The Acts of the Apostles

MIRACLES AND WORKS OF THE SPIRIT 155
(racrOai to ay. Trvevjiiai yj/evo-acrOaL tu> Oew, ol vecoTepoi
[ol peavlcTKoil). Its point lies in the miraculous know-
ledge and power of St. Peter (in the second place,
in the sanctity of the Church, in which every offence
is avenged by God). Here again we cannot say what
really happened, but it is not incredible that the
sudden death of two members of the community, of
doubtful character, should have been regarded in
Jerusalem itself, and even by contemporaries, as a
Divine act of punishment announced by St. Peter
and that the account of this event should have
been worked up after the pattern of Jos. vii. and
Levit. X. If, however, we recollect 1 Cor. v. 5, we
may go a step farther and may very well suppose
that St. Peter really pronounced a sentence of
death against the guilty pair and that their death
actually followed (vide Macar, Magn., III. 21, 28).
How this took place scarcely allows of conjecture.
At all events this legend is not one of those
that could only have been created by a later
generation.
On the other hand, the account of the corporal
Ascension is without doubt a narrative that could
not have taken form in the circle of the " Eleven."
I have collected together the material for the history
of the tradition of the Ascension in Hahn's Bibliothek
der Symhole, 3 Aufl. s. 382 ff. Apart from the Acts,
it occurs in the New Testament only in the spurious
conclusion of St. Mark, and in the interpolated passage
in St. Luke xxiv. 51. St. Paul has no knowledge of
it ; but there is no need to show how natural it was
that the primitive belief in the descensus and ascenstis
;