Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/16

 apostolic times, and composed in the credulous spirit of the age, seemed to satisfy the demands of pious curiosity and soon obtained an extensive circulation. Catholic bishops and teachers did not know how better to stem this flood of Gnostic writings and their influence among the faithful, than by boldly adopting the most popular narrations from the heretical books, and, after carefully eliminating the poison of false doctrine, replacing them in this purified form in the hands of the people. That this process of purification was not always complete need not surprise us when we consider how changeable or uncertain on some points was the boundary line between Gnostic and Catholic doctrines. Thus originated the many castrated and revised editions of the Acts of Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, Thomas, Philip, Matthew, and others, which are found in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Anglo-Saxon, and ancient Slavonic languages.

In general, however, says Lipsius whom we follow for the most part, these Gnostic productions, apart from any more or less marked assertion of heretical dogmas or rules of life, betray their real origin by the overgrowths of a luxuriant imagination, by their highly colored pictures, and by their passionate love for mythical additions and adornments in excess even of the popular belief in signs and wonders. The favorite critical canon—"the more romantic the more recent in origin"—does not hold good as against this branch of literature, in which exorcising of demons, raisings of the dead, and other miracles of healing or of punishment are multiplied endlessly. The incessant repetition of the like wonders baffles the efforts of the most lively imagination to avoid a certain monotony, interrupted, however, by dialogues and prayers, which not seldom afford a pleasant relief, and are sometimes of a genuinely poetical character. There is withal a rich apparatus of the supernatural, consisting of visions, angelic appearances, voices from heaven, speaking animals and demons, who with shame confess their impotence against the champions of the truth; unearthly streams of light descend, or mysterious signs appear, from heaven; earthquakes, thunders and lightnings terrify the ungodly; the elements of wind and fire and