trying to hinder them. Wherefore, also he especially exhorts us:
"Take the whole armour of God, that the enemy, having no evil to say
about us, may be ashamed." But when we heard this, we remembered
the Apostle's saying, "Whether in the body I cannot tell, or out of
the body I cannot tell: God knoweth." But Paul was caught up into
the third heaven, and, having heard unspeakable words, descended
again; but Antony saw himself rapt in the air, and wrestling till he
seemed to be free.

Again, he had this grace, that as he was sitting alone in the
mountain, if at any time he was puzzled in himself, the thing was
revealed to him by Providence as he prayed; and the blessed man was,
as Scripture says, taught of God. After this, at all events, when
he had been talking with some who came to him concerning the
departure of the soul, and what would be its place after this life,
the next night some one called him from without, and said, "Rise up,
Antony; come out and see." So coming out (for he knew whom he ought
to obey), he beheld a tall being, shapeless and terrible, standing
and reaching to the clouds, and as it were winged beings ascending;
and him stretching out his hands; and some of them hindered by him,
and others flying above him, and when they had once passed him,
borne upwards without trouble. But against them that tall being
gnashed his teeth, while over those who fell, he rejoiced. And
there came a voice to Antony, "Consider what thou seest." And when
his understanding was opened, he perceived that it was the enemy who
envies the faithful, and that those who were in his power he
mastered and hindered from passing; but that those who had not
obeyed him, over them, as over conquerors, he had no power. Having
seen this, and as it were made mindful by it, he struggled more and
more daily to improve. Now these things he did not tell of his own