of his life was like, it is fit that I should relate, and you hear
eagerly. For it too is worthy of emulation. He was visiting,
according to his wont, the monks in the outer mountain, and having
learned from Providence concerning his own end, he said to the
brethren, "This visit to you is my last, and I wonder if we shall
see each other again in this life. It is time for me to set sail,
for I am near a hundred and five years old." And when they heard
that they wept, and embraced and kissed the old man. And he, as if
he was setting out from a foreign city to his own, spoke joyfully,
and exhorted them not to grow idle in their labours or cowardly in
their training, but to live as those who died daily, and (as I said
before) to be earnest in keeping their souls from foul thoughts, and
to emulate the saints, and not to draw near the Meletian
schismatics, for "ye know their evil and profane determinations, nor
to have any communion with the Arians, for their impiety also is
manifest to all. Neither if ye shall see the magistrates
patronising them, be troubled, for their phantasy shall have an end,
and is mortal and only for a little while. Keep yourselves
therefore rather clean from them, and hold that which has been
handed down to you by the fathers, and especially the faith in our
Lord Jesus Christ which ye have learned from Scripture, and of which
ye have often been reminded by me." And when the brethren tried to
force him to stay with them and make his end there, he would not
endure it, on many accounts, as he showed by his silence; and
especially on this:--The Egyptians are wont to wrap in linen the
corpses of good persons, and especially of the holy martyrs, but not
to bury them underground, but to lay them upon benches and keep them
in their houses; {77} thinking that by this they honour the
departed. Now Antony had often asked the bishops to exhort the
people about this, and in like manner he himself rebuked the laity