of life; and there was present too James the brother of the Lord ([Greek:  adelphotheos]), and Peter the chief and the most revered head of the apostles ([Greek:  theologon]); then it seemed right, after the spectacle, that all the hierarchs (as each was able) should sing of the boundless goodness of the divine power.  After the apostles, as you know, he surpassed all the other sacred persons, wholly carried away, and altogether in an ecstasy, and feeling an entire sympathy with what was sung; and by all by whom he was heard, and seen, and known (and he[117] knew it not), he was considered to be an inspired and divine hymnologist.  And why should I speak to you about the things there divinely said, for unless I have even forgotten myself, I know that I have often heard from you some portions also of those inspired canticles?  And the royal personages having heard this, requested of Juvenal the archbishop, that the holy coffin, with the {314} clothes of the glorious and all-holy Mary, mother of God, sealed up, might be sent to them.  And this, when sent, they deposited in the venerable temple of the Mother of God, built in Blachernae; and these things were so.”

    [Footnote 117:  This seems confused in the original ([Greek:  kai
    eginosketo, kai ouk eginoske]).  The whole passage is involved in
    great obscurity.]

It is a fact no less lamentable than remarkable, that out of the lessons appointed by the Church of Rome for the feast of the Assumption, to be read to believers assembled in God’s house of prayer, three of those lessons are selected and taken entirely from this very oration of John Damascenus[118].

    [Footnote 118: 

The Fourth Lesson begins “Hodie sacra et animata arca.” 
The Fifth    "      "    “Hodie virgo immaculata.” 
The Sixth    "      "    “Eva quae serpentis,” &c.—­AE. 603.

These contain the passages to which we have before referred as fixing the belief of the Church of Rome to be in the CORPOREAL assumption of Mary.  “Quomodo corruptio invaderet CORPUS ILLUD in quo vita suscepta est? [Greek:  pos diaphthora tou zoodochon katatolmaeseie somatos.]”]

This, then, is the account nearest to the time of the supposed event; and yet can any thing be more vague, and by way of testimony, more worthless?  A writer near the middle of the sixth century refers to a conversation, said to have taken place in the middle of the fifth century; in this reported conversation at Constantinople, the Bishop of Jerusalem is represented to have informed the Emperor and Empress of an ancient tradition, which was believed, concerning a miraculous event, said to have taken place nearly four hundred years before, that the body was taken out of a coffin without the knowledge of those who had deposited it there:  Whilst the primitive and inspired account, recording most minutely the journeys and proceedings of some of those very persons, and the letters of others, makes no mention at all of any transaction of the kind; and of {315} all the intermediate historians and ecclesiastical writers not one gives the slightest intimation that any rumour of it had reached them[119].