A large number of Christians throughout history, aware of their sin, have given away their material wealth entirely to pursue a simple Gospel-centered life of prayer, starting with the hermit Saint Anthony in the early fourth century, when the Diocletian Persecution was still active, who following the death of his parents, sold his possessions, established a trust for the care of his younger sister, distributed the rest of the proceeds as alms, and then, after several failed attempts to get the Romans to allow him to die with those Christians arrested for martyrdom, including obstructing their processions (the soldiers merely pushed him out of the way), he retired to the desert to pray.
The biography of Anthony, entitled simply The Life of Anthony, was written by the same man, Athanasius, who as the chief deacon of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, defended the doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord against Arius at the Council of Nicea, and was later exiled from his native Alexandria, over which he had become Bishop, and his absence was lamented by the people; he was exiled in the late 330s and not allowed to return until around 360, under Julian the Apostate, and he died later that decade, but before he died, in the 39th year of his episcopate, he published in his annual encyclical setting the date of Pascha (Easter) to the bishops of Egypt, who were subordinate to him, the first binding and definitive New Testament canon - it was the first canon containing all and only the 27 books we use, and it was mandated, and this New Testament canon slowly was adopted by the rest of the Church (the Roman church, which used to be extremely conservative, confining itself primarily to the ecclesiastical affairs of Rome rather than the Western Empire as a whole, and hesitant to make any changes to anything, not even using Latin instead of Greek in their worship until the late second century, and not using music except for monotone until the late fifth century, and really, not doing it in a good or comprehensive way until Pope Gregory the Great, who had been trained in Greek chant and implemented a similar eight mode system we now call Gregorian chant at the end of the sixth century, did not adopt the Athanasian Canon of the 27 New Testament books until the Decretum Gelasianum in 493, under Pope Gelasius).
So, given the provenance of the biography of Saint Anthony the Great, that it was written by the same man who forced through the 27 book New Testament canon we benefit from so much today (imagine if the spurious Epistle of Barnabas, which some people wanted, had been included, or Revelations, Jude, James, Hebrews, 2 John, 3 John and 2 Peter, and 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon had been left out, as many more authorities in the church wanted, and which were absent from many bibles at the time - Athanasius prevented that), I think every Christian should try and read it, along with the doctrinal exposition Athanasius wrote, entitled On The Incarnation.
The biography of Anthony, entitled simply The Life of Anthony, was written by the same man, Athanasius, who as the chief deacon of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, defended the doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord against Arius at the Council of Nicea, and was later exiled from his native Alexandria, over which he had become Bishop, and his absence was lamented by the people; he was exiled in the late 330s and not allowed to return until around 360, under Julian the Apostate, and he died later that decade, but before he died, in the 39th year of his episcopate, he published in his annual encyclical setting the date of Pascha (Easter) to the bishops of Egypt, who were subordinate to him, the first binding and definitive New Testament canon - it was the first canon containing all and only the 27 books we use, and it was mandated, and this New Testament canon slowly was adopted by the rest of the Church (the Roman church, which used to be extremely conservative, confining itself primarily to the ecclesiastical affairs of Rome rather than the Western Empire as a whole, and hesitant to make any changes to anything, not even using Latin instead of Greek in their worship until the late second century, and not using music except for monotone until the late fifth century, and really, not doing it in a good or comprehensive way until Pope Gregory the Great, who had been trained in Greek chant and implemented a similar eight mode system we now call Gregorian chant at the end of the sixth century, did not adopt the Athanasian Canon of the 27 New Testament books until the Decretum Gelasianum in 493, under Pope Gelasius).
So, given the provenance of the biography of Saint Anthony the Great, that it was written by the same man who forced through the 27 book New Testament canon we benefit from so much today (imagine if the spurious Epistle of Barnabas, which some people wanted, had been included, or Revelations, Jude, James, Hebrews, 2 John, 3 John and 2 Peter, and 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon had been left out, as many more authorities in the church wanted, and which were absent from many bibles at the time - Athanasius prevented that), I think every Christian should try and read it, along with the doctrinal exposition Athanasius wrote, entitled On The Incarnation.
