was riding with Nestorius, governor of Egypt, their horses
began to play and prance, and the governor's horse, though otherwise
remarkably tame, by {170} justling, threw Belacius from his horse, and
by biting his thigh, tore it in such a manner that the general died
miserably on the third day.[19] About the year 337, Constantine the
Great, and his two sons, Constantius and Constans, wrote a joint letter
to the saint; recommending themselves to his prayers, and desiring an
answer. St. Antony seeing his monks surprised, said, without being
moved: "Do not wonder that the emperor writes to us, one man to another;
rather admire that God should have wrote to us, and that he has spoken
to us by his Son." He said he knew not how to answer it: at last,
through the importunity of his disciples, he penned a letter to the
emperor and his sons, which St. Athanasius has preserved; and in which
he exhorts them to the contempt of the world, and the constant
remembrance of the judgment to come. St. Jerom mentions seven other
letters of St. Antony, to divers monasteries, written in the style of
the apostles, and filled with their maxims: several monasteries of Egypt
possess them in the original Egyptian language. We have them in an
obscure, imperfect, Latin translation from the Greek.[20] He inculcates
perpetual watchfulness against temptations, prayer, mortification, and
humility.[21] He observes, that as the devil fell by pride, so he
assaults virtue in us principally by that temptation.[22] A maxim which
he frequently repeats is, that the knowledge of ourselves is the
necessary and only step by which we call ascend to the knowledge and
love of God. The Bollandists[23] give us a short letter of St. Antony to
St. Theodorus, abbot of Tabenna, in which he says that God had assured
him in a revelation, that he showed mercy to all true adorers of Jesus
Christ, though they should have fallen, if they sincerely repented of
their sin. No ancients mention any monastic rule written by St.
Antony.[24] His example and instructions have been the most perfect rule
for the monastic life to all succeeding ages. It is related[25] that St.
Antony, hearing his disciples express their surprise at the great
multitudes who embraced a monastic life, and applied themselves with
incredible ardor to the most austere practices of virtue, told them with
tears, that the time would come when monks would be fond of living in
cities and stately buildings, and of eatin