afresh, took more pains to improve, saying over to himself
continually the Apostle's words, "Forgetting what is behind,
stretching forward to what is before;" and mindful, too, of Elias'
speech, "The Lord liveth, before whom I stand this day." For he
held, that by mentioning to-day, he took no account of past time:
but, as if he were laying down a beginning, he tried earnestly to
make himself day by day fit to appear before God, pure in heart, and
ready to obey his will, and no other. And he said in himself that
the ascetic ought for ever to be learning his own life from the
manners of the great Elias, as from a mirror. Antony, having thus,
as it were, bound himself, went to the tombs, which happened to be
some way from the village; and having bidden one of his
acquaintances to bring him bread at intervals of many days, he
entered one of the tombs, and, shutting the door upon himself,
remained there alone. But the enemy, not enduring that, but rather
terrified lest in a little while he should fill the desert with his
training, coming one night with a multitude of daemons, beat him so
much with stripes, that he lay speechless from the torture. For he
asserted that the pain was so great that no blows given by men could
cause such agony. But by the providence of God (for the Lord does
not overlook those who hope in him), the next day his acquaintance
came, bringing him the loaves. And having opened the door, and
seeing him lying on the ground for dead, he carried him to the
Lord's house in the village, and laid him on the ground; and many of
his kinsfolk and the villagers sat round him, as round a corpse.
But about midnight, Antony coming to himself, and waking up, saw
them all sleeping, and only his acquaintance awake, and, nodding to
him to approach, begged him to carry him back to the tombs, without
waking any one. When that was done, the doors were shut, and he
remained as before, alone inside. And, because he could not stand