Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Apocalypse of Peter/Fragments of the Apocalypse of Peter

Fragments of the Apocalypse of Peter.

1.&#160;, Eclog. 48.&#160; For instance, Peter in the Apocalypse says that the children who are born out of due time shall be of the better part:&#160; and that these are delivered over to a care-taking angel that they may attain a share of knowledge and gain the better abode [after suffering what they would have suffered if they had been in the body:&#160; but the others shall merely obtain salvation as injured beings to whom mercy is shown, and remain without punishment, receiving this as a reward].

2.&#160; Eclog. 49.&#160; But the milk of the women running down from their breasts and congealing shall engender small flesh-eating beasts:&#160; and these run up upon them and devour them.

3.&#160;, Apocritica iv., 6 cf. 16.&#160; The earth, it (sc. the Apoc. of Peter) says, &#8220;shall present all men before God at the day of judgment, being itself also to be judged, with the heaven also which encompasses it.&#8221;

4.&#160; Eclog. 41.&#160; The scripture says that infants that have been exposed are delivered to a care-taking angel, by whom they are educated and so grow up, and they will be, it says, as the faithful of a hundred years old are here.

5.&#160;, Conviv. ii., 6.&#160; Whence also we have received in divinely-inspired scriptures that untimely births are delivered to care-taking angels, even if they are the offspring of adultery.