ANTHONY (_bursting into tears_). "Enough! enough! thou dost wound my heart deeply."
HILARION. "Shake the vermin from thy rags! Rise up from thy filth! Thy God is not a Moloch who demands human flesh in sacrifice!"
ANTHONY. "Yet suffering is blessed. The cherubim stoop to receive the blood of confessors."
HILARION. "Admire, then, the Montanists!--they surpass all others."
ANTHONY. "But it is the truth of the doctrine which makes the martyrdom."
HILARION. "How can martyrdom prove the excellence of the doctrine, inasmuch as it bears equal witness for error?"
ANTHONY. "Perhaps martyrdom is not so difficult as thou dost imagine! The exhortations of friends, the pleasure of insulting the people, the oath one has taken, a certain dizzy excitement, a thousand circumstances all aid the resolution of the martyrs...."
(_Anthony turns his back upon Hilarion, and moves away from him. Hilarion follows him._)
" ... Moreover this manner of dying often brings about great disorders. Dionysius, Cyprian and Gregory fled from it. Peter of Alexandria has condemned it; and the council of Elvira...."
ANTHONY (_stops his ears_). "I will listen to thee no longer!"
HILARION (_raising his voice_). "Lo! thou fallest again into the habitual sin, which is sloth! Ignorance is the foam of pride. One says, forsoth:--'My conviction is formed! wherefore argue further?'--and one despises the doctors, the philosophers, tradition itself, and even the text of the law whereof one is ignorant! Dost thou imagine that thou dost hold all wisdom in the hollow of thy hand?"
ANTHONY. "I hear him still! His loud words fill my brain."
HILARION. "The efforts of others to comprehend God are mightier than all thy mortifications to move Him. We obtain merit only by our thirst for truth. Religion alone cannot explain all things; and the solution of problems ignored by thee can render faith still more invulnerable and noble. Therefore, for our salvation we must communicate with our brethren--otherwise the Church, the assembly of the faithful, would be a meaningless word--and we must listen to all reasoning, despising nothing, nor any person. The magician Balaam, the poet Aeschylus, and the Sybil of Cumæ--all foretold the Saviour. Dionysius, the Alexandrian, received from heaven the command to read all books. Saint Clement orders us to cultivate Greek letters. Hennas was converted by the illusion of a woman he had loved...."