(received the price). I sold the land and kept nought back of the price, but gave all the money
unto the poor.
Know therefore, thou servant of Jesus Christ, that God directeth (?) them that are his, and
prepareth good for every one of them, although we think that God hath forgotten us. Therefore
now, brethren, let us be sorrowful and watch and pray, and so shall the goodness of God look
upon us, whereon we wait.
And yet further discourse did Peter hold before them all, and glorified the name of Christ the
Lord and gave them all of the bread: and when he had distributed it, he rose up and went unto his
house.
The scene of this episode is probably Jerusalem. The subject of it was often used by later writers,
most notably, perhaps, by the author of the late Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus (fifth or sixth
century), who gives the daughter a name, Petronilla, which has passed into Kalendars, and as
Perronelle, Pernel, or Parnell has become familiar.
A few critics have questioned whether this piece really belongs to the Acts of Peter: but the
weight of probability and of opinion is against them. Nothing can be plainer than that it is an
extract from a larger book, and that it is ancient (the manuscript may be of the fourth century).
Moreover, Augustine, in dealing with apocryphal Acts, alludes to the story contained in it. What
other large book of ancient date dealing with Peter's doings can we imagine save the Acts?
II
THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER
Augustine (Against Adimantus, xvii. 5 ), says to his Manichaean opponent: the story of Peter
killing Ananias and Sapphira by a word is very stupidly blamed by those who in the apocryphal
Acts read and admire both the incident I mentioned about the apostle Thomas (the death of the
cup-bearer at the feast in his Acts) 'and that the daughter of Peter himself was stricken with palsy
at the prayer of her father, and that the daughter of a gardener died at the prayer of Peter. Their
answer is that it was expedient for them, that the one should be disabled by palsy and the other
should die: but they do not deny that it happened at the prayer of the apostle'.
This allusion to the gardener's daughter remained a puzzle until lately. But a passage in the
Epistle of Titus (already quoted) tells us the substance of the story.
A certain gardener had a daughter, a virgin, her father's only child: he begged Peter to pray for
her. Upon his request, the apostle answered him that the Lord would give her that which was
useful for her soul. Immediately the girl fell dead.
O worthy gain and suitable to God, to escape the insolence of the flesh and mortify the
boastfulness of the blood! But that old man, faithless, and not knowing the greatness of the
heavenly favour, ignorant of the divine benefit, entreated Peter that his only daughter might be
raised again. And when she was raised, not many days after, as it might be to-day, the slave of a
believer who lodged in the house ran upon her and ruined the girl, and both of them disappeared.
This was evidently a contrast to the story of Peter's daughter, and probably followed immediately
upon it in the Acts. There is another sentence appropriate to the situation, which Dom de Bruyne
found in a Cambrai MS. of the thirteenth century - a collection of apophthegms- and printed with
the extracts from the Epistle of Titus.
That the dead are not to be mourned overmuch, Peter, speaking to one who lamented without
patience the loss of his daughter, said: So many assaults of the devil, so many warrings of the
ron
(Ron)
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