Life of Antony. (Vita Antoni.)
Section 68: How he rejected the schism of Meletius and the heresies of Manes and Arius.
68. And he was altogether wonderful in faith and religious, for he never held communion with the Meletian schismatics, knowing their wickedness and apostacy from the beginning; nor had he friendly dealings with the Manichæans or any other heretics; or, if he had, only as far as advice that they should change to piety. For he thought and asserted that intercourse with these was harmful and destructive to the soul. In the same manner also he loathed the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all neither to approach them nor to hold their erroneous belief. And once when certain Arian madmen came to him, when he had questioned them and learned their impiety, he drove them from the mountain, saying that their words were worse than the poison of serpents.
Edition and rights
NPNF2-04. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters. Historical English edition; series volume first published 1892.
Archibald Robertson, volume editor; historical English translations as revised in this edition
Ancient work and historical English translation: public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Copyright rules vary by country. This is a historical source transcription, not an official Church edition. Modern website material is not reproduced.
Historical footnotes and publisher introductions are omitted. Author-written openings are retained. Paragraph whitespace is normalized. Transcriptions can contain errors; this is not a critical edition. Attribution follows the historical edition, not universal scholarly agreement.
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Source section: xvi.ii.xxx · Text SHA-256: 85905c4b84980c79cb97ac7d2299549489d7e0a56e032073da8b107475d7a11a