Besides the persecutions which St. Anthony suffered from the Devil, he has the farther merit of having been the first Institutor of the Monastic life, several other Hermits having in his time chosen to assemble together, and lived under his direction; and though he has not expressly been the Founder of any particular Order, yet it is glory enough for him to have been the Father of the whole family of Friars and Nuns. In more modern times, however, his relicks having been brought from Egypt to Constantinople, and thence transferred to _Dauphiné_, in France, a Church was built on the spot where they were deposited, and a new Order of Friars was a little after established, who go by the name of Monks of St. Anthony. These Monks form a kind of Order distinct from all others; but yet they have no less ingenuity than the other Monks for procuring the good of their Convent, as may be judged from the following story, which, I think, I may venture to relate as a conclusion both of this Note, and of the whole Chapter. The Story I mean, is contained in the Book of the _Apologie pour Hérodote_, which was written about the year 1500 by _Henry Etienne_, on purpose to shew that those who intirely reject the facts related by Herodotus, on account of their incredibility, treat him with too much severity, since a number of facts daily happen, which are altogether as surprising as those that are found in that Author. Before relating the story in question, the Reader ought to be informed, that St. Anthony is commonly thought to have a great command over fire, and a power of destroying, by flashes of that element, those who incur his displeasure: the common people have been led into this belief, by constantly seeing a fire placed by the side of that Saint, in the representations that are made of him; though this fire is placed there for no other reason than because the Saint is thought to have the power of curing the _erysipelas_, which is also called the _sacred fire_ (_ignis sacer_), in the same manner as St. Hubert cures the Hydrophoby, St. John the Epilepsy, and other Saints other disorders. A certain Monk of St. Anthony (to come to our point) who was well acquainted with the above prepossession of the vulgar concerning the power of his Saint, used on Sundays to preach in public, in different villages within a certain distance from his Convent. One day he assembled his congregation under a tree on which a magpye had built her nest, into which he had previously found means to convey a small box filled with gunpowder, which he had well secured therein; and out of the box hung a long thin match, that was to burn slowly, and was hidden among the leaves of the tree. As soon as the Monk, or his Assistant, had touched the match with a lighted coal, he began his sermon. In the mean while the magpye returned to her nest; and finding in it a strange body which she could not remove, she fell into a passion, and began to scratch with her feet, and chatter unmercifully.