then _Abraham's Sacrifice_; then _Moses and the Two Tables_; then _The Prophets_, each of whom prophesies of the coming Saviour; after which we find ourselves in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the midst of much nonsense about Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, about Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus, till we arrive at _The Shepherds_ and _The Magi, The Purification, The Slaughter of the Innocents, The Disputing in the Temple, The Baptism, The Temptation_, and _The Woman taken in Adultery_, at which point I pause for the sake of the remarkable tradition embodied in the scene--that each of the woman's accusers thought Jesus was writing his individual sins on the ground. While he is writing the second time, the Pharisee, the Accuser, and the Scribe, who have chiefly sustained the dialogue hitherto, separate, each going into a different part of the Temple, and soliloquize thus:
_Pharisee_. Alas! alas! I am ashamed! I am afeared that I shall die; All my sins even properly named Yon prophet did write before mine eye. If that my fellows that did espy, They will tell it both far and wide; My sinful living if they outcry, I wot not where my head to hide.
_Accuser_. Alas! for sorrow mine heart doth bleed, All my sins yon man did write; If that my fellows to them took heed, I cannot me from death acquite. I would I were hid somewhere out of sight, That men should me nowhere see nor know; If I be taken I am aflyght _afraid._ In mekyl shame I shall be throwe. _much._
_Scribe_. Alas the time that this betyd! _happened._ Right bitter care doth me embrace. All my sins be now unhid, Yon man before me them all doth trace. If I were once out of this place, To suffer death great and vengeance able,[15] I will never come before his face, Though I should die in a stable.
Upon this follows _The Raising of Lazarus_; next _The Council of the Jews_, to which the devil appears as a Prologue, dressed in the extreme of the fashion of the day, which he sets forth minutely enough in his speech also. _The Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; The Betrayal; King Herod; The Trial of Christ; Pilate's Wife's Dream_ come next; to the subject of the last of which the curious but generally accepted origin is given, that it was inspired by Satan, anxious that Jesus should not be slain, because he dreaded the mischief he would work when he entered Hades or Hell, for there is no distinction between them either here or in the Apocryphal Gospel whence the _Descent into Hell_ is taken. Then follow _The Crucifixion_ and _The Descent into Hell_--often called the _Harrowing of Hell_--that is, the _making war upon_ or _despoiling of hell_,[16] for which the authority is a passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus, full of a certain florid Eastern grandeur. I need hardly remind my readers that the Apostles' Creed, as it now stands, contains the same legend in the form of an article of faith. The allusions to it are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.