Appendices

II -- Passion Play Interlude

Modernized by A.F. Johnston

FIRST DOCTOR

Oh thou altitude of all ghostly riches!
Oh thou incomprehensible of great excellence!
Oh thou luminary of pure lightness,
Shoot out thy beams on to this audience.

SECOND DOCTOR

Oh filii altissimi called by eternality                              5
Heal this congregation with the salve of thy Passion.
And we pray thee, Spiritus Paraclyte,
With the fire of thy love to slake all detraction.

FIRST DOCTOR

To the people not learned I stand as a teacher,
Of this procession to give information;                              10
And to them that be learned as a ghostly preacher,
That in my rehearsal they may have delectation.

SECOND DOCTOR

Welcome of the apostles the glorious choir:
First Peter, your prince and also your president;
And Andrew, your half-brother, companions together                   15
That first followed Christ by one assent.

FIRST DOCTOR

Oh two luminaries, James and John,
Continually burning as bright as the sunbeam,
With the chain of charity both knit in one,
And offered of your mother to Christ in Jerusalem,                   20

SECOND DOCTOR

Welcome Philip, that converted the Samarian,
And converted the treasurer of the Queen of Candace
With James the Lesser, that apud Jerusalem
Was made first patriarch by the ordinance of Cephas.

FIRST DOCTOR

Hail, Matthew the Apostle and also Evangelist,                       25
That was called to the flock of ghostly conversation
From the moral darkness that you were in first,
With Bartholomew, that fled all carnal temptation.

SECOND DOCTOR

Hail, Simeon Zealot, thus be your name,
And Judas, that both well love our Lord.                             30
Therefore you have both joy and game
Where never is strife, but good accord.

FIRST DOCTOR

Hail, Paul, great doctor of the faith,
And vessel chosen by true election.
Hail, Thomas, of whom the gospel sayeth,                             35
In Christ's wound was your refreshment.

SECOND DOCTOR

Hail, John Baptist, most sovereign creature
That ever was born by natural conceiving,
And highest of prophets as witnesseth Scripture;
Hail, voice that in desert was always crying.                        40

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