Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete

CHAPTER XVII.

1 Death and the dev­ils in great hor­ror at Christ’s com­ing. 13 He tram­ples on death, seizes the prince of hell, and takes Adam with him to Heav­en.

IM­PI­OUS death and her cru­el of­fi­cers hear­ing these things, were seized with fear in their sev­er­al king­doms, when they saw the clear­ness of the light,

2 And Christ him­self on a sud­den ap­pear­ing in their habi­ta­tions, they cried out there­fore, and said, We are bound by thee; thou seemest to in­tend our con­fu­sion be­fore the Lord.

3 Who art thou, who has no signs of cor­rup­tion, but that bright ap­pear­ance which is a full proof of thy great­ness, of which yet thou seemest to take no no­tice?

4 Who art thou, so pow­er­ful, and so weak, so great and so lit­tle; mean, and yet a sol­dier of the first rank, who can com­mand in the form of a ser­vant and a com­mon sol­dier?

5 The king of Glo­ry, dead and alive, though once slain up­on the cross?

6 Who layest dead in the grave, and art come down alive to us, and in thy death all the crea­tures trem­bled, and all the stars were moved; and now hast thy lib­er­ty among the dead, and givest dis­tur­bance to our le­gions?

7 Who art thou, who dost re­lease the cap­tives that were held in chains by orig­inal sin, and bringest them in­to their for­mer lib­er­ty?

8 Who art thou, who dost spread so glo­ri­ous and di­vine a light over those who were made blind by the dark­ness of sin?

9 In like man­ner all the le­gions of dev­ils were seized with the like hor­ror, and with the most sub­mis­sive fear cried out, and said,

10 Whence comes it, O thou Je­sus Christ, that thou art a man so pow­er­ful and glo­ri­ous in majesty so bright as to have no spot, and so pure as to have no crime? For that low­er world of earth, which was ev­er till now sub­ject to us, and from whence we re­ceived trib­ute, nev­er sent us such a dead man be­fore, nev­er sent such presents as these to the princes of hell.

11 Who there­fore art thou, who with such courage en­ter­est among our abodes, and art not on­ly not afraid to threat­en us with the great­est pun­ish­ments, but al­so en­deav­ourest to res­cue all oth­ers from the chains in which we hold them?

12 Per­haps thou art that Je­sus, of whom Sa­tan just now spoke to our prince, that by the death of the cross thou wert about to re­ceive the pow­er of death.

13 Then the King of Glo­ry tram­pling up­on death, seized the prince of hell, de­prived him of all his pow­er, and took our earth­ly fa­ther Adam with him to his glo­ry.