Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter IV. How practical life is distributed among many different professions and interests.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter IV.
How practical life is distributed among many different
professions and interests.
This practical life then,
which as has been said rests on a double system, is distributed among
many different professions and interests. For some make it their whole
purpose to aim at the secrecy of an anchorite and purity of heart, as
we know that in the past Elijah and Elisha, and in our own day the
blessed Antony and others who followed with the same object, were
joined most closely to God by the silence of solitude. Some have given
all their efforts and interests towards the system of the brethren and
the watchful care of the Cœnobium; as we remember that recently
Abbot John, who presided over a big monastery in the neighbourhood of
the city Thmuis,1868
| 1868 It is doubtful
whether this is the same John mentioned in the Institutes V. xxviii.
and to whom the xixth Conference is assigned. Thmuis is the coptic
Thmoui, a little to the south of the Mendesian branch of the Nile. See
Rawlinson’s note to Herod. ii. c. 166 and cf. Ptolemy IV. v.
§ 51. | and some
other men of like merits were eminent with the signs of Apostles. Some
are pleased with the kindly service of the guest house and reception,
by which in the past the patriarch Abraham and Lot pleased the Lord,
and recently the blessed Macarius,1869
| 1869 On the two
Macarii see the note on the Institutes V. xli. | a man of
singular courtesy and patience who presided over the guest house at
Alexandria in such a way as to be considered inferior to none of those
who aimed at the retirement of the desert. Some choose the care of the
sick, others devote themselves to intercession, which is offered up for
the oppressed and afflicted, or give themselves up to teaching, or give
alms to the poor, and flourish among men of excellence and renown, by
reason of their love and goodness.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
