nd in his rage had assaulted him by visible phantoms, but that these
disappeared while he persevered in prayer. He told them, that once when
the devil appeared to him in glory, and said, "Ask what you please; I am
the power of God:" he invoked the holy name of Jesus, and he vanished.
Maximinus renewed the persecution in 311; St. Antony, hoping to receive
the crown of martyrdom, went to Alexandria, served and encouraged the
martyrs in the mines and dungeons, before the tribunals, and at the
places of execution. He publicly wore his white monastic habit, and
appeared in the sight of the governor; yet took care never
presumptuously to provoke the judges, or impeach himself, as some rashly
did. In 312 the persecution being abated, he returned to his monastery,
and immured himself in his cell. Some time after he built another
monastery, called Pispir, near the Nile; but he chose, for the most
part, to shut himself up in a remote cell upon a mountain of difficult
access, with Macarius, a disciple, who entertained strangers. If he
found them to be _Hierosolymites_, or spiritual men, St. Antony himself
sat with them in discourse; if Egyptians, (by which name they meant
worldly persons,) then Macarius entertained them, and St. Antony only
appeared to give them a short exhortation. Once the saint saw in a
vision the whole earth covered so thick with snares, that it seemed
scarce possible to set down a foot without falling into them. At this
sight he cried out, trembling: "Who, O Lord, can escape them all?" A
voice answered him "Humility, O Antony!"[11] St. Antony always looked
upon himself as the least and the very outcast of mankind; he listened
to the advice of every one, and professed that he received benefit from
that of the meanest person. He cultivated and pruned a little garden on
his desert mountain, that he might have herbs always at hand to present
a refreshment to those who, on coming to see him, were always weary by
travelling over a vast wilderness and inhospitable mountain, as St.
Athanasius mentions. This tillage was not the only manual labor in which
St. Antony employed himself. The same venerable author speaks of his
making mats as an ordinary occupation. We are told that he once fell
into dejection, finding uninterrupted contemplation above his strength;
but was taught to apply himself at intervals to manual labor, by a
vision of an angel who appeared platting mats of palm-tree leaves, then
rising to pray, and aft