Section 39

“I would have preferred to stop here and say nothing further from my own experience, content with what has already been said. But I do not want you to think that I speak at random or describe these things without experience or truth.

“So even if I appear foolish, the Lord who hears me knows the purity of my conscience: I am not saying these things for my own sake, but because of your affection for me and because you asked me. I will therefore tell you again some of what I myself have seen concerning the practices of evil spirits.

“How often have they called me blessed, and I cursed them in the name of the Lord! How often have they predicted the rising of the river, and I answered, ‘What does that have to do with you?’

“Once they came threatening me and surrounded me like soldiers fully armed. Another time they filled the house with horses, wild animals, and reptiles, and I sang: ‘Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the Lord our God.’ At prayer the Lord put them to flight.

“Once they came in darkness bearing the appearance of a light and said, ‘We have come to give you light, Antony.’ But I shut my eyes and prayed, and immediately the light of the wicked ones was extinguished.

“A few months later they came as though singing psalms and babbling words from Scripture. But ‘I, like a deaf man, did not hear.’ Once they shook my cell as though with an earthquake, but I continued praying with an unshaken heart.

“Afterward they came again making noises, whistling, and dancing. But while I prayed and lay there singing psalms quietly to myself, they immediately began lamenting and weeping as though their strength had failed. I gave glory to the Lord, who had brought down their audacity and madness and made a public example of them.