Nicephorus then refers to Juvenal, Archbishop of Jerusalem, as the authority on which the tradition was received, that the Apostles opened the coffin to enable St. Thomas (the one stated to have been absent) to embrace the body; and then he proceeds to describe the personal appearance of the Virgin. [Vol. i. p. 171.]

I am unwilling to trespass upon the patience of my readers by any comment upon such evidence as this.  Is it within the verge of credibility that had such an event as Mary’s assumption taken place under the extraordinary circumstances which now invest the tradition, or under any circumstances whatever, there would have been a total silence respecting it in the Holy Scriptures? {317} That the writers of the first four centuries should never have referred to such a fact?  That the first writer who alludes to it, should have lived in the middle of the fifth century, or later; and that he should have declared in a letter to his contemporaries that the subject was one on which many doubted; and that he himself would not deny it, not because it rested upon probable evidence, but because nothing was impossible with God; and that nothing was known as to the time, the manner, or the persons concerned, even had the assumption taken place?  Can we place any confidence in the relation of a writer in the middle of the sixth century, as to a tradition of what an archbishop of Jerusalem attending the council of Chalcedon, had told the sovereigns at Constantinople of a tradition, as to what was said to have happened nearly four hundred years before, whilst in the “Acts” of that Council, not the faintest trace is found of any allusion to the supposed fact or the alleged tradition, though the transactions of that Council in many of its most minute circumstances are recorded, and though the discussions of that Council brought the name and circumstances of the Virgin Mary continually before the minds of all who attended it?

This, however, is a point of too great importance to be dismissed summarily; and seems to require us to examine, however briefly, into the circumstances of that Council. {318}

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CHAPTER IV.—­COUNCILS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, EPHESUS, AND THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON

The legend on which the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is founded professes to trace the tradition to Juvenal, Archbishop of Jerusalem, when he was sojourning in Constantinople for the purpose of attending the General Council of Chalcedon.  To the Emperor and Empress, who presided at that council, Juvenal is said to have communicated the tradition, as received in Palestine, of the miraculous taking up of Mary’s body into heaven.  This circumstance seems, as we have already intimated, of itself, to require us to examine the records of that Council,