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The Patriarch's dramatic warning of the Real Presence found in her a ready second; for keeping strictly to Father Hilarion's distinction between a right Creed and a form or ceremony for pious observance, the former essential to salvation, the latter merely helpful to continence in the Creed, it was with her as if Christ in glorified person stood there under the baldacchino.
Hear me before addressing yourself to something else.... I remember the words of the Creed or if I have them wrong correct me: 'I believe in God, and Jesus Christ, his Son." "It is word for word." "Am I to understand you gave him the form?" "The idea is Father Hilarion's." "And the Two Articles. Are they indeed sayings of Jesus Christ?" "Even so." "Give me the book containing them."
"God's will be done, were better! ... So, if it please you," she went on, "tell me all the Hegumen told you about me." "Everything?" he asked doubtfully. "Why not?" "Part of it is too wicked for repetition." "Yet it was an accusation." "Yes." "Sergius, you are no match in cunning for my enemies. They are Greeks trained to diplomacy; you are" she paused and half smiled "only a pupil of Hilarion's.
These miracles, however, according to St. Jerome, were the foundations of Hilarion's fame and public career. For he says, "When they were noised abroad, people flowed to him eagerly from Syria to Egypt, so that many believed in Christ, and professed themselves to be monks for no one had known of a monk in Syria before the holy Hilarion.
But Hilarion's fame spread to them; and a great multitude, brown and shrunken with famine, cried to him for rain, as to the blessed Antony's successor. He saw them, and grieved over them; and lifting up his hand to heaven, obtained rain at once.
He must read again the confession, extorted from her by the second perusal of Father Hilarion's letter, and be reminded of her education in the venerated Father's religious ideas, by which her whole soul was adherent to his conceptions of the Primitive Church of the Apostles.
He sailed for Pachynum, and there, in a cottage on the shore, heard of Hilarion's fame that which most surprised all being that, after so many signs and miracles, he had not accepted even a bit of bread from any man. So, "not to make the story too long," as says St. Jerome, Hesychius fell at his master's knees, and watered his feet with tears, till at last he raised him up.
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