Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 3.djvu/365

Rh if it were entirely manifest that it related to us, we might then confess it." And when they had thus spoken, they went in weeping to our mother. And when they found her asleep, and wished to embrace her, Peter prevented them, saying: "Permit me first to prepare your mother's mind, lest haply by the great and sudden joy she lose her reason, and her understanding be disturbed, especially as she is now stupified with sleep."

Therefore, when our mother had risen from her sleep, Peter began to address her, saying: "I wish you to know, O woman, an observance of our religion. We worship one God, who made the world, and we keep His law, in which He commands us first of all to worship Him, and to reverence His name, to honour our parents, and to preserve chastity and uprightness. But this also we observe, not to have a common table with Gentiles, unless when they believe, and on the reception of the truth are baptized, and consecrated by a certain threefold invocation of the blessed name; and then we eat with them. Otherwise, even if it were a father or a mother, or wife, or sons, or brothers, we cannot have a common table with them. Since, therefore, we do this for the special cause of religion, let it not seem hard to you that your son cannot eat with you, until you have the same judgment of the faith that he has."

Then she, when she heard this, said: "And what hinders me to be baptized to-day? For even before I saw you I was wholly alienated from those whom they call gods, because they were not able to do anything for me, although I frequently, and almost daily, sacrificed to them. And as to chastity, what shall I say, when neither in former times did pleasures deceive me, nor afterwards did poverty compel me to sin? But I think you know well enough how great was my love of chastity, when I pretended that dream that I might escape the snares of unhallowed love, and that I might