who washed with it, and during the eight
months that he was himself dying of a dropsy, he touched for their
diseases all who came to the door of his cell to be healed. Hellas
carried fire in his bosom without burning his clothes. Elias spent
seventy years in solitude on the borders of the Arabian desert near
Antinoopolis. Apelles was a blacksmith near Achoris; he was tempted
by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman, but he scorched the
tempter's face with a red-hot iron. Dorotheus, who though a Theban had
settled near Alexandria, mortified his flesh by trying to live without
sleep. He never willingly lay down to rest, nor indeed ever slept till
the weakness of the body sunk under the efforts of the spirit. Paul,
who dwelt at Pherma, repeated three hundred prayers every day, and kept
three hundred pebbles in a bag to help him in his reckoning. He was the
friend of Anthony, and when dying begged to be wrapt in the cloak given
him by that holy monk, who had himself received it as a present from
Athanasius. His friends and admirers claimed for Paul the honour of
being the first Christian hermit, and they maintained their improbable
opinion by asserting that he had been a monk for ninety-seven years, and
that he had retired to the desert at the age of sixteen, when the Church
was persecuted in the reign of Valerian. All Egypt believed that the
monks were the especial favourites of Heaven, that they worked miracles,
and that divine wisdom flowed from their lips without the help or
hindrance of human learning. They were all Homoousians, believing
that the Son was of one substance with the Father; some as trinitarians
holding the opinions of Athanasius; some as Sabellians believing that
Jesus was the creator of the world, and that his body therefore was not
liable to corruption; some as anthropomorphites believing God was of
human form like Jesus; but all warmly attached to the Mcene creed,
denying the two natures of Christ, and hating the Arian Greeks of
Alexandria and the other cities. Gregory of Nazianzum remarks that Egypt
was the most Christ-loving of countries, and adds with true simplicity
that, wonderful to say, after having so lately worshipped bulls, goats,
and crocodiles, it was now teaching the world the worship of the Trinity
in the truest form.

The pagans, who were now no longer able to worship publicly as they
chose, took care to proclaim their opinions indirectly in such ways as
the law could not reach. I