They are
severed at the wrist, and are lying on the coffin, on which his
arms also are resting. In the sky the Virgin appears between the
Father and the Son, the Holy Dove being seen above her. The same
print occurs also in another part of the volume.]
Nicephorus then refers to Juvenal, Archbishop of Jerusalem, as the
authority on which the tradition was received, that the Apostles opened
the coffin to enable St. Thomas (the one stated to have been absent) to
embrace the body; and then he proceeds to describe the personal
appearance of the Virgin. [Vol. i. p. 171.]
I am unwilling to trespass upon the patience of my readers by any
comment upon such evidence as this. Is it within the verge of
credibility that had such an event as Mary's assumption taken place
under the extraordinary circumstances which now invest the tradition, or
under any circumstances whatever, there would have been a total silence
respecting it in the Holy Scriptures? {317} That the writers of the
first four centuries should never have referred to such a fact? That the
first writer who alludes to it, should have lived in the middle of the
fifth century, or later; and that he should have declared in a letter to
his contemporaries that the subject was one on which many doubted; and
that he himself would not deny it, not because it rested upon probable
evidence, but because nothing was impossible with God; and that nothing
was known as to the time, the manner, or the persons concerned, even had
the assumption taken place? Can we place any confidence in the relation
of a writer in the middle of the sixth century, as to a tradition of
what an archbishop of Jerusalem attending the council of Chalcedon, had
told the sovereigns at Constantinople of a tradition, as to what was
said to have happened nearly four hundred years before, whilst in the
"Acts" of that Council, not the faintest trace is found of any allusion
to the supposed fact or the alleged tradition, though the transactions
of that Council in many of its most minute circumstances are recorded,
and though the discussions of that Council brought the name and
circumstances of the Virgin Mary continually before the minds of all who
attended it?
This, however, is a point of too great importance to be dismissed
summarily; and seems to require us to examine, however briefly, into the
circumstances of that Council.
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