to be made unsightly; it was to save me from death eternal, that Thou didst taste for a while the most cruel of deaths. O Death, what hast thou done? How is it that thou wast not afraid to lay thy hand upon the Lord's Anointed? What power hadst thou over Him; what crime couldst thou lay to the charge of the Son of God? Thou hast fallen upon Him, and slain Him; but thy victory has cost thee dear: for in slaying Him thou hast slain thyself; impaled upon the stake of Christ's Divinity, thou hast brought to an end thy cruel reign; and on the descent into Hell of the Soul of Christ thou hast been compelled to set free all the Saints, dead because of Adam's sin, who had so long been held captive by the prince of Darkness. As indeed the Prophet had long since foretold: " O death, I will be thy death; O hell, I will he thy sting." And so in Church is raised the triumphant song: " Life dies upon the Tree: the grave has lost its sting."[1]
By Thy death, therefore, O Christ, the hope of life is mine once more, and by Thy victory over the prince of death a crown of joy is given me.
- ↑ [The Responsory from which these words are taken is not to be found in Office-books of the present day; but during the Middle Ages it was customary in some churches to introduce, at the end of Tenebrae, certain tropes; and it is one of such which is quoted in the text. This trope (Kyrie eleison: qui passzirus, etc.) is known to have been in use in the Diocese of St, Gall (Switzerland) in the tenth century; and from its being found quoted here it would seem to have been in use in the Diocese of Utrecht in the fifteenth. For the material of this note and of those at pages 204 and 259 infra, I am indebted to the kindness of the Right Rev. Dom Fernand Cabrol, Abbot of Farnborough, who, as the authority for this note, cites " Paleographie Musicale, Partie Monumentale," i. 225, and Pothier.]
