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As also we remember that a dead man was raised to life by Abbot
Macarius who was the first to find a home in the desert of Scete. For
when a certain heretic who followed the error of Eunomius was trying by
dialectic subtlety to destroy the simplicity of the Catholic faith, and had
already deceived a large number of men, the blessed Macarius was asked by
some Catholics, who were terribly disturbed by the horror of such an upset,
to set free the simple folk of all Egypt from the peril of infidelity, and
came for this purpose. And when the heretic had approached him with his
dialectic art, and wanted to drag him away in his ignorance to the thorns
of Aristotle, the blessed Macarius put a stop to his chatter with apostolic
brevity, saying: the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." Let
us go therefore to the tombs, and let us invoke the name of the Lord over
the first dead man we find, and let us, as it is written, "show our faith
by our works," that by His testimony the manifest proofs of a right
faith may be shown, and we may prove the clear truth not by an empty
discussion of words but by the power of miracles and that judgment which
cannot be deceived. And when he heard this the heretic was overwhelmed with
shame before the people who were present, and pretended for the moment that
he consented to the terms proposed, and promised that he would come on the
morrow, but the next day when they were all in expectation who had come
together with greater eagerness to the appointed place, owing to their
desire for the spectacle, he was terrified by the consciousness of his want
of faith, and fled away, and at once escaped out of all Egypt. And when the
blessed Macarius had waited together with the people till the ninth hour,
and saw that he had owing to his guilty conscience avoided him, he took the
people, who had been perverted by him and went to the tombs determined
upon. Now in Egypt the overflow of the river Nile has introduced this
custom that, since the whole breadth of that country is covered for no
small part of the year by the regular flood of waters like a great sea so
that there is no means of getting about except by a passage in boats, the
bodies of the dead are embalmed and stored away in cells an good height up.
For the soil of that land being damp from the continual moisture prevents
them from burying them. For if it receives any bodies buried m it, it is
forced by the excessive inundations to cast them forth on its surface. When
then the blessed Macarius had taken up his position by a most ancient
corpse, he said "O man, if that heretic and son of perdition had come
hither with me, and, while he was standing by, I had exclaimed and invoked
the name of Christ my God, say in the presence of these who were almost
perverted by his fraud, whether you would have arisen." Then he arose and
replied with words of assent. And then Abbot Macarius asked him what he had
formerly been when he enjoyed life here, or in what age of men he had
lived, or if he had then known the name of Christ, and he replied that he
had lived under kings of most ancient date, and declared that in those days
he had never heard the name of Christ. To whom once more Abbot Macarius:
"Sleep," said he, "in peace with the others in your own order, to be roused
again by Christ in the end." All this power then and grace of his which was
in him would perhaps have always been hidden, unless the needs of the whole
province which was endangered, and his entire devotion to Christ, and
unfeigned love, had forced him to perform this miracle. And certainly it
was not the ostentation of glory but the love of Christ and the good of all
the people that wrung from him the performance of it. As the passage in the
book of Kings shows us that the blessed Elijah also did, who asked that
fire might descend from heaven on the sacrifices laid on the pyre, for this
reason that he might set free the faith of the whole people which was
endangered by the tricks of the false prophets.
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