CHAPTER XI.
THE LIFE OF JESUS BEFORE HIS PASSION.
Mary speaketh: I have spoken to thee of my dolors; but that dolor was not the least which I experienced, when I bore my Son in my flight to Egypt, and when I heard the innocents slaughtered, and Herod pursuing my Son. But, although I knew what was written of my Son, yet my heart, for the excessive love I bore my Son, was filled with grief and sadness. You may perhaps ask what my Son did all that time of his life before his Passion. I reply, that, as the Gospel says, he was subject to his parents, and he acted like other children, till he reached his majority. Nor were wonders wanting in his youth: how idols were silenced, and fell in numbers in Egypt at his coming; how the Wise Men foretold that my Son should be a sign of great things to come; how, too, the ministries of angels appeared; how, too, no uncleanness appeared upon him, nor entanglement in his hair, all which it is unnecessary for thee to know, as signs of his divinity and humanity are set forth in the Gospel, which may edify
