From his life, compiled by St. Jerom, in 365. Pope Gelasius I., in his learned Roman council, in 494, commends this authentic history. St. Paul is also mentioned by Cassian, St. Fulgentius, Sulpitius Severus, Sidonius, Paulinus, in the life of St. Ambrose, &c. St. Jerom received this account from two disciples of St. Antony, Amathas and Macariux. St. Athanasius says, that he only wrote what he had heard from St. Antony's own mouth, or from his disciples; and desires others to add what they know concerning his actions. On the various readings and MS. copies of this life, see the disquisition of P. Jem{} de Prato, an oratorian of Verona, in his new edition of the works of Sulpitius Severus, t. l, app. 2, p. 403. The Greek history of St. Paul the hermit, which Bollandus imagines St. Jerom to have followed, is evidently posterior; and borrows from him, as Jos. Assemani shows. Comm. In Calend. Univ. t. 6, p. 92. See Gudij Epistolae, p. 278. A.D. 342. ELIAS and St. John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast in the wilderness; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day, though young, into the desert, and was to him an instructor there; but it is no less certain, that an entire solitude and total sequestration of one's self from human society, is one of those extraordinary ways by which God leads souls to himself, and is more worthy of our admiration, than calculated for imitation and practice: it is a state which ought only to be embraced by such as are already well experienced in the practices of virtue and contemplation, and who can resist sloth and other temptations, lest, instead of being a help, it prove a snare and stumbling-block in their way to heaven.