In propagating these superstitions, the ringleaders were the Monks, and Antony was at the head of them: for in the end of the life of Antony, Athanasius relates that these were his dying words to his disciples who then attended him. Do you take care, said Antony, to adhere to Christ in the first place, and then to the Saints, that after death they may receive you as friends and acquaintance into the everlasting Tabernacles. Think upon these things, perceive these things; and if you have any regard to me, remember me as a father. This being delivered in charge to the Monks by Antony at his death, A.C. 356, could not but inflame their whole body with devotion towards the Saints, as the ready way to be received by them into the eternal Tabernacles after death. Hence came that noise about the miracles done by the relics of the Saints in the time of Constantius: hence came the dispersion of the miracle-working relics into all the Empire; Alexandria setting the example, and being renowned for it above all other cities. Hence it came to pass in the days of Julian, A.C. 362, that Athanasius by a prophetic spirit, as Ruffinus tells us, hid the bones of John the Baptist from the Heathens, not in the ground to be forgotten, but in the hollow wall of a Church before proper witnesses, that they might be profitable to future generations. Hence also came the invocation of the Saints for doing such miracles, and for assisting men in their devotions, and mediating with God. For Athanasius, even from his youth, looked upon the dead Saints and Martyrs as mediators of our prayers: in his Epistle to Marcellinus, written in the days of Constantine the great, he saith that the words of the Psalms are not to be transposed or any wise changed, but to be recited and sung without any artifice, as they are written, that the holy men who delivered them, knowing them to be their own words, may pray with us; or rather, that the Holy Ghost who spake in the holy men, seeing his own words with which he inspired them, may join with them in assisting us.
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