Accuser.  Alas! for sorrow mine heart doth bleed,
All my sins yon man did write;
If that my fellows to them took heed,
I cannot me from death acquite. 
I would I were hid somewhere out of sight,
That men should me nowhere see nor know;
If I be taken I am aflyght                      afraid.
In mekyl shame I shall be throwe.             much.

  Scribe.  Alas the time that this betyd! happened.
    Right bitter care doth me embrace. 
  All my sins be now unhid,
    Yon man before me them all doth trace. 
  If I were once out of this place,
    To suffer death great and vengeance able,[15]
  I will never come before his face,
    Though I should die in a stable.

Upon this follows The Raising of Lazarus; next The Council of the Jews, to which the devil appears as a Prologue, dressed in the extreme of the fashion of the day, which he sets forth minutely enough in his speech also. The Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; The Betrayal; King Herod; The Trial of Christ; Pilate’s Wife’s Dream come next; to the subject of the last of which the curious but generally accepted origin is given, that it was inspired by Satan, anxious that Jesus should not be slain, because he dreaded the mischief he would work when he entered Hades or Hell, for there is no distinction between them either here or in the Apocryphal Gospel whence the Descent into Hell is taken.  Then follow The Crucifixion and The Descent into Hell—­often called the Harrowing of Hell—­that is, the making war upon or despoiling of hell,[16] for which the authority is a passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus, full of a certain florid Eastern grandeur.  I need hardly remind my readers that the Apostles’ Creed, as it now stands, contains the same legend in the form of an article of faith.  The allusions to it are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.

The soul of Christ comes to the gates of hell, and says: 

  Undo your gates of sorwatorie; place of sorrow.
  On man’s soul I have memorie;
  There cometh now the king of glory,
    These gates for to breke! 
  Ye devils that are here within,
  Hell gates ye shall unpin;
  I shall deliver man’s kin—­
    From woe I will them wreke. avenge.

* * * * *

    Against me it were but waste
  To holdyn or to standyn fast;
  Hell-lodge may not last
    Against the king of glory. 
  Thy dark door down I throw;
  My fair friends now well I know;
  I shall them bring, reckoned by row,
    Out of their purgatory!

The Burial; The Resurrection; The Three Maries; Christ appearing to Mary; The Pilgrim of Emmaus; The Ascension; The Descent of the Holy Ghost; The Assumption of the Virgin; and Doomsday, close the series.  I have quoted enough to show that these plays must, in the condition of the people to whom they were presented, have had much to do with their religious education.