church; after the mass, it returned to its sepulchre.

A pious person having prayed for three days, learnt by the voice of an
angel that this monk had incurred excommunication for having disobeyed
his superior, and that he would remain bound until that same superior
had given him absolution. Then they went to the desert directly, and
brought the saintly old man, who caused the coffin of the martyr to
be opened, and absolved him, after which he remained in peace in his
tomb.

This instance appears to me rather suspicious. 1. In the time that the
Desert of Sheti was peopled with solitary monks, there were no longer
any persecutors at Alexandria. They troubled no one there, either
concerning the profession of Christianity, or on the religious
profession--they would sooner have persecuted these idolators and
pagans. The Christian religion was then dominant and respected
throughout all Egypt, above all, in Alexandria. 2. The monks of Sheti
were rather hermits than cenobites, and a monk had no authority there
to excommunicate his brother. 3. It does not appear that the monk in
question had deserved excommunication, at least major excommunication,
which deprives the faithful of the entry of the church, and the
participation of the holy mysteries. The bearing of the Greek text is
simply, that he remained obedient for some time to his spiritual
father, but that having afterwards fallen into disobedience, he
withdrew from the hands of the old man without any legitimate cause,
and went away to Alexandria. All that deserves doubtlessly even major
excommunication, if this monk had quitted his profession and retired
from the monastery to lead a secular life; but at that time the monks
were not, as now, bound by vows of stability and obedience to their
regular superiors, who had not a right to excommunicate them with
grand excommunication. We will speak of this again by-and-by.

CHAPTER XXV.

A MAN REJECTED FROM THE CHURCH FOR HAVING REFUSED TO PAY TITHES.

John Brompton, Abbot of Sornat in England,[502] says that we may read
in very old histories that St. Augustin, the Apostle of England,
wishing to persuade a gentleman to pay the tithes, God permitted that
this saint having said before all the people, before the commencement
of the mass, that no excommunicated person should assist at the holy
sacrifice, they saw a man who had been interred for 150 years leave
the church.

After mass, St. Augustin, preceded by the cros