before what I have seen shall come to pass." And when they asked
him again, he said with tears, that "Wrath will seize on the Church,
and she will be given over to men like unto brutes, which have no
understanding; for I saw the table of the Lord's house, and mules
standing all around it in a ring and kicking inwards, as a herd does
when it leaps in confusion; and ye all perceived how I groaned, for
I heard a voice saying, 'My sanctuary shall be defiled.'"

This the old man saw, and after two years there befell the present
inroad of the Arians, {72a} and the plunder of the churches, when
they carried off the holy vessels by violence, and made the heathen
carry them: and when too they forced the heathens from the prisons
to join them, and in their presence did on the holy table what they
would. {72b} Then we all perceived that the kicks of those mules
presignified to Antony what the Arians are now doing without
understanding, like the brutes. But when Antony saw this sight, he
exhorted those about him, saying, "Lose not heart, children; for as
the Lord has been angry, so will he again be appeased, and the
Church shall soon receive again her own order and shine forth as she
is wont; and ye shall see the persecuted restored to their place,
and impiety retreating again into its own dens, and the pious faith
speaking boldly everywhere with all freedom. Only defile not
yourselves with the Arians, for this teaching is not of the Apostle
but of the daemons, and of their father the devil: barren and
irrational and of an unsound mind, like the irrational deeds of
those mules." Thus spoke Antony.

But we must not doubt whether so great wonders have been done by a
man; for the Saviour's promise is, "If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard-seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Pass over from hence,