Chapter IV. How practical life is distributed among many different professions and interests.

Chapter IV.

How practical life is distributed among many different professions and interests.

This practical life then, which as has been said rests on a double system, is distributed among many different professions and interests. For some make it their whole purpose to aim at the secrecy of an anchorite and purity of heart, as we know that in the past Elijah and Elisha, and in our own day the blessed Antony and others who followed with the same object, were joined most closely to God by the silence of solitude. Some have given all their efforts and interests towards the system of the brethren and the watchful care of the Cœnobium; as we remember that recently Abbot John, who presided over a big monastery in the neighbourhood of the city Thmuis, ¹⁸⁶⁸ and some other men of like merits were eminent with the signs of Apostles. Some are pleased with the kindly service of the guest house and reception, by which in the past the patriarch Abraham and Lot pleased the Lord, and recently the blessed Macarius, ¹⁸⁶⁹ a man of singular courtesy and patience who presided over the guest house at Alexandria in such a way as to be considered inferior to none of those who aimed at the retirement of the desert. Some choose the care of the sick, others devote themselves to intercession, which is offered up for the oppressed and afflicted, or give themselves up to teaching, or give alms to the poor, and flourish among men of excellence and renown, by reason of their love and goodness.

Footnotes

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It is doubtful whether this is the same John mentioned in the Institutes V. xxviii. and to whom the xixth Conference is assigned. Thmuis is the coptic Thmoui, a little to the south of the Mendesian branch of the Nile. See Rawlinson’s note to Herod. ii. c. 166 and cf. Ptolemy IV. v. § 51.

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On the two Macarii see the note on the Institutes V. xli.