried him without a spade ; for two lions came of their own accord, or rather from supernatural impulse, from the interior parts of the desert, laid down at his feet, wagging their tails, and moaning distressingly, and scratched a grave in the sand large enough for the body of the departed saint of the desert ! An- thony returned with the coat of Paul, made of palm leaves, and wore it on the solemn days of Easter and Pentecost. Tlie learned Jerome wrote the life of Paul, some thirty years afterward, as it appears, on the authority of Anathas and Macarius, two disciples of Anthony. But he remarks, in the prologue, that many incredible things are said of him, which are not worthy of repetition. If he believed his story of the § 35. PAUL OF THEBES AJ^D ST. ANTHONY. 181 grave-digging lions, it is hard to imagine what was more credi- ble and less worthy of repetition. In this Paul we have an example of a canonized saint, who lived ninety years unseen and unknown in the wilderness, be- yond 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 con- sist with the common doctrine of the Catholic church respecting the necessity and the operation of the means of grace ? Au- gustine, 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. The 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 learn- ing. He understood only his Coptic vernacular, and remained all his life ignorant of Grecian literature and secular science.^ But he