A Vision of What the Arians Would Do

So, since he was known to be so great a man, and had given these answers to those who visited him, he went back to the inner mountain and kept up his usual discipline. Often, when people came to him, as he sat or walked he would fall speechless, as it is written in Daniel, and after a while he would take up again the thread of what he had been saying to the brothers who were with him. His companions understood that he was seeing a vision. For often, while he was in the mountains, he saw what was happening in Egypt, and told it to Serapion the bishop, who was indoors with him and saw that Antony was caught up in a vision. Once, as he sat working, he fell into something like a trance and groaned greatly at what he saw. After a time he turned to the bystanders, groaning and trembling, and prayed; and falling on his knees, he stayed that way a long time. When he got up, the old man wept. His companions, trembling and terrified, wanted to learn from him what it was. They pressed him hard, until he was forced to speak. And with many groans he said: “O my children, it would be better to die before what has appeared in the vision comes to pass.” When they asked him again, he burst into tears and said: “Wrath is about to seize the church, and she is on the point of being handed over to men who are like senseless beasts. For I saw the table of the Lord’s house, with mules standing all around it in a ring, kicking the things on it, just as a herd kicks when it leaps about in confusion. And you saw,” he said, “how I groaned, for I heard a voice saying, ‘My altar will be defiled.’” These things the old man saw. And two years later came the present attack of the Arians and the plundering of the churches, when they violently carried off the vessels and made pagans carry them; when they forced pagans out of the prisons to attend their services, and in their presence did whatever they pleased on the table. Then we all understood that the kicking of the mules had shown Antony beforehand what the Arians, senseless as beasts, are now doing. [a]

But when he saw this vision, he comforted those with him, saying: “Do not be downcast, my children. As the Lord has been angry, so he will heal us again, and the church will soon receive her own order again and shine out as she used to. You will see the persecuted restored, wickedness withdrawn again to its own hiding place, and godly faith speaking boldly everywhere with all freedom. Only do not defile yourselves with the Arians. Their teaching is not that of the apostles, but that of the demons and their father the devil. Indeed, it is barren and senseless, without right understanding, like the senselessness of these mules.”