INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
From St. Augustine’s Confessions, Bk. 8, Ch. 6.
WHEN, therefore, I had declared to him [Pontitianus, a fellow Christian] that I bestowed myself much in the reading of those Scriptures, he took occasion in the course of his speech to discourse unto us of Antony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was excellently famous amongst Thy servants; but, as for us, we had never heard of him until that hour.
But he, so soon as he perceived this, insisted the longer in speaking of him, insinuating the knowledge of so great a man to us, who were wholly ignorant, and wondering withal at that same ignorance of ours. We, on the other hand, were amazed to hear that so lately, and almost in our own days, such wonderful things had been wrought by Thee, in the True Faith and the Catholic Church; so that all of us wondered, we at the hearing of things so strange, and he that we had never heard of them before.
From this he went on to speak of the teeming monasteries, and of them who are a sweet savor unto Thee, and of the fruitful bosom of the barren desert, whereof also we had heard nothing. Nay, more, there was a monastery at Milan, full of holy brethren, close without the walls of the city, under the fostering care of Ambrose, and yet we knew nothing of it. So did he proceed in his discourse, and we held our peace, listening intently. Whereupon he went on to tell us further how once at Treves, he himself, with three companions, while the Emperor was detained at the afternoon games in the circus, went out to walk in some gardens near the city walls; thus it chanced that they became separated into two parties, one of the three keeping with him and the other two walking together. These latter two, as they wandered up and down, came at length upon a poor cottage, inhabited by divers servants of Thine, poor in spirit, of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven, and there they found a book wherein was written the life of Antony.
One of them began to read the same, to wonder at it and to be inflamed by it, and even whilst he was reading to resolve upon leading such a life as that, leaving the service of the world, to become wholly Thine.