Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter VI. Of the system of the Anchorites and its beginning.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter VI.
Of the system of the Anchorites and its beginning.
Out of this number of the
perfect, and, if I may use the expression, this most fruitful root of
saints, were produced afterwards the flowers and fruits of the
anchorites as well. And of this order we have heard that the
originators were those whom we mentioned just now; viz., Saint
Paul2077
| 2077 Paul was from very
early days celebrated as the first of the anchorites. Indeed S. Jerome,
who wrote his life (Works, Vol. ii. p. 13 ed. Migne) calls him
“auctor vitæ monasticæ” (Ep. xxii. ad
Eustochium). He is said to have fled to the Thebaid from the terrors of
the Decian persecution, and to have died there in extreme old age.
Antony has already been several times mentioned by Cassian. See the
Institutes V. iv.: Conference II. ii.; III. iv., etc. | and Antony, men who frequented the
recesses of the desert, not as some from faintheartedness, and the evil
of impatience, but from a desire for loftier heights of perfection and
divine contemplation, although the former of them is said to have found
his way to the desert by reason of necessity, while during the time of
persecution he was avoiding the plots of his neighbours. So then there
sprang from that system of which we have spoken another sort of
perfection, whose followers are rightly termed anchorites; i.e.,
withdrawers, because, being by no means satisfied with that victory
whereby they had trodden under foot the hidden snares of the devil,
while still living among men, they were eager to fight with the devils
in open conflict, and a straightforward battle, and so feared not to
penetrate the vast recesses of the desert, imitating, to wit, John the
Baptist, who passed all his life in the desert, and Elijah and Elisha
and those of whom the Apostle speaks as follows: “They wandered
about in sheepskins and goatskins, being in want, distressed,
afflicted, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts, in
mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth.” Of whom too the
Lord speaks figuratively to Job: “But who hath sent out the wild
ass free, and who hath loosed his bands? To whom I have given the
wilderness for an house, and a barren land for his dwelling. He
scorneth the multitude of the city and heareth not the cry of the
driver; he looketh round about the mountains of his pasture, and
seeketh for every green thing.” In the Psalms also: “Let
now the redeemed of the Lord say, those whom He hath redeemed from the
hand of the enemy;” and after a little: “They wandered in a
wilderness in a place without water: they found not the way of a city
of habitation. They were hungry and thirsty: their soul fainted in
them. And they cried unto the Lord in their trouble and He delivered
them out of their distress;” whom Jeremiah too describes as
follows: “Blessed is the man that hath borne the yoke from his
youth. He shall sit solitary and hold his peace because he hath taken
it up upon himself,” and there sing in heart and deed these words
of the Psalmist:
“I am become like a pelican in the
wilderness. I watched and am become like a sparrow alone upon the
house-top.”2078
| 2078 Heb. xi. 37, 38; Job xxxix.
5–8; Ps. cvi. (cvii.) 2, 4–6; Lam. iii. 27, 28; Ps. ci
(cii.) 7, 8. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
