{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/211/2111071.htm","path":"chr/ecf/211/2111071.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/211/2111071.htm","text":"The answer stating what Saint Antony laid down on this matter.\nAbraham: I will not give you my own opinion against this, but that of the blessed Antony, whereby he confounded the laziness of a certain brother (overcome by this luke-warmness which you describe) in such a way as also to cut the knot of your subject. For when one came as I said to the aforesaid old man, and said that the Anchorite system was not at all to be admired, declaring that it required greater virtue for a man to practise what belongs to perfection living among men rather than in the desert, the blessed Antony asked where he lived himself, and when he said that he lived close to his relations, and boasted that by their provision he was set free from all care and anxiety of daily work, and gave himself up ceaselessly and solely to reading and prayer without any distraction of spirit, once more the blessed Antony said: \u201cTell me, my good friend, whether you grieve with their griefs and misfortunes, and in the same way rejoice in their good fortune?\u201d He confessed that he shared in them both. To whom the old man: \u201cYou should know,\u201d said he, \u201cthat in the world to come also you will be judged in the lot of those with whom in this life you have been affected by sharing in their gain or loss, or joy or sorrow.\u201d And not satisfied with this statement the blessed Antony entered on a still wider field of discussion, saying: \u201cThis mode of life and this most lukewarm condition not only strike you with that damage of which I spoke (though you do not feel it now, when somehow you say in accordance with that saying in Proverbs: \u2018They strike me but I am not grieved: and they mocked me but I knew it not;\u2019 or this that is said in the Prophet: \u2018And strangers have devoured his strength, but he himself knew it not\u2019 2309 ), because day after day they ceaselessly drag down your mind to earthly things, and change it in accordance with the variations of chance; but also because they defraud you of the fruits of your hands and the due reward of your own exertions, as they do not suffer you to be supported by what these supply, or to procure your daily food for yourself with your own hands, according to the rule of the blessed Apostle, as he when giving his last charge to the heads of the Church of Ephesus, asserts that though he was occupied with the sacred duties of preaching the gospel yet he provided not only for himself, but also for those who were prevented by necessary duties with regard to his ministry, saying: \u2018Ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my necessities and to the necessities of those who were with me.\u2019 But to show that he did this as a pattern to be useful to us he says elsewhere: \u2018We were not idle among you; neither did we eat any man\u2019s bread for nothing, but in labour and in toil we worked night and day lest we should be chargeable to any of you. Not as if we had not power; but that we might give ourselves a pattern unto you, to imitate us.\u201d 2310","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XI: The Wor...","type":"page"}