fact for the most practical purposes by the whole of Christendom.
The forging of miracles, like the forging of charters, for the
honour of a particular shrine, or the advantage of a particular
monastery, belongs to a much later and much worse age; and,
whatsoever we may think of the taste of the authors of these lives,
or of their faculty for judging of evidence, we must at least give
them credit for being earnest men, incapable of what would have been
in their eyes, and ought to be in ours, not merely falsehood, but
impiety. Let the reader be sure of this--that these documents would
not have exercised their enormous influence on the human mind, had
there not been in them, under whatever accidents of credulity, and
even absurdity, an element of sincerity, virtue, and nobility.



SAINT ANTONY



The life of Antony, by Athanasius, is perhaps the most important of
all these biographies; because first, Antony was generally held to
be the first great example and preacher of the hermit life; because
next, Athanasius, his biographer, having by his controversial
writings established the orthodox faith as it is now held alike by
Romanists, Greeks, and Protestants, did, by his publication of the
life of Antony, establish the hermit life as the ideal (in his
opinion) of Christian excellence; and lastly, because that biography
exercised a most potent influence on the conversion of St.
Augustine, the greatest thinker (always excepting St. Paul) whom the
world had seen since Plato, whom the world was to see again till