the Apostles, for their divine Master recommended them to eat and drink what they could find. Edentes et bibentes, quae apud illos sunt, (Luke, x. 1) Who can surpass, or even equal them ? Others said that all the Saints had taught, by their words and their examples, that we should never be singular in our way of living. Others pretended that all excess is vicious, and that such as fear God ought to avoid it. Others respected her intentions and only said that she was the victim of an illusion. Others again, more coarse and vulgar, calumniated her publicly, and repeated continually that it was a kind of vanity that prompted her to wish to be noticed; that she did not fast really, but fed herself well in secret. If I did not refute all these rash and absurd judgments, I should think that I was offending God. I pray, therefore, that it be remarked, that if the objection that is drawn from our Lord, the Blessed "Virgin and the Apostles be just, it would follow that St. John the Baptist was greater than our Lord himself: for it is said of him in the Gospel that John neither eat nor drank, while the Son of Mary on the contrary ate and drank. (Matt. xi. 18) it would also follow that Anthony, the Macariuses, the Hilariens, the Serapions and many other hermits, who fasted more than the Apostles, consequently surpassed them. If it be objected that John in the wilderness, and the monks in Egypt did not entirely fast, but took from time to time some food, what shall be said of St. Mary Magdalen, who remained thirty-three years in a grotto, without touching any nutriment, as is related in history, and the place in which she dwelt also proves, which was, at that time, inaccessible. What shall be said of the saints who also passed considerable time without eating, and who contented themselves for the most part of
