Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/231

 God on whom ye believed has had mercy upon you and will have his pleasure in you and give you rest in all eterntiy [sic].

17. "But what will happen to me should not frighten you as some strange thing, that the servant of God, to whom God has shown so many things by words and deeds, should be forcibly driven from this earthly life by a bad man! For such will not only happen unto me, but also unto all who love him, believe on him, and confess him. The devil, shameless in every respect, will arm his own children against them, that they adhere to him. And yet he shall not accomplish what he wishes. And why he undertakes it, I will tell: from the beginning of all things, and, if it may be said, since he who is without beginning came down into his dominion, the evil enemy who is averse to peace, estranges him who is not his (from God), but only one of the weaker ones, which has not yet come to full clearness and could not yet be known. And since he also does not know him, he should have been opposed by him. And because that one thought to own him and to be his master for ever, he behaves toward him so that their enmity became a kind of friendship. For he often sketched pictures of that which is his own, to father it upon him, namely, of deceitful sensual pleasures, by which he thought to rule over him fully. He did not come out openly as enemy, because he pretended a friendship worthy of him.

18. "And this work he carried on for a long