Englands Antiphon | Page 8

sorry apple that we have sokyn sucked. To death hath brought my spouse and me.
When the voice of God is heard, saying,
Adam, that with my hands I made,?Where art thou now? what hast thou wrought?
Adam replies, in two lines, containing the whole truth of man's spiritual condition ever since:
Ah, Lord! for sin our flowers do fade:?I hear thy voice, but I see thee nought.
The vision had vanished, but the voice remained; for they that hear shall live, and to the pure in heart one day the vision shall be restored, for "they shall see God." There is something wonderfully touching in the quaint simplicity of the following words of God to the woman:
Unwise woman, say me why?That thou hast done this foul folly,?And I made thee a great lady,?In Paradise for to play?
As they leave the gates, the angel with the flaming sword ends his speech thus:
This bliss I spere from you right fast; bar.?Herein come ye no more,?Till a child of a maid be born,?And upon the rood rent and torn,?To save all that ye have forlorn, lost.?Your wealth for to restore.
Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her throat to her husband, praying him to strangle her:
Now stumble we on stalk and stone;?My wit away from me is gone;?Writhe on to my neck-bone?With hardness of thine hand.
Adam replies--not over politely--
Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush;
and goes on to make what excuse for themselves he can in a very simple and touching manner:
Our hap was hard, our wit was nesche, soft, weak, still in use in To Paradise when we were brought: [some provinces. My weeping shall be long fresh;?Short liking shall be long bought. pleasure.
The scene ends with these words from Eve:
Alas, that ever we wrought this sin!?Our bodily sustenance for to win,?Ye must delve and I shall spin,?In care to lead our life.
Cain and Abel_ follows; then _Noah's Flood, in which God says,
They shall not dread the flood's flow;
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,