If we turn again to the various apocryphal Acts, where we have already noted charges of magic made against the apostles, we may find traces of gnosticism which have already been noted by Anz.[1716] In the Acts of Thomas the Holy Ghost is called the pitying mother of seven houses whose rest is the eighth house of heaven. In the Acts of Philip that apostle prays, “Come now, Jesus, and give me the eternal crown of victory over every hostile power ... Lord Jesus Christ ... lead me on ... until I overcome all the cosmic powers and the evil dragon who opposes us. Now therefore Lord Jesus Christ make me to come to Thee in the air.” The Acts of John, too, speak of overcoming fire and darkness and angels and demons and archons and powers of darkness who separate man from God.
Legend of John.
We deal in another chapter with the struggle of the apostles with Simon Magus as recounted in the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul, and with similar legends of the contests of other apostles with magicians. Here, however, we may mention some of the marvels in the apocryphal legend of St. John, supposed to have been written by his disciple Procharus and “which deluded the Greek Church by its air of sincerity and its extreme precision of detail,”[1717] although it does not seem to have reached the west until the sixteenth century. John is represented as drinking without injury a poison which had killed two criminals, and as reviving two corpses without going near them by directing an incredulous pagan to lay his cloak over them. A Stoic philosopher had persuaded some young men to embrace the life of poverty by converting their property into gems and then pounding the gems to pieces. John made the criticism that this wealth might have better been distributed among the poor, and when challenged to do so by the Stoic, prayed to God and had the gems made whole again. Later when the young men longed for their departed wealth, he turned the pebbles on the seashore into gold and precious stones, a miracle which is said to have persuaded the medieval alchemists that he possessed the secret of the philosopher’s stone.[1718] At any rate Adam of St. Victor in the twelfth century wrote the following lines concerning St. John in a chant to be used in the church service:
Cum gemmarum partes fractas
Solidasset, has distractas
Tribuit pauperibus;
Inexhaustum fert thesaurum
Qui de virgis fecit aurum,
Gemmas de lapidibus.[1719]
Legend of St. Sousnyos.