the middle of his body. The first ascended and held him by the body; the second, mounting another ladder drew out first one of the nails from one hand; then changing the ladder he took out the nail from the other. These nails extended far beyond the wood of the cross. Then he who bore the weight of the body, descending gradually and moderately as he could, the other got up the ladder reaching to the feet, and drew the nails from the feet. And when he approached the ground, one of them held the body by the head, and the other by the feet, but I, being his mother, held him by the middle. And so we three bore him to a rock which I had covered with a clean linen sheet, in which we wrapped the body, but I did not sew the winding-sheet. For I knew Tor certain that he would not decay in the tomb. Afterwards, Mary Magdalen and the other holy women came, and many holy angels, like specks in the sunbeam were present, paying reverence to their creator. What grief I then felt, no one can tell. For I was like a woman in childbirth, all whose limbs after delivery are tremulous, who, though she can scarcely breathe for pain, yet rejoices inwardly as much as she can, because she knows that her child is born never to return
