and if I had come to you, I should have copied you; but if you come
to me, copy me, for I am a Christian." And they wondering went
their way, for they saw that even daemons were afraid of Antony.

And again when others of the same class met him in the outer
mountain, and thought to mock him, because he had not learnt
letters, Antony answered, "But what do you say? which is first, the
sense or the letters? And which is the cause of the other, the
sense of the letters, or the letters of the sense?" And when they
said that the sense came first, and invented the letters, Antony
replied, "If then the sense be sound, the letters are not needed."
Which struck them, and those present, with astonishment. So they
went away wondering, when they saw so much understanding in an
unlearned man. For though he had lived and grown old in the
mountain, his manners were not rustic, but graceful and urbane; and
his speech was seasoned with the divine salt, so that no man grudged
at him, but rather rejoiced over him, as many as came. . . .

[Here follows a long sermon against the heathen worship, attributed
to St. Antony, but of very questionable authenticity: the only
point about it which is worthy of note is that Antony confutes the
philosophers by challenging them to cure some possessed persons,
and, when they are unable to do so, casts out the daemons himself by
the sign of the cross.]

The fame of Antony reached even the kings, for Constantinus the
Augustus, and his sons, Constantius and Constans, the Augusti,
hearing of these things, wrote to him as to a father, and begged to
receive an answer from him. But he did not make much of the
letters, nor was puffed up by their messages; and he was just the